Utah candy and chocolate makers, and how long each has been at it

Sweet Candy Company is the oldest, though it was born somewhere else. Leon Sweet started it in Portland, Oregon, in 1892 and moved it to Salt Lake City in 1900. Salt Lake Magazine says he came for better access to Utah's sugar mills. Since 1999 it has made its candy in a 180,000 square foot plant about three miles south of the airport, and the company is still family owned. Cinnamon candy is a Western taste, president Rick Kay told the magazine: "Distribution stops right around Kansas."

Bluebird Candy Company dates to 1914, when O. Guy Cardon and two partners opened a shop on Center Street in Logan. The Herald Journal says the shop brought baseball fans together during the World Series. The factory is at 75 W. Center, in what remains of the old Palace Hotel, and the company bought the building in 1967. When the Utah Statesman visited in 2008, a new dipper needed close to six weeks before anything they dipped could be sold. Each flavor gets its own mark on top so the counter can tell them apart.

Taffy Town started in 1916 as the Glade Candy Company in Salt Lake City. James Vernon Glade, a Park City miner struggling to pay the bills after his second child was born, spent the change in his pocket on enough material for a 5-pound bag of peppermint chews. Within a couple of months, his great-grandson Derek Glade told the West Jordan Journal, he had a bicycle delivery route and more than 50 accounts. The company tried many kinds of candy before it settled on taffy and took the name Taffy Town in 1994. In 2016 it made the third move in its history, to West Jordan, where the factory is today.

Idle Isle Candy has a Bluebird connection. Percy Knudson worked two years at the Logan shop to learn the ice cream and candy business, and then he and his wife, Verabel, opened the Idle Isle in Brigham City in 1921. David Call developed more than 40 candy recipes, including the Almond Creme Toffee. The candy business moved across the street in 2004, so the Idle Isle Cafe is now a separate company.

Mrs. Cavanaugh's Chocolates began in 1964 as a fundraiser for a church in South Dakota. When Marie Cavanaugh needed a loan to go into business, she brought a box of chocolates to the meeting. The banker ate the whole box during the interview, the company says, then approved the loan and ordered more than 200 pounds for his clients. The candy is now made at a factory in North Salt Lake, and the company is still family owned. Utah is where it is made and run, not where it was founded.

Amano Artisan Chocolate began in Orem in 2005. Art Pollard was designing equipment for a physics department when he started building his own chocolate refiner, and he founded the company with business partner Clark Goble. BYU Magazine¹¹ says one of the plantations Amano buys from can be reached only by horseback. The name is Italian, and the magazine says amano means both "by hand" and "they love."

Ritual Chocolate started in Boulder, Colorado, in 2010 and moved to Utah in 2015, won over by small business grant money and trail access. After it redesigned its packaging around the mountains, sales doubled almost overnight, the company wrote on its blog in 2026. The company finished moving its operations to Heber City in October 2023, and Visit Utah¹³ says the factory tour covers the whole chocolate making process.

Trü Frü launched in 2016, and over the two years before February 2022 it covered 525 million pieces of fruit in chocolate, according to FoodNavigator¹⁵. Its chief executive said that year he would love to reach one billion. Mars announced it would buy the company in December 2022 and runs it as a separate business. Trü Frü is run from an office at 170 S. Main in Salt Lake City, with a test kitchen for new recipes, and it is on our run from Utah list rather than the made in Utah one.

The Nut Garden in Bluffdale coats its confections in its own Belgian chocolate. Its milk chocolate cinnamon bears come with dings and dents, the product page says, because they use real milk chocolate instead of the smoother compound coating. For a flawless bear, the page suggests a heat gun, or a blow dryer on low.

Some. Ritual runs scheduled public tours in Heber City, and the times and prices are in Utah brands you can visit. Mrs. Cavanaugh's says on its own story page that it offers public tours at the North Salt Lake factory, so call ahead before you drive out. Sweet Candy has permanently ended public tours and its factory store.

Others sell at the door without a tour. Taffy Town has a store at its West Jordan factory. The Nut Garden's shop sits at the front of its warehouse and is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. On the second Saturday of every month it holds a seconds sale for Utah Truffles and Mrs. Call's, at 80 percent off or more. For candy that ships, see Utah food gifts, and the rest of the makers are on the food and drink page.