Sarris has built a candy and ice cream empire in Canonsburg, Pa.

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It was 1960 when Sarris Candies founder Frank Sarris – truck driver by day, candy maker by night – made a decision that would change his life forever.

Well, actually, his wife, Athena, helped make the decision for him. “My wife was holding a flashlight at 2 a.m. and she said, ‘Frank, what are you going to do?’” Sarris recalls. “‘I don’t like to see you working this late dipping chocolate and then you get up to go to work at 6 a.m. Quit one or the other.’”

Unforgettable Errand
Sarris was drawn to the business in 1959, when he delivered chocolate Easter bunnies to a chain of grocery stores for a candy maker operating out of his own basement. “He asked me if I would deliver the bunnies during January, when the stores wanted their candy before Easter,” he says.

The gentleman offered Sarris a substantial amount in those days to drive his truck in the winter weather. “I got the trailer loaded and said, ‘I don’t know if I want to go, because it’s snowing out there and he said, ‘I’ll give you $100,’” he remembers. “When you hear $100 in 1959, that’s a lot of money for a young person – he’ll do anything whether it rained, snowed or thundered, because he wasn’t scared.

“Now, if you tell me to go 20 minutes in that weather, I wouldn’t take it if you gave me $2,000. You don’t do that when you’re older – drive to Pittsburgh when it’s snowing.

“But, I went ahead and picked it up and he gave me a list of where I was supposed to go.”

Sarris drove through the night from Pennsylvania to West Virginia and on through Ohio, returning the next morning to retrieve his $100.

“I said to the candy maker, ‘Show me what you do,’” Sarris remembers. “He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Call me if you need me.’ He didn’t. I told my wife, ‘I’m going in the candy making business.’ She said, ‘No, you’re not. You put that $100 in the bank.’ I said, ‘No. I’m going to make candy.’”

Lessons Learned
Sarris used the money to purchase a stove, kettle and chocolatier’s book and began making peanut clusters. His fellow truck drivers at Radio Corp. of America (RCA) became his guinea pigs. They loved his chocolate, but it took a good three months for Sarris to perfect the product. Candy making wasn’t easy in those days.

“When you bought sugar from a local grocery store, you had to sign your name on a piece of paper and they would turn you into the liquor control board, because they thought you were going to make something strong, some kind of whisky,” he says with a laugh.

“They came in on me twice and saw my kettle. They said, ‘Where’s your candy then?’ I said, ‘I buried it in my yard; it didn’t turn out right.’

“See, I didn’t know sugar could overflow if you don’t stir it constantly. I caught my place on fire; the fire trucks came and everything. Lucky for me, the floor was concrete. When it went over the kettle, it was on the floor and burning. I learned a lesson from that.”

Big Tip
Sarris also learned a lesson from a stranger at a candy making conference in 1963. It was the most important business tip he ever received, he says.

“I went to one of the candy shows and somebody said, ‘Some lady wants to talk to you,’” he recalls. “I joined Retail Confectionaries International and a lady said, ‘I hear you make candy in your basement.’

“She said, ‘It will take you three, four months to get out. Listen to me. Quit all of your sports and quit all of your friends that you have. You are to concentrate and dedicate yourself. Remember, don’t look at the clock.

“You’ll be working 19 or 20 hours a day. Have patience and focus only on chocolate. You’ll be out of the basement and putting up a building in no time.’ I thought putting up a building in two, three years sounded pretty good.

“I said, ‘Thanks for the advice, but I didn’t catch your name.’ She said, ‘I’m Mrs. Russell Stover.’”

Making Sacrifices
That was around the time his wife told him to pick one job or the other. "I said I’d quit RCA,” Sarris confirms. “I was top seniority there and you hate to give that up because they pay your insurance, but, eventually, we started making profits. My wife got a job as a secretary, and we were eating on her paycheck and putting mine away.

“After 1964, I shut myself off from all the sports I played, and I played every sport there was. Sometimes I would feel depressed because I didn’t have the patience to slow down and think about it first. I just went ahead and did what I had to do.      

“I went to every store and every club that I knew would buy candy for Christmas and other holidays, and I just happened to be one of the lucky people that got their orders.”

To put up his first building, Sarris had to sell his car for $900, he recalls. “The people along the block wanted to sell their homes and I used my paychecks to purchase every one of them,” he says. “I tore them down so I could put my building up. When restaurants or clubs came up, I bought them and tore them down. I have the whole block now.”

Willie Wonka Does Exist
A modern-day Willie Wonka, Sarris has built a chocolate empire in Canonsburg, Pa. It can take 45 to 60 minutes to simply walk through the store, he says, and people come from all over the nation in tour buses, wanting to see the chocolate castle he built inside the factory’s walls.

“Well, the place is pretty big,” he says, modestly. “It’s 100 yards long – a football field of candy and ice cream.”

Sarris began making ice cream in 1978. “There was no ice cream in Cannonsburg because all of the drug stores used to have soda foundations,” he explains. “They did away with that because they were making more money on pharmaceutical things, so I decided to build one for the fun of it.”

His ice cream parlor is usually the first thing tourists want to see, he continues, because it’s enormous and adorned with chandeliers.

Kid Friendly
As the tour buses roll up – sometimes six at a time – passengers receive their “golden tickets,” or passes, that grant them entrance and a free sundae.

And, just like Willie Wonka, Sarris has a soft spot for kids. He hosts a high school fundraising event each year where the winners are picked up on their lunch hours in a stretch limousine, taken to the restaurant of their choosing and given a personal tour of the factory.

The competition can get pretty fierce, he says. One student made the company $18,000, whereby he was promptly given a giant flat screen TV and a $1,000 college scholarship.

Next Generation
Akin to the Roald Dahl novel, when asked if he’ll ever pass the reins down to an ambitious youth, Sarris responds, “Well, I hope someone takes it over.

“I’ll tell you this: The young people aren’t going to put the time in that I do. The kids today want to work eight hours, tops. They want to work less, but earn more money. Nobody will work the 19, 20 hours that I did.”

That’s the secret to success, he says. After all, it worked for Russell Stover, the Walt Disney of candy making, and it worked for him, too.