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    Sanders Confectionery
    Sanders Confectionery
    Sanders Confectionery
    Ebook167 pages36 minutes

    Sanders Confectionery

    By Greg Tasker

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    About this ebook

    For more than 130 years, there has been no sweeter word in Detroit than Sanders. The venerable confectioner was once as much a part of Detroit's streetscape as the Big Three, Hudson's, and Coney Islands. Sanders was more than just an ice-cream and candy shop. A Detroit icon, it served a fountain of memories for generations. Detroiters stood two and three deep behind lunch counters for tuna or egg salad sandwiches, devil's food buttercream "bumpy"cake, hot fudge sundaes, and Sanders' signature dessert--hot fudge cream puffs. As Detroit boomed, so did Sanders. At its peak, the company boasted more than 50 stores, with its products available in as many as 200 supermarkets. The Sanders story began in Chicago, where Fred Sanders opened his first shop. A series of misfortunes prompted him to relocate to Detroit, where he began selling his confections on Woodward Avenue. Business grew steadily, and by the early 1900s, he had opened other shops along Woodward and elsewhere in Detroit. The Motor City nearly lost Sanders in the mid-1980s, but its desserts shops have begun resurfacing, thanks to another Detroit institution, Morley Brands LLC, which bought the Sanders brand.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439632994
    Sanders Confectionery
    Author

    Greg Tasker

    Utilizing many of the images stored in the Sanders archive, author Greg Tasker captures the glory years of Detroit's famous confectioner. Tasker, a former newspaper editor and reporter, is a widely published freelance writer.

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      Book preview

      Sanders Confectionery - Greg Tasker

      business.

      INTRODUCTION

      No other confectionery in Detroit stirs up as many delectable memories as Sanders. For more than 130 years, Sanders has been a staple on the Motor City’s menu, with its incomparable hot fudge cream puff and ice-cream toppings, one-of-a-kind bumpy cake, and fragile honeycomb chips (not to mention a host of other caramel- and cream-filled chocolates). What would Easter in Detroit be without a foiled chocolate purple bunny? Or Christmas without raspberry stufties, those unusual hard candy raspberries stuffed with Sanders’s own raspberry puree?

      It is difficult to imagine Detroit without Sanders. The company has been around for generations, tracing its beginnings to a young confectioner’s dream, a barrel of borrowed sugar, and a leased shop on Woodward Avenue where the J. L. Hudson’s block would later rise. From that humble beginning in 1875, the quality of the German-born Fred Sanders’s chocolates was never debated, but the struggling businessman—who often worked into the night making chocolates at his home with his wife, Rosa Conrad—strived to prove himself. A year later, he relocated his cream soda and chocolate business closer to Detroit’s business district, moving south on Woodward Avenue to the corner of Michigan Avenue. There, his Pavilion of Sweets flourished and Sanders secured his role as Detroit’s confectioner.

      For a long time, Detroiters took pride in Fred Sanders’s invention of the ice-cream soda. Sanders stumbled upon the concoction by accident, serving the mixture to late-night customers he did not want to disappoint at that first shop on Woodward at Gratiot Avenues. Time has since proven that the ice-cream soda was created elsewhere, but Sanders is given credit for introducing the delight to Detroiters and helping the treat gain widespread popularity. Sanders continued to serve ice-cream sodas for decades, but Detroiters fell in love with a long list of other concoctions, especially the hot fudge cream puff. Who created this treat remains unknown, but the cream puff hot fudge shows up on some of Sanders earliest menus. Sanders did not enter the baking business until 1913.

      While Fred Sanders, or Grandpa Sanders as he was affectionately called, enjoyed his company’s success, he could not have imagined the heights his small company—not to mention a bustling Detroit—would reach in the ensuing decades. As the automobile industry stretched Detroit, Sanders expanded, too. By the time of its 50th anniversary, Sanders had seven locations in Detroit and maintained an office, store, and factory at Woodward Avenue and Henry Street, a structure that survived until 2006, when it was razed for Super Bowl XL. In the 1930s and 1940s, Sanders expanded into the suburbs and its growth meant the construction of a modern 400,000-square-foot factory in Highland Park. At the company’s peak, in the 1970s, Sanders products were sold at 100 locations in and around Detroit, including J. L. Hudson’s, grocery stores, and retail outlets.

      Unfortunately, Sanders encountered bumpy roads in the 1980s, filing bankruptcy and changing hands. By the mid-1990s, Sanders stores had disappeared from the Detroit landscape and the future looked bleak. But another Detroit confectioner, Morley Brands LLC, bought the brand in the early 21st century. Responding to Detroiters’ cravings—and affection and nostalgia—for Sanders, Morley began remarketing Sanders candy, ice-cream toppings, and baked goods. The company also opened a Sanders Candy and Dessert Shop at Laurel Park Place Mall in Livonia. On the heels of that success, a second Sanders shop was opened in 2005 in Grosse Pointe. At press time, Morley had plans to open yet another store in Birmingham and to renovate the Rochester Morley’s retail store as a Sanders store, complete with a contemporary soda fountain.

      It is no wonder. The affection and loyalty Detroiters have long felt for Sanders has never waned. Even now, years after all the original Sanders stores have disappeared from the Detroit landscape, generations recall standing two and three deep behind the crowded lunch counter, waiting for a stool and a tuna salad or egg salad sandwich. For many Detroit-area children, stopping by Sanders for

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