(Al Hartmann | Salt Lake Tribune) Chocolate Cinnamon Bears march along the production line of Sweet Candy Co. in Salt Lake City. Candy has recently become fascinating in Utah.
Chocolate cinnamon bears are red and spicy, chewy and sweet. This is a unique combination that Utahans cannot resist on Valentine’s Day and beyond.
Rachel Sweet of the Sweet Candy Co. in Salt Lake City said that ordinary red gummy candies (flavored with cinnamon and shaped like a cute teddy bear) have been around since the 1920s. It was not until the 1990s that someone decided to introduce this food animal into milk chocolate.
Sweet said: “We have a vice president of sales who thinks that after adding chocolate, everything will be better.” Therefore, the company sent the already popular red bear through the chocolate wrapper.
“People like them,” she said of the original chocolate bear. “But we didn’t do a good job marketing them. We didn’t even package them as our own brand.”
Until four years ago, when Sweet Candy Co. purchased equipment that puts candies in vertical plastic bags, the Chocolate Cinnamon Bear remained relatively unknown.
Since then, sales have started to grow. Sweet Candy produces about 1 million pounds of chocolate cinnamon bears every year. Candies are sold in buik-sized bags at Costco, Wal-Mart, Smith Foods and Drugs, related food stores, Harmons and other smaller specialty stores.
The chocolate version did not replace the regular cinnamon bear, because Sweet Candy Co. sold about 4 million pounds each year.
She said that Sweet Candy Co. does not claim to be the first company to make chocolate cinnamon bears, but it is one of the few “companies that have two large equipment to make them.”
In its factory, the jelly machine (used to make bears) and the chocolate coating are placed side by side. They are the same equipment used to make Sweet’s popular orange and raspberry sticks.
Because the machine has a dual purpose, “we can only produce as many chocolate cinnamon bears,” Sweet said. “So we are often out of stock.”
Although Sweet Candy can be found all over the country, the chocolate cinnamon bear is clearly the taste of Utah and Intermountain West.
Sweet said: “Cinnamon is a local flavor.” “It is not popular in the Great Lakes or even the East Coast.”
He said that the Provo campus store sells about 20,000 (1 pound) bags of chocolate cinnamon bears, or “about one million bears” each year.
This is more than double the 10,000 pounds of homemade jelly that BYU stores produce and sell each year.
The store also has ordinary cinnamon bears. Clegg said: “However, chocolate sales are 50:1 higher than them.”
The flavor combination is the reason. He said: “This is the fusion of two solid flavors,” he pointed out that students bought most of the bear toys, the so-called “bear hugs.”
Craig said BYU has also made this treatment an international favorite. BYU stores can ship to 143 countries/regions. Customers buy logo sweatshirts or hats and then add a bag of chocolate cinnamon bears. This is not uncommon.
Teachers and staff also bought them and put them in a bowl at the reception. Or, as in the Language and English Language Department, give it to guest writers, editors, and agents who give lectures in Editing 421.
“When I tell them this is a chocolate cinnamon bear, they usually think it’s weird,” said Lorianne Spear, graduate program manager. Then they try one. “When they talk to students, I have some guest lecturers give them snacks.”
Spear said that Chocolate Bear is suitable for BYU brand. She said: “We are famous for sugar.” “We have BYU fudge, ice cream and cinnamon bear.”
Utah writer Carol Lynch Williams (Carol Lynch Williams) teaches 421 editing, and he agrees. She joked: “Ice cream and chocolate cinnamon bear, they are Mormon alcohol.”
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Post time: Dec-24-2020