David Taiclet grew up 100 miles southeast of Chicago in Culver, Ind., nibbling on Fannie May Pixies his mother Dot liked to bring home.
Nodding to those Midwestern roots, Taiclet and business partner R. Taz Murray this week became the new caretakers of the Fannie May brand. They have already begun making Mint Meltaways and other favorites in their Utah and Ohio plants with plans for keeping the name and tastes alive for generations.
The pair are co-founders and co-presidents of Alpine Confections Inc., the Utah candy company that wants to acquire the remnants of the Fannie May and Fannie Farmer empire. Chicago-based Archibald Candy Corp., which previously made the candy, shuttered its local factory in January after it filed for bankruptcy.
Earlier this month they received approval from a federal bankruptcy court to resume production of the candy under a temporary license while the sale of Archibald’s assets is sorted out.
“The brand stood to take a huge hit if it went away for a year,” said Murray. “This is a premier brand. It is maybe the No. 2 or 3 brand in the whole (candy) industry.”
Murray said Alpine already has begun shipping packages of Pixies and Mint Meltaways to Chicago. Soon, the company plans to begin shipping new batches of Trinidads and the popular Colonial box assortment.
While Murray and Taiclet have been candymakers for only a decade–taking up the profession after they both received MBAs from Harvard in 1994–candy industry observers say they operate great companies.
In the past decade they have scooped up four of them: Kencraft Candy, of Alpine, Utah; Maxfield Candy, of Salt Lake City; Dynamic Chocolates, in Vancouver; and Harry London Candies of Canton, Ohio.
Murray said the key to their success has been the people they’ve hired.
“We surround ourselves with really good people,” he said, adding the same approach would be key to the resurgence of the Fannie May brand.
They’ve hired John Thorn, a son of the family that in 1991 sold Archibald to Jordan Co., a New York City investment company, to help with the transition.
And they are using Archibald managers to oversee production at Alpine’s factories in Canton, Ohio, and Salt Lake City.
Murray said the company is sparing no expense to ensure that consumers notice no difference between the chocolates produced in Chicago and the new ones now appearing on Jewel and Dominick’s store shelves.
He said the candy is being produced using the same ingredients that Archibald had used for nearly 80 years, including the same chocolate made by Chicago’s Blommer Chocolate Co. and the same $500-per-gallon vanilla extract.
Thorn, who was president of Archibald when the company was sold to Jordan Co., a New York investment firm, said he’s impressed with their results.
The candy he’s sampled “is great.” He said that it is being made “equally well” to the candy that was made by Archibald when he was with the company in the 1980s.
Though the start-up of the Fannie May line has gone smoothly, Murray and Taiclet acknowledge they are taking a huge risk.
It is possible Alpine will not win the April 1 bankruptcy auction of the Fannie May and Fannie Farmer brands, the 31 company-owned stores and the candy recipes.
While they’ve offered $18 million for the brands, stores and recipes, another candy company could attempt to top their bid–though so far no other bidder has expressed a public interest in the assets of Archibald.
Despite the risk, Taiclet and Murray are proceeding as if they already have won the auction.
“As we go we want to stabilize the wholesale trade, get the Web site back up and finalize our retail strategy,” said Taiclet, who would like to see Alpine operate about 40 stores in the Chicago area.
In addition, they said they will open a Chicago office to oversee their Fannie May operation, he said.
“We love the brand. We want to do everything we can to protect and grow it,” he said.
But Thorn said it will be customers who make the final decision about the candy Alpine factories are making.
“I think they will keep buying the candy,” he said.