Brock Candy Company
Dates
- Existence: 1909 - 1994
Biography
Brock Candy Company was a Chattanooga-based confectionery manufacturing company that operated independently from 1906 to 1995, and as a subsidiary until 2014. William Emerson Brock, born in North Carolina, was a traveling tobacco salesman for R.J. Reynold Tobacco Company, who in 1906 bought Trigg Candy Company, a small wholesale grocery and candy shop in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Brock reincorporated the candy manufacturing operation in 1909, changing the name to Brock Candy Company. Brock Candy continued Trigg Candy Company’s production of penny candies and bulk candies, such as peanut brittle, peppermints, and fudge.
In the 1920s, the company moved away from producing slab confectionery items and concentrated on developing new jelly and marshmallow candies with the installation of automated starch mogul equipment at the plant. A starch mogul system is a method for molding softer candies in trays of starch powder. In this decade of plant modernization, Brock Candy also became one of the first to package its products in cellophane bags.
While serving as president of Brock Candy, William E. Brock also engaged in business in banking and insurance, and served for many decades as a trustee of the University of Chattanooga. Brock was appointed to fill the seat left vacant in the United States Senate following the death of Senator Lawrence D. Tyson in 1929 and was subsequently elected to serve the remainder of the late senator’s term until 1931. During Brock’s term as Senator, his son William E. Brock Jr. succeeded him as the president of Brock Candy Company.
The company introduced Chocolate Covered Cherries in the 1930s, a confection that became one of the company’s best selling products. With the institution of sugar rationing during World War II, Brock Candy was forced to cut back much of its usual production and adapt to producing candies with ingredients that were still abundantly available, such as corn syrup and peanuts. As a result of these adaptations, the company introduced another one of its signature products, the Brock Bar, a chocolate-coated, peanut and caramel roll.
Brock Candy grew its operations throughout the second half of the 20th century, beginning in 1950 when the company added a new 60,000 square foot wing to the plant on Chestnut Street in downtown Chattanooga. In the 1960s, the company expanded again, building a new distribution warehouse on Jersey Pike outside the city and acquiring Schuler Chocolates of Winona, Minnesota. By the mid-1970s, the company moved its headquarters from the Chestnut Street plant to its campus on Jersey Pike, adding a production warehouse and office facilities. In 1981, Brock Candy was one of the first American companies to produce European-style gummy candies, and began introducing more fruit-based snacks and candies. In the early 1990s, Brock Candy acquired Shelly Brothers, Inc. of Souderton, Pennsylvania and a share of Clara Candy of Dublin, Ireland, before going public in 1993. A year later, in 1994, Brock Candy was acquired by Chicago-based company Brach Confections.
Production of jelly candies and fruit snacks continued at the Chattanooga plant on Jersey Pike for the next two decades. The company was sold to Farley's & Sathers Candy Company in 2007, and merged with Ferrara Candy Company in 2012. In 2014, Ferrara Candy closed the Jersey Pike production plant, ending 108 years of Brock Candy production in Chattanooga.