CJ: Gina says you’ve got a pretty good story about a nightmare you had just before opening the shop?

JF: Oh, yes . . .

Paul comes by.

PF: You’re from the Coastal Journal?

CJ: Yeah.

JF: He’s never been in here, can you believe it?

PF: You must live far away.

CJ: No, I live in Brunswick.

PF: Well, you know the old story?  About the difference between Bath and Brunswick?

CJ: No.

PF: Bath isn’t Brunswick.

CJ: [laughs] Fair enough.

JF: We started three years ago in November.  I had been working in advertising, putting in a million hours, driving all over the state, and decided if I’m going to work this hard I might as well have my own business, and we had before.  This space had just become empty, we inquired about it, and Jane Morrison of Sagadahoc Realty said, “What we really want here is a candy store.”  I told her I’d look into,  she gave me a week, I asked around at places like Wilbur’s.  Finally, I said I’d do it.  I’d worked in small business, had a big family, worked with large church groups, but I didn’t know a thing about candy, knew nothing about the candy business.   We had $10, 000 that we were going to use to redo our kitchen, but I put it towards ordering things for the store without really knowing what I was ordering.  I spent $8,000 on candy alone.

So I remember thinking about it one night and saying, “Oh my God, my mother’s going to kill me!  I just spent my whole allowance on candy [laughs]!”  Then it all came in bulk, it didn’t even come packaged!  I had to have some friends help me do the packaging.  We just had to learn things as they came along.  I didn’t even know how to temper chocolate.

CJ: What is tempering?

JF: You know when you take chocolate, stick it in the freezer, and it turns white?  That’s because the cocoa butter in the chocolate is unstable, so it comes to the surface.  You have to bring it down to a certain temperature and then bring it back up to make it more stable.

CJ: It’s very cozy in here.  You wouldn’t be able to tell that it’s only been here for three years by looking at it.  It feels like it’s been here forever.

JF: We wanted to create a comfort zone.  Candy has no barriers.  People like sleep and they like chocolate [laughs].  And now you hear all these things on the news about the health benefits of chocolate, it’s wonderful.  They say that about liquorice, too, that it’s naturally healthy.  I could have told them that, just based on all the people who come through asking for it.

CJ: What are the health benefits of eating liquorice?

JF: It’s a plant that has antiviral properties, it’s great for heartburn, canker sores, colic, inflammation, reflux disease.  It’s really very good.  The history of candy is wonderful.  My friend Kathy, who used to work here, just opened a sweet shoppe outside of Syracuse, and it’s a huge success.  We’ve talked about becoming candy queens and opening chains all over the country; every community needs a good candy store.

CJ: It makes people happy.

JF: Kids love it when you tell them chocolate is a vegetable, and dentists come in here and tell us that chocolate is even good for the teeth.  It doesn’t stick to your teeth like gummies, and it has properties that prevent bacteria from staying on your teeth.  Also, chocolate isn’t as bad for you as other sweets like cake and cookies.  One whoopie pie has 600 calories in it but chocolate only has 50.  And it’s just as satisfying!  Maybe supermodels don’t get fat because they eat chocolates when they get up in the morning [laughs]!

We try to be creative and do a bunch of different things here.  For example, if a baby is born on my birthday I’ll give them free candy for the rest of their life. 

CJ: Has that happened yet?

JF: No.  But that’s the kind of thing that makes it all worthwhile.  I can’t tell you how many people come in and say, “Thank you for being here.”  How many times have you walked into a store and ever thought to say, “Thanks for being here?”  So I know we make a difference in the community and that we’re bringing people to downtown Bath.