AS FEATURED IN BUSINESS IN FOCUS CANADA JUNE 2013

AS FEATURED IN BUSINESS IN FOCUS CANADA
JUNE 2013
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JUNE ISSUE | 2013
BUSINESS IN FOCUS
Written by Dave Côté
This article is about chocolate, the stuff that we all know and love. Today at Annabelle Candy Company
the goal is simple, to bring people back for another bite.
T
a masterpiece, he finally found a hit with the now well
known Rocky Road candy bar. In 1950 he incorporated his
company, named after his daughter Annabelle Altshuler
Block, and there have been good things coming ever since.
Sam Altshuler was a Russian immigrant who came to
America in 1917 and he started making candy in San Francisco in the early 1920s. After many attempts at creating
Rocky Road gained popularity almost instantly by enveloping the taste buds in chocolate, marshmallows, roasted
cashew nuts and crunchy malt. Consumers couldn’t get
enough of this great product and soon the Annabelle
Candy Company needed a bigger factory. In 1965 the
his family owned Hayward, California based candy
manufacturer is one of the largest independently
owned candy bar manufacturers in America. The
company manufactures a range of five different candy bars
and is currently ranked among the top selling chocolate
bars on the west coast of the United States.
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JUNE ISSUE | 2013
“Rocky Road gained popularity almost instantly.”
company moved across San Francisco to a different location in Hayward, where it still operates today.
After Mr. Altshuler passed away in 1971, he left the company to
Annabelle, who ran the operation for many years. Her son Gary
managed the business for a length of time before handing it
down to his sister, Susan Gamson Karl, who still runs it today.
“There were generations moving through; I came on board in
1996 and took over for my brother in 1997,” explains Susan.
The company which, up until the early 1970s, only produced
one product, had more products join the family when Annabelle Candy Company purchased
The Golden Nugget Candy Company
which was another small candy company located in
San Francisco, responsible for the LOOK! and Big Hunk candy
bars. Then, in the late 1970s, Annabelle acquired Cardinet
Candy Company which made bars called U-NO and AbbaZaba. After purchasing the companies, production of all candy
was moved into the Hayward facility.
The
famous
Rocky Road bar is still handmade to this day.
The marshmallow centre is made first
then topped with roasted cashews
and crunchy malt bits and enrobed
in chocolate. Unlike its siblings, this
delicious candy bar comes dressed
in a distinctive red wrapper. There
are actually a number of Rocky
Road candy bar varieties. Rocky
Road Dark has the same inner
layers but is topped with dark
chocolate instead of milk chocolate; Rocky Road Mint has a mint
flavoured marshmallow under its
dark chocolate and the youngest sibling of Rocky Road is the
Rocky Road S’Mores which is
a milk chocolate version that
comes with a graham cracker
layer in the middle.
Big Hunk is honey-based
nougat mixed with peanuts
“The famous
Rocky Road
bar is still
handmade to
this day.”
BUSINESS IN FOCUS
late Abba-Zaba. Currently, you can
find Strawberry Abba-Zaba which
Susan describes as, “sort of like
peanut butter and jelly.”
and is similar to LOOK! with its molasses base for a slightly different flavour. U-NO is a completely different flavour; it has a
truffle center and is coated with milk chocolate. Last but not
least is the ever popular Abba-Zaba, which is white taffy with a
layer of peanut butter in the middle.
From time to time, the Abba-Zaba recipe has been
changed to bring special edition flavours to the market.
These have included Sour Apple Abba-Zaba and Choco-
Every year, the Annabelle Candy
Company makes roughly nine
million Rocky Road bars, about
ten million Big Hunk bars, around
two million LOOK! bars, two million
U-NO bars, and finally about three
million Abba-Zaba bars – not
including the snack size. “All of
the products come in a variety
of package types; they come in
regular sizes and snack sizes,” says
Susan. That’s roughly twenty-six
million candy bars that have all been handmade with quality
and care.
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JUNE ISSUE | 2013
“Who wouldn’t enjoy making
candy! It’s a fun business.”
According to Susan, “We have brokers all over the United States
who are the ones responsible for our sales. We just got a new
one in South Korea and we have one in Mexico. Those are
the front line people; they sell to many distributors.” With the
company’s candy also available at bulk retailers like Costco, in
essence any small mom and pop store could become a distributor as well; indeed, Susan has seen Annabelle Candy being
sold right around the world.
In fact, chocolate itself has a long history. More than two thousand years ago, the Mayans in Central America used cocoa
as currency. They considered it a gift from the gods and they
called it the ‘god food.’ The name chocolate we use today
comes from the original Aztec word xocolatl which means
‘bitter water.’ Back then, cocoa was typically mixed with water,
chilies, achiote, cornmeal and other ingredients – perhaps not
quite as tasty as a nice marshmallow centre.
Chocolate is delicious and obviously Mr. Altshuler picked the
right kind of profession; who can honestly say they don’t love
chocolate? For so many people, this simple food can bring
back warm memories of childhood or provide a bit
of a pick-me-up during a rough day. Certain types
of chocolate have even been proven to lower bad
cholesterol and even to act as a mild anti-depressant by raising the endorphin levels in the brain.
As for Annabelle, the company continues to branch out; sales
are increasing in Central America and the aim is to send more
business down to South America as well. The company has
also been doing business in Asia, with a new sales representative in South Korea, and has also
sold to Japan.
“Who wouldn’t enjoy making candy!” laughs
Susan. “It’s a fun business; it’s a great business
and, for me, it has historical resonance in my
family which makes it even sweeter.”
BUSINESS IN FOCUS
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Next year, Annabelle Candy is planning on
attending the big time candy show in
Germany, hoping to share products
and expand its footprint even further.
“American candy is very popular over
there,” explains Susan. “We’ll see
how it goes!” Annabelle has also recently been filmed for the Canadian
Food Network television show, Food
Factory.
For Susan, it all really comes back to the customers, and the
company makes it a point to remain engaged and involved
with its customer base. Visitors to the Annabelle Candy Facebook pages can give their feedback and even win prizes. “We
ask people to do things like write a poem about Rocky Road
and people submit their poems. I pick the winner and we will
send them a box of candy and a t-shirt,” says Susan. “We also
have a website that we are actually redoing this year so that it
will be a lot more interactive.”
“The company makes it a point to
remain engaged and involved with its
customer base.”
The main ingredient of chocolate, in many cases, is the love that goes
into making it. No one makes good chocolate without
putting time and thought into how it will be received
and how many people will enjoy it. After all, it is quite simply
the single most enjoyable food on the planet.
Annabelle Candy Co., Inc.
27211 Industrial Blvd | Hayward
Ca 94545
P: (510) 783-2900
www.annabelle-candy.com/
Focus Media Group Pty Ltd
210-1310 Hollis Street
Halifax NS B3J 3P3
production@focusmediagroup.com.au
www.businessinfocusmagazine.com