Donells Candies has been making the most amazing chocolate and much more since March 17, 1956!!
And I’m Mike Stepp. This is Donells Candies. So, chocolate everywhere. Chocolate on the floor, chocolate in our clothes sometimes.
You’ve been a staple around Casper for a long time, since 1956.
56, yeah. 64 years. It’ll be 65–
Wow!
In March.
That is awesome.
It is.
What an accomplishment!
Aha.
And you’ve only been in two spots, which I think a lot of people that have been in business 65 years can’t say that.
Yeah. Like we tend to move around. We were at Hilltop for 39 years and we’d been down here for 25.
Wow. Tell us about the Turtle and how that’s a little different in here.
Well, Turtle is a brand name registered, so we have our own brand name Pecan Pixie and that’s our signature piece. It comes from our homemade butter caramel, still dad’s recipe, so..
And who named that?
My mom did. She was part Irish. She’s the EL in Donells, Elma. And she was part Irish. She wanted something that sounded Irish. So she chose pixie and then we wanted something that sounded western. And so there was the cashews. It’s called a Maverick.
That’s awesome. I was asking Mike, what, what didn’t he make in here?
Jelly beans. That’s about it
Which I thought was very funny. So all the other stuff in here, the popcorn, the caramel apples over there.
The fudge and brittles, Brew brittle So forth. Brittle Brian’s own recipe of the pistachio for a little, which flies off the shelf and my fudge and all of the chocolates truffles. They’re all our flavors molded here. What’s your favorite? The pixie. Is that what everybody’s favorite is?
that’s the biggest seller
It is.
It is by far.
What is, what is your favorite thing to make back there? Is that the same or
The favorite thing to make is probably the candy popcorn. Although it’s a lot of work.
It’s so good. And, and you have sweet and savory.
Yes. And we’ve got a theater style popcorn, cheesy cheddar, white cheddars big sellers kind of addictive.
It’s addicting and caramel of course is the biggest seller.
And you are a very big proponent of shopping local and really keeping the money, for gift giving in our community.
You know, we try to do our own shopping here where we can. You know the thing about small businesses is almost all of their money stays here in the community research regulates they do most of their shopping here or buy a car here, or they buy a house here buy their food at the local supermarkets. So business owners and their employees are mostly here. You go to a big box store that money, most of the all of the profits, and most of the revenues go to a bank out of state where it gets spent. So
We want people, we want to remind people who’s here in our community to buy gifts from. So Thank you
You know, just our, by ourselves just our little store, we give away thousands of dollars of product and prizes for local nonprofits, just so they can raise for their fundraisers.
And we appreciate donations.
almost every business that I know of does something like that.
Yup. Well, thank you so much. And everybody have a great holiday season. See ya.