CHESAPEAKE, Va. — Once a month Mirta loads up her car with 24 cases of H.E. Williams’ hard candy to sell at the small country store in Suffolk where she works. Her personal favorite? The pineapple candy.
“It's delicious!" she says.
The Chesapeake candy factory mainly sells to mom-and-pop stores like Mirta's as well as 7-11’s in Virginia and North Carolina. And the rest is word of mouth.
“Everything we do is by hand, the machine just crimps it, the same way my granddaddy did it, my dad and his brothers did it,” said Williams.
I caught up with David and Joe Williams making their best-selling candy.
“Peach buds number one, why? People haven’t figured out how to keep the coconut in there, and you’re gonna see that first hand,” said David Williams.
Their grandfather had worked at Forbes Candy and wanted to branch out on his own. So in 1919, he opened the H.E. Williams candy factory hard in Chesapeake.
“Usually in the wintertime, we’ll make 1000 to 1200 pounds a day,” said David.
Watch more Positively Hampton Roads: Mahjong popularity growing in Hampton Roads
So what goes into these sweet treats?
“Every batch, we put in 80 pounds of sugar, 20 pounds of corn syrup, and a bucket of water that’s our recipe for every batch, heated to 310 degrees precisely. Then the liquid sweetness is poured onto the cooling table," David said.
“Everybody says how long is it gonna stay on the table? And I say I don’t know it depends on the humidity temperature that changes your ballpark thing… Its an art,” he continued.
David says candy-making competitors have tried to duplicate their recipes but can’t quite get it right.
“They don’t have the feel, it's in our blood apparently,” he said
After the base is poured, that’s when the fun stuff happens, the flavoring is added.
From there it's a delicate dance between hot and cold, and like dancing, once again David says it's a "feel" thing.
While David says he still loves making candy, he says one day it'll be up to his Joe’s kids to take over.
"This is gonna be like glass blowing, a lost art, unless we can retire and let the kids take over,” David said.
Let’s just hope that the next generation has a “feel” for the business.
Either way, we are proud to call the H.E Williams Candy Factory Positively Hampton Roads.
