About The Candy Makers

A Buffalo expat and an immigrant make chocolates

I am a Buffalo expatriate and Sandy is an Buffalo immigrant. We’ve been here 22 years, living on the corner of Abbott Road and Lakewood Avenue in South Buffalo, making chocolates, growing a business and raising children.

Sandy was raised a military brat. For those not familiar with the term, her father’s career was active duty U.S. Air Force and that meant her family moved a lot. She had a birth place but not really a locale that she was attached to. She ended up in Sacramento because that’s were most of her family had settled.

My family came to Buffalo from Kentucky when I was 4 years old. We lived in Lovejoy (Iron Island), Cheektowaga and South Buffalo until I was almost almost 18. My parents bought Louis’ Soda Bar on Lovejoy Street when I was 12 and sold that along with our house in Cheektowaga to buy Ko-Ed Candies and live in the back when I was 15. I left Buffalo the morning after I graduated South Park High School (Class of 1971). I eventually ended up in Sacramento, too.

Sandy and I were both working for the Department of Defense at McClellan AFB and actually that’s were we met. During the two years we were together we were getting more and more serious about planning a future together but the metropolitan Sacramento area was growing and changing at a rate that alarmed us. When stoplights were installed at the end of freeway on-ramps to meter gobs of traffic onto an already full 10 lane freeway, we got serious about deciding on a place to go. We wanted someplace to raise up a family and a way to do it on one income so Sandy could stay home with the kids. Our Sacramento lifestyle wasn’t going to allow that for us.

With my father’s health declining between 1983 and 1985, we became aware that there was a solution for us to do the family thing by living and working together. Funny turn of events because I had always felt our family business asked too much of me as a child and it was one of the reasons I was in such a hurry to get as far away from Buffalo as fast as I could after high school. So Sandy and I got married and came to Buffalo in 1985 to buy out my family business. I had been away from Buffalo except for a few short visits for 14 years.

[note] This post is just a piece of the story. More will be posted at a later date along with those links here. I’ll also add some pictures when I come across them. -Gary