
Loop Back: “The Oldest Candy Company In The West”
Roach, Tisdale & Company, established in 1864, billed itself as the “oldest candy company in the West.” It built its fanciest–and final–factory/warehouse facility at the corner of North 3rd Street and 6th Avenue North in 1910.
Newspaper photos show a big smokestack and sizable water tower on the roof, with the company’s name emblazoned in big letters across the front of the building.
Led by two Minneapolis men, Charles Roach and George Edward Tisdale, the company specialized in boxed chocolates and other candies sold by the bucketful such as peanut fudge, “Neapolitan creams and Varsity jellies.”
And while it was still legal in Minneapolis, the company also sold wholesale fireworks.
But their long run of candy-making ended with the Great Depression.
Both Roach & Tisdale retired in 1930, and the building was sold to Minneapolis Allied Grocers, a wholesaling firm in 1931.
But today if you look up at the top of the building, you can still see the Roach, Tisdale name, along with the year, 1910.
Please visit the Historic North Loop section of this website for many more fun photos and articles about our neighborhood’s history.
By Mike Binkley, North Loop volunteer*
(*not an actual historian; I just pulled together information from newspaper archives, public records, online searches and most helpfully, the digital archives at the Hennepin County Library)