Holiday Candy

As I read the newspapers, scan the Internet and watch TV, one would think the anger and fear from the economic nightmare  would start to  affect our customers too, but the candy buying customers we have  are still showing their sugary smiles and sweet tones.
At first, I thought the spike in our candy sales was coming from the up and coming arrival of the Easter Bunny, but after reviewing what was selling I noticed it was all of our candy selections, not just our Easter Candy treats , that were  flying off our shelves.
Let’s face it, candy  is comforting and lifts spirits. It costs a heck of a lot less and  is more easily accessible than going to the doctor and getting something for the same results.  In trying times, people  tend to think back to the easier ,  less stressful days .  What better thoughts  are there than your childhood days of buying a bag full of candy for a quarter and running down the street with your best friends.
To say remembering those days has helped candy stay recession-proof, I’d be going out on a limb, but when you look at the past and think back to the Great Depression, The Candy Companies stayed in business and kept people happy, just like today!
Yes the good old Necco Wafers, Hershey Bars, Nestle’s  and Tootsie Rolls were   helping people cope back then and are still today.
I think what isn’t recession-proof in my line of  business is the high end candies. I just read the other day that Lindt Candy Company was closing  tons of their stores, but yet all the other companies making the cheaper chocolates and the old fashioned candies are booming. It was also reported  that gummi candy and gum sales this quarter have risen double digits.

My theory is even getting stronger as I watch our  lower priced Easter candy fly off the shelves and the more expensive brands  sit waiting for me to run a special or put them on sale. I wonder why Lindt  didn’t see this happening and lower their prices to fit the hard economic times? Maybe because they weren’t around in the  Great  Depression, so they really don’t know how to market their products?
Regardless of any of those who seem to be clueless, our candy strategy is working. We are very fortunate to be in business since 1939; that’s seventy years of weathering both good and bad times so we know how to adapt. We carry candy from every manufacturer and do understand people’s wants and needs. I guess that comes from being family owned and operated all these years.
This Easter Candy season I think will be one for the record books, not just in candy sales figures, but in what’s popular in those baskets. Yes you’re  going to see the good old fashioned  standby  jelly beans, marshmallow peeps,  hollow chocolate bunnies and coconut cream eggs, but from the looks of it,  you’re going to see the good old daily Nostalgic candy treats like Tootsie Rolls, Necco Wafers and Bit o Honey’s making their way back in.
Candy is an old fashioned  comfort food and I think we all could use a little of those sweet memories from the days before banks collapsed and government bailouts, so I think now is a good time to buy a bigger basket and reward yourself and others  with a good old fashioned  sweet treat!

Actor Kevin Costner was popular for his role in the movie Field of Dreams, perhaps known most for it’s famous tagline, “If you build it, they will come.”  At Blair Candy, we enjoyed our own sweet success with our own concoction of that line:  “If you give them free candy, they will come, too!”

Our big event wasn’t a look back at famous baseball players– our main event was the start of the Holiday shopping season with Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  No, we didn’t have Shoeless Joe Jackson or Archie Graham walking out of a cornfield, but all Black Friday weekend, we did have our hard working employees walking in and out of our warehouse doors. Plus, our shipping company, UPS, pitched in and gave a hand as well, just so our customers could enjoy a little old fashioned candy game of speedy great customer service– our team’s trademark for the 70-plus years we’ve been in the candy business! 

The cheering in our stands erupted from the free candy we gave away those days to all of our previous customers, and even many new ones that found out about the promotion through our Advertising work done by Solid Cactus.  All our customers had to do was place any candy order that crucial holiday shopping week and we’d take 10% off their order, plus throw in some free candyto help fill their stockings. It was a homerun! 

The first group up to bat got a free box of the new Jr. Mints Peppermint crunch candies; the second group got a free Hershey’s Milk Chocolate large holiday bar, and the third got a free box of Cowtails.  These free candy items might not be what you usually order when you sit down to enjoy a live baseball game, but they sure did make the holidays a little sweeter on the wallets of over a thousand of our customers!

With all the excitement this free offer generated, it of course also generated a lot of work from our employees and our shipping company, UPS. Not only did UPS pitch in and help with the excessive amount of packages to be shipped across the nation, but our dedicated employees stepped up to the plate as well. We might not have had Kevin Costner lending a hand to make this all happen, but we did have our company vice president, Terry, pull himself away from his computer and speadsheets to pitch in and help get us to the 9th inning.   

This was the first time ever I had to make a S.O.S call to our UPS rep, Steve, on a weekend. I explained to him that first thing Monday morning, we needed a BIG empty brown truck.  Without a hitch, first thing Cyber Monday morning, UPS was parked in our warehouse parking lot ready to take away all of the orders.  But Steve didn’t just send a big truck, the normal UPS brown trucks most of you see, but a bigger model.  As in TRACTOR-TRAILER.   It may be hard for a lot of you to understand the kind of space all these different sizes of packed-up candy can take, but let me just say, they all would have covered that entire baseball field of dreams, way out there in Iowa!

A special thank you to UPS and their team, who helped us out, plus our own employees, too, who gave up their holiday weekend away from family and friends to work from dawn to dusk so our customers would be happy! Also a special thank you to all of our customers for continuously choosing us. We appreciate all the business and effort everyone gave.          

What better time of year than to pimp your house for the Holiday season. Not only do most of us decorate a tree or the outside of our homes, but many still do what I did years ago as a kid. We built gingerbread houses with our moms or grandmothers. Back when I did it, there wasn’t that much creative thinking that went into them as there is now.  Oh we’d put the typical red and white swirled starlite mints or a few chocolate stars here and there, and a few M&M’s and gum drops, but times have changed. People now have taken this nostalgic Christmas tradition to new heights and turned it also into contests.

We have many people from big and small corporate offices calling and wanting to buy some pretty cool candy items to help Pimp Out Their Houses. We have church groups and school teachers calling as well. It seems now,  the bigger the better and the sweeter looking they are the more attention they get.

Customers have some pretty cool ideas. They are using spearmint green leaves for trees, and bubble gum balls for decorations, some even have gone as far as using red licorice for shingles on the roof and those red colored french burnt peanuts to resemble a brick sidewalk. The school teachers are into the gum drops, marshmallow peep trees and different colors of tootsie roll frooties to bring their houses alive.

I guess it all boils down to just how sweet looking you want yours to be!

Just when I’m finally caught up with our Halloween candy, along comes the candy canes. It seems to get earlier and earlier every year. As you can tell by our employee’s faces, they were about as happy as I was today to see the tractor trailers lined up waiting to unload Santa’s favorites. You want to talk about         ”No room at the Inn”. Floor to ceiling boxes of all sizes, shapes, colors and flavors of candy canes. I saw the traditional red and white, and those funky designer gourmet tasting ones and those Giant candy canes as well. Blueberry, Strawberry, Hot Cinnamon and even Sugar Free. As I was peaking around the corner to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me, I even saw tootsie candy cane lollipops sheesh.

I stood there watching,  not saying a word and finally one of them said ” And just where are we suppose to put all these?” … hmm, my typical no fail response; Ask my brother lol

and she slowly tip toed back to her office, shut the door, and pretended she saw nothing! he hee

Fall has officially arrived and when people get into the Fall mood, it normally brings the wanting of cooler temps, colorful leaves, Halloween Candy, and Football. While I was searching through some pictures on my computer trying to find a picture for my Halloween costume idea, I ran across this picture.

This is Joe, Blair Candy’s first official King of Candy. His co-workers entered him in this contest we had a while back looking for the king or queen of candy. They wrote us stories about him and how walking in his office was like going trick or treating.

 You line up at his door, he gives you candy.

Needless to say, Joe won our contest! He received $500 worth of free candy. Joe was so sweet, he donated most of it to a children’s hospital in the DC area. Joe’s picture and his stories from his co-workers had us all in stitches here laughing. Little does he know he just saved me a few bucks. I’m going to make my Halloween costume out of the materials I work around daily.

I can see myself now, shoe string licorice hair, wax red lips, a candy necklace with a matching candy watch. A light up candy ring that I can eat plus it alerts people I’m coming. I know we have some other candy items to make me look even sweeter, but why press my luck.  I might not get much in my trick or treat bag. lol

With only 43 days left till Halloween I sit at my desk staring at all the Halloween candy we carry wondering who’s going to take the ghosts and goblins treats back to green this spooky season.

Halloween is my favorite time of the year, the memories of shopping with my mom to get my boxed Halloween costume that came with the mask that made my face sweat all night and watching the piles of candy and fruit I would see filling my pillowcase as I went door to door. Ahh such sweet memories!

My favorite treats back then were the regular size Snicker bar, and those bags of M&M’s that seemed to last all night. Now it’s the mini snack size candy bars that get all the attention along with gummy earth worms, gross candy body parts, or those skull shaped lollipops that turn your tongue purple. What happened to the nostalgic candy treats like smarties, pixy stix and jawbreakers?

Now it looks like this years “Green” version of the real apple treat is apple flavored candy warts. A far cry from the real apples I use to get in my pillowcase! It will be interesting to see if the natural popcorn balls and the real fruit once again begin to fill up those blinking plastic pumpkins and those designer treat bags this season.

As a kid, nothing was more disappointing than to run up the sidewalk to the biggest house on the block, stand in line at the door till they guessed me and be handed a real apple, ugh! Not that I was ungrateful, but being born into a family that owned the largest wholesale candy company in Pennsylvania, this was my chance to get a bag full! For some reason back then we never had any candy at home.

After sitting behind this desk for the past 28 years, surrounded by even more candy choices than when my father owned the company,I now understand… it’s the last thing you want to take home!

Like my parents cupboards were when I was young, I find mine at home minus the candy, but filled with the salty snacks like chips, pretzels and peanuts. I now understand the meaning of the old cliche “don’t bring your work home” LOL.

I wonder if the person who came up with that cliche owned a candy company like we have the past 70 years?