Just in time for Halloween, The Candy Store has opened at 114 Fourth St. SE (the space that formerly housed O’Suzan-nah, which moved to 320 E. Main St., next to Timberlake’s Drug Store and Soda Fountain), and the slightly sour sugary aroma is palpable even from the doorstep.
The Candy Store, with a second location in Roanoke, has stocked its Charlottesville shelves full of silver-lidded glass jars holding whatever your sweet tooth desires: a rainbow of rock candies, gumballs of all diameters, M&Ms in a variety of colors, edible Legos-esque Candy Blox, Red Hots, Swedish Fish, Goetze’s caramel creams and Rademaker Hopjes coffee candies. Boxes of Marshmallow Madness cereal (for those who picked all the marshmallows out of their bowls of Lucky Charms), Jelly Belly jelly beans, Sour Patch Kids and Sour Power Quattro line the top shelves. Tables in the center hold boxes of Nintendo Wii gumballs, Kinder chocolate bars, giant candy necklaces, mega Dum Dum lollipops and so much more, including everyone’s arguably least favorite Halloween treat (the trick, really)—candy wax lips.
There are more than 3,000 different candies available in the store, says co-owner Lawson Jaeger, who’s a self-proclaimed “sucker for English toffee” and English candy in general (he stocks plenty of it). Jaeger, who went to high school in the area, has always wanted to move back to Charlottesville, and this was his chance, he says while standing next to a 27-pound gummy bear and pointing out trays of slick-domed chocolates handmade in Floyd, Virginia.
We’re getting a cavity just thinking about it.
Food chain for thought
Here’s some food for thought: What happens to the food chain when a major hurricane (or two, or three) hits? A whole lot, as you could have guessed, and we’re feeling small ripple effects here in Charlottesville.
Seafood @ West Main owner Chris Arsenault says that whenever oceans are churned up, as they are in a hurricanes, the seafood industry is affected. Tides change and stir up habitats for fish and other sea creatures, such as oysters, and high winds and waves make it difficult for fishermen to get out on the water. Hurricane Jose made oyster harvesting a bit more difficult in the Mid-Atlantic, Arsenault says, and Harvey dealt the tuna industry a pretty severe blow—a lot of tuna comes out of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, he says.
Standard Produce owner Bobby Ballard says the week after Hurricane Irma hit Florida and the Caribbean, it was more difficult to get certain items, such as asparagus, which is usually flown to the U.S. from Peru via Miami.
The Bradenton Herald, a southwest Florida newspaper, reports that Florida Citrus Mutual estimates Irma’s winds blew half of Florida’s citrus crop off trees and onto grove floors. The estimates are based on growers’ reports from across the state. And that’s just the fruit—Irma damaged or uprooted countless other trees and flooded groves. Ballard says the cost of a case of fresh-squeezed orange juice will go up a few bucks, but consumers will feel it only slightly—“It hasn’t hurt us too badly,” he says. Not nearly as much as the growers and producers themselves.