Hello my friends! Today I have a sweet lil story for ya all about about Idaho Candy Company. It's so good – you're gonna love it. This story was written by Julie Sarasqueta. You can listen to me read it on today's podcast episode. Enjoy!

In partnership with Idaho Wine Commission

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Head to your local winery this weekend, February 17-18, to chat with the growers and makers who bring your favorite wines to the table. Meet-the-winemaker talks and other special promotions and flights will be offered in honor of National Drink Wine Day during Idaho Winter Wine Weekends.

Meet Idaho Candy Company

By Julie Sarasqueta

My family loves sugar. It’s a staple food, right up there with eggs and milk and bread and olive oil (luckily, we also have two dentists in the family). And when it comes to treasured treats, nothing captures our attention quite like confections from the Idaho Candy Company.

This love affair has been going on for decades, starting with my great-grandma Juanita. When she immigrated to America she found a job working in the house of the Friedman family in Hailey. Long after she married my great-grandfather, started her own family, and moved to California, the Friedmans would send her a box of Owyhee Toffee from the Idaho Candy Company every Christmas. She would share it with her grandchildren, including my dad — and in the process created generations of fans.

When I told that story to David Wagers, the president of the Idaho Candy Company, a big smile broke across his face.

“It becomes part of families’ histories,” he said. “It’s part of your family’s legacy because you’ve been getting it for years and years. And that’s what I love.”

A holdout of Old Boise

When T.O. Smith founded the Idaho Candy Company in his home in 1901, Idaho had been a state for only 11 years. Boise was a growing city of just less than 6,000 people. The Mercedes, the first modern car, came out that same year, but in Boise people were getting around on horses and electric trolleys.

And folks in the City of Trees — like Americans across the country — were sugar fanatics. In fact, the early 1900s were something of a boom time for the sweet stuff. The United States had gained control of sugarcane-rich places like Cuba and Hawaii, and suddenly candy was a whole lot cheaper to make. In Idaho, the Amalgamated Sugar Company was busy extracting sugar from sugar beets (the Idaho Candy Company still gets its sugar from Amalgamated’s plant in Nampa).

With so much supply, candymakers like Smith could get creative and make candies that would appeal specifically to their local fans. By 1909, Smith had graduated from selling his confections door-to-door to constructing a state-of-the-art factory on 8th Street. Idaho Candy Company products are made and sold there to this day.

You’ve probably passed by the building, located in BoDo, a thousand times without giving it a second thought — but the Idaho Candy Company factory is the last actual factory in what used to be Boise’s thriving warehouse district. When I arrived for my interview with Wagers, on the first day of this year’s Snowpocalypse, he had spent his morning shoveling so trucks could make deliveries… in an area that wasn’t designed for modern vehicles.

“Trucking companies will get a little frustrated with us sometimes, but usually a bag of candy will solve most of those gripes,” he said.

His neighbors also have to get used to working next to an active factory. “We’ve got four stories, so about 23,000 square feet, but we get 53-foot trucks in our back alley and downtown,” he said. “And as you’re sitting in this factory, you feel it. There’s some vibration there and it shakes a little bit. And it’s connected to the buildings on either side, so our neighbors have to be a little tolerant of what happens here.”

The factory itself is amazing (it’s not open for public tours; I made a very last-minute request and Wagers was kind enough to walk me through for this story). The ceilings are high and the original wood is painted white; there are long wooden tables for sorting and packaging and old windows. The building has skylights and a break room for employees, both very modern additions at the time of its construction.

The factory has undergone extensive upgrades over the years, so much of the equipment has been replaced or modernized, but there are still a couple of holdouts. Every time you bite into a Cherry Cocktail, for instance, you’re enjoying something created on a machine that’s over 100 years old.

A short & sweet history of the Idaho Spud Bar

The Idaho Candy Company has churned out dozens of different types of candy bars over the past 123 years, but nothing is as iconic as their Idaho Spud Bar. I say this lovingly: It’s odd. Even Wagers describes the Idaho Spud as a “weird candy bar.”

It’s oval-shaped with a marshmallow-y filling and decorated with flaked coconut. Most modern marshmallows are made with gelatin, but from the beginning the Idaho Spud has been made with agar agar, a vegetarian substitute derived from seaweed. That’s what gives the bar its unique texture.

“It breaks when you pull it instead of stretching like a campfire marshmallow,” Wagers said.

The Idaho Spud trades stretchiness for a very moist consistency, “which people aren’t necessarily ready for all the time,” Wagers said. “And it’s got a different flavor. I mean, it has maple and more cocoa, but people don’t even notice the maple until you tell them.”

And just like another American classic, Oreos — which debuted the same decade as the Idaho Spud — fans have very specific ways of eating them. “Some people tear off the chocolate,” Wagers said.

“Everybody’s got their own way,” he said. “But my wife thinks she has the best way to do it. She’ll buy rejects and melt them down and make chocolate fondue.” (I shared that with my family and could hear light bulbs go off hundreds of miles away.)

The Idaho Spud can be found on price lists from 1918, Wagers said, and most likely debuted around 1912 or 1913. Thanks to internet selling on Amazon and Goldbelly, specialty candy shops, and social media, the Idaho Spud is finding a new audience. Just type in #idahospudbar on Instagram or TikTok and you’ll see what I mean.

“The fun thing about having a small, regional candy company is that not everyone has had it,” Wagers said. “I mean, Hershey bars and Nestle are ubiquitous across the country. But, most likely, someone in Georgia will never have seen an Idaho Spud Bar.”

The Idaho Spud may be the flagship candy of the Idaho Candy Company, but it’s certainly not the only kind. There’s the Old Faithful, first manufactured in 1925, as well as Owyhee Butter Toffee, which debuted the same year. The Cherry Cocktail came out in 1926. Huckleberry Gems, which rolled off the factory line in 2012, and University of Idaho-themed Vandal Bars are the newest additions to the lineup. You’ll also find tons of bulk candy at the factory store on 8th Street, like peanut brittle and red burnt peanuts made in old copper candy pans.

The nostalgia for these candies is intense. Fans will tell Wagers they remember when the Old Faithful was made in a round shape (Wagers said the shape changed around 1972). They remark about the “new” shape of the Idaho Spud Bar (before 1968, the bar was sold in two sections).

“Lots of people want me to do lots of different things,” he said. “And I try not to make changes, especially to the core items. Not unless we absolutely have to. I don’t change recipes. Sometimes we end up paying more for things, but I don’t like to change suppliers or the ingredients we buy, because then it will be slightly different.”

The cutthroat world of candy

You can discover all sorts of regional treasures by looking at the bottom tier of the candy section at a convenience or grocery store. Give it a try next time you’re on a road trip. You’ll find Farr’s Mallo-Nut Bars in Eastern Idaho, Sifer’s Valomilk Candy Cups in Kansas, Abba-Zabba bars in California, Pearson’s Salted Nut Rolls in Minnesota … there’s a whole treasure trove of sweets out there if you can get past the wall of Snickers bars.

But why do you have to get past the Snickers blockade in the first place? The fact is, it costs $5,000 just to get a new candy bar into a grocery store like WinCo because of slotting fees — that’s what a manufacturer pays a store to feature its product on store shelves.

“It’s a tough, tough gig, and you better be willing to put some money behind it,” Wagers said. When you go into a convenience store, he said, you’ll notice that around 90 percent of the candies are made by Hershey’s, Nestle, and Mars. They can easily pay $10,000 per store to stock their candies. That’s why smaller, regional companies are relegated to the bottom rung.

Wagers is sanguine about the arrangement. His dad, John, an accountant, bought the Idaho Candy Company in 1984; he also bought a distribution company that the Wagers family has since closed. “I mean, I get it,” he said. “We used to run those programs through our distribution company. It’s been a while. But I was fairly familiar with how they worked and the market and how they squeezed and how they maintained their market share. I mean, they're good at what they do.”

(If you’d like to really dive into this topic, I’d recommend “Candy Freak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America” by Steve Almond, which also features Wagers and the Idaho Candy Company.)

The candy men

Wagers didn’t intend to enter the candy business. His dad purchased the business because he thought it, combined with its distribution arm, could be profitable. Wagers graduated high school and he and his dad started work at the Idaho Candy Company on the same day. He continued working summers there but didn’t envision himself helming his dad’s business … until the longtime plant manager, a candy maker who had learned the craft in his native Germany, announced his retirement in 1991. Suddenly, John Wagers needed a replacement. He asked Dave Wagers and his brothers whether they would like to take over.

“We’re all business guys,” he said. “We didn’t know how to make candy!”

At the time, Dave Wagers was living outside the state and was looking for a chance to move home — and a chance to get to know his dad better. He received about three or four months of training before taking over.

“And then I had to learn how to run a candy company and how to make candy and how to fix candy machines and how to take care of this old factory,” he said. He’s been doing it ever since.

Wagers said the Idaho Candy Company’s sales have grown every year. “At least it’s still growing,” Wagers said. “How do I still make sure that’s still happening?”

During our interview, I noticed prototype molds on his desk for new candies. “That’s the dreamy stuff you get to do. You know, we can make Spud Bars all day long, and we do. And we hopefully sell a lot of them. And I always like to sell more … I have to get it out there. I have to get those slots in those placements, because if I don’t, people will forget. You know, there’s so many new people in Idaho, and I have to find a way to introduce it to them.”

Wagers and his family have run the Idaho Candy Company for 40 years, but who will take over once Wagers retires? His wife is a dentist (“My kids always said, ‘Dad rots the teeth and Mom fixes them!”) and their children are following her into the medical profession.

That said, Wagers and his family like owning a candy company. His job, as he sees it, is to make the company successful enough so the next owner can make it work.

“My dad always said this, and I agree with him,” he said. “It’s not like we really own the company. We’re taking care of it. We’re taking care of it for Idaho.”

You can purchase Idaho Candy Company products at the factory located at 412 S. 8th Street, as well as grocery stores, drugstores, and specialty stores throughout Idaho and much of the Northwest. Candies are also widely available online, including Amazon, Goldbelly, and Etsy.

Thanks for reading!

With love from Boise,

Marissa

PS - send one of these to your Boise valentine 💌

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