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Ben Heggy Candy Company Canton Location: On the northwest side of downtown Canton near the Canton Museum of Art and Palace Theatre. Provenance: After working for a candymaker as a teenager, Ben Heggy opened his own restaurant and confectionery on the corner of Cleveland Avenue NW and Eighth Street NW in his hometown of Canton in 1923. Following a fire in 1950, Heggy closed the restaurant to concentrate on his candy business. His daughters and sons-in-law, including current president Richard “Wally” Wollenberg, eventually became the owners and operators of the eponymous company that Heggy started. Significance: Known for handcrafted chocolates, Ben Heggy Candy is one of Ohio’s oldest candy manufacturers and a Canton institution patronized by generations of local families. The combination candy factory and retail store still is located at its original site on Cleveland Avenue NW, where Heggy’s grandson, Danny Wollenberg, is now a candymaker who continues to use many of his grandfather’s recipes. Heggy candies also are available at more than 20 regional ice cream, confectionery, and grocery stores. Currently: Ben Heggy Candy produces more than 30 kinds of light and dark chocolates, several kinds of cara-
mels, and a variety of fresh-roasted nuts. “Our best-sellers are the chocolate-coated peanuts and pecans and the buttercream-filled chocolates,” says Wally Wollenberg, “but my personal favorites are the dark chocolate peanut clusters with cream centers.” For Valentine’s Day, the company makes molded chocolate hearts, and for Easter, it offers a variety of molded bunnies, chick, ducks, and baskets. “All the molded items that we make are solid chocolate,” Wollenberg says. It’s a little-known fact that: The Heggy company’s special hard peanuts consist of Virginia redskins that first are blanched to remove their skins and then undergo a process that gives them an extra crispy texture — but that process is a trade secret. The Ben Heggy Candy Company, 743 Cleveland Ave. NW, Canton, OH 44702. For additional information about Heggy products, retail store hours, and online ordering, call 330-455-7703 or visit www.heggys.com.
An employee carefully weighs out some roasted peanuts to add to one of the company’s gift bags that are especially popular around holidays. At right, a selection of walnut caramels — one of dozens of Heggy's homemade confections.
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