Hidden Gem - Richmond: Anderson's one sweet destination

RICHMOND – Leif Anderson tried to escape the family business.

Anderson drove a cab. He sold insurance. He even wrote for local newspapers. But the prospect of running Anderson’s Candy Shop in Richmond became increasingly attractive throughout his 20s.

“My brother and I ... found out we couldn’t work for other people,” Anderson said. “It was a natural progression.”

So in the 1970s, Anderson, 58, and his brother took over the downtown shop his grandfather opened 90 years ago. Today, Anderson runs the business with his wife, Tracey – and the store’s reputation for signature hand-dipped chocolates is stronger than ever.

Each year, about 50,000 pounds of chocolate candy is made at the two-story, Main Street storefront – milk and dark chocolates, fudge, marshmallow bars, chocolate covered creams, nuts and more. Anderson makes them all, and he makes them carefully.

“We want this to be a marriage of the chocolate and the centers ...” said Anderson, of Spring Grove. “... With a lot of flavor.”

The recipes have changed over the years as certain suppliers went out of business, Anderson said, but for the most part the taste remains the same. But when tweaking the decades-old recipes, employees at the store strive for the centers to melt at the same time as the chocolate, and for the chocolate to leave a good after-taste.

Most importantly, the chocolate needs to be craved. Anderson said he personally eats some of it every day.

“I never get tired of eating our stuff,” he said. “I never eat any other chocolate.”

Neither does Marilyn Metz, of Richmond. She’s been shopping at Anderson’s since 1959, and it’s the only type of chocolate she buys come Christmastime. When she started shopping at the store, it was run by Anderson’s father, Raynold. Anderson’s father inherited the store from his father, Arthur.

When Raynold Anderson ran the shop during World War II, ingredients and supplies for the chocolate were low. So Anderson’s father would close the store for a month to accumulate enough ingredients, and then open it for a day and allow customers to purchase only one box of chocolate at a time. On the days when the store would open, a line would be all the way down the street, Anderson said.

Decades later in the ’70s and ’80s, “it was the boom time of this town,” Anderson said. Tourists shopping at the antique stores or on their way to Wisconsin made stops at the store and comprised most of the clientele.

However, in recent years, the customer base has transformed from tourists to an increasing number of mail-order or Internet shoppers who heard about the candy through the store’s Web site, www.andersonscandyshop.com, or national rankings.

Now, only about 30 percent of the store’s business is generated by tourists, he said, because the traffic along Route 12 mostly is composed of commuters. Area residents don’t frequent the store much, either.

“Local people don’t shop here,” Anderson said. “They kind of take it for granted.”

Customers who walk into the store today are greeted by clerks from behind the candy counter, but Anderson said clerking is the “smallest part of the job.”

All 15 employees are involved in the candy production process, from hand-dipping nuts and other candy centers in warmed chocolate to packing rows and rows of treats into heart-shaped boxes for Valentine’s Day. And most who work at the store are long-time employees.

“The joke is, ‘You die here,’ ” Anderson said.

Each of Anderson’s five children have worked in the store, too, and he said if they don’t take it over when he retires, it likely will close.

“If there’s not going to be an Anderson running it, it’s not going to be open,” he said.