Historic North Loop

Loop Back: When The Biggest Candy Factories Were Here

In the Roaring 1920s, Minneapolis was a regional hub of candy production, with its vast trade territory and easy access to milk, cream and butter from Minnesota’s dairy farms.

A 1924 article in the Minneapolis Journal listed the city’s top candy factories, and five of the top six were in the North Loop–including the fledgling Mars Candy company that would eventually become one of the world’s largest.

  1. J. N. Collins Candy, 514-520 North 3rd Street

J. N. Collins produced just two types of candy: Honey Scotch caramels and Walnettos (caramels with walnuts) and packaged them in 5-cent containers. They were sold in all 48 states as well as a number of foreign countries.

Founder James N. Collins had a fascinating life story, going from a shoeshine boy to a millionaire candy magnate who cashed out right before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Read more here.

2. Paris Candy, 129 North 2nd Street

Named after one of Minneapolis’ first chocolatiers, Alfred Paris, the Paris Candy Factory produced high-end boxes of chocolates at the corner of North 2nd Street and 2nd Avenue North from 1916 to 1936.

It was a division of the National Candy Company, whose founder had a son who became famous for his starring roles in horror films. Read more here.

 3. Roach, Tisdale & Company, 530 North 3rd Street

Roach, Tisdale & Company, established in 1864, billed itself as “the oldest candy factory in the West.” From 1910 to 1930, it produced a variety of candies inside this facility at the corner of North 3rd Street and 6th Avenue North.

Some candies were sold by the bucketful such as peanut fudge, “Neapolitan creams and Varsity jellies.” Read more here.

4. Gurley Candy Company, 900 North 3rd Street

Built in 1919, the Gurley Candy factory (later sold to Fanny Farmer) was a big producer of boxed chocolates, known as Hidden Treasures.

It also produced lemon drops, chocolate mints and an oversized 10-cent candy bar known as Big Liz. Read more here.

6. Mars Candy, 718 Washington Avenue North

Franks Mars didn’t need a lot of space when he first moved his modest candy company, Mar-O-Bar, into this North Loop factory in 1922.

But after he and his son, Forrest, met at a soda fountain and came up with the idea of producing a candy bar that tasted like malted milk, the Milky Way was born–and was first produced here in the North Loop in 1923. It became so popular, Mars Candy quickly outgrew this space and moved to a big new candy factory in the suburbs of Chicago. Read more here.

We have many more pages of neighborhood history in our Historic North Loop section.

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)

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