If you find a Chick-O-Stick or Mary Jane Caramel while out trick-or-treating this year, you can thank a Texas company: Atkinson Candy Company opened in Lufkin in 1932, and they’ve been making treats like their famous Peanut Butter Bar ever since.
And since the pandemic, Atkinson has started a new tradition inviting the public each Halloween to a Chick-O-Treat at the candy factory – complete with an appearance from Willy Wonka himself, aka Eric Atkinson, the company’s CEO.
Atkinson joined the Standard to share more about what’s changed at the company in 92 years.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: You were born into the candy business. It was your grandparents who, I understand, founded the company. Was it as magical as the as the Willy Wonka story?
Eric Atkinson: You know what? It was a lot of work and a lot of tenacity and a lot of, frankly, good luck to get to where we are today. But I always go back to what my grandfather did and think, you know, he had the hard job. He brought this company up from the soil.
So all we had to do is make it an indelible part of the American confectionery landscape.
Well, I really appreciate you taking the time. I imagine the months leading up to Halloween is a busy time in the candy industry. Is that true? Is it cyclical, or is it always busy?
It’s busy all the time. But of course, Halloween, Christmas, those candy events like that definitely are something that we’ve got to get ready for way ahead of the game.
I understand that you have just recently passed off day-to-day operations to the next generation. Many of your brands have been around for several decades. With the sort of generational change, do you foresee any of those old favorites ever going away?
Well, we hope not. We’re leaning into those old favorites. Our goal is to take the classic into a new direction. And so that’s what we’re doing with the brands that we have.
I saw something that might pique some interest, might make people wonder what this tastes like: Can you tell me about Chick-O-Stick soda?
Courtesy Atkinson Candy Company
Yes that’s a fun little thing that we’ve done with RocketFizz. They wanted to come up with a soda for Chick-O-Stick. And apparently it was something that the market wanted, too, because it’s selling like hotcakes right now.
When you when you think about the favorites – the Mary Jane Caramels and the Peanut Butter Bars – when you get folks that are looking for those things, are they coming from far and wide?
Every day, somebody walks up to our office doors and we have to tell them, no, the store is down at the other end of the building. But every day people come up to the building, and I know when they come up the office doors, it’s the first time they’ve ever been to the building. And every day that happens.
What have you seen change? What else has sort of become popular that wasn’t so much in the beginning? Or how have you guys evolved in recent decades?
We have focused on brands. A very wise man once told me that every child should have a name. So we have done that with all of our different items and acquired brands or came up with brand names for them. That’s one thing that we’ve done.
We have solidified our manufacturing base. You know, there was a day when Atkinson Candy Company was put together with duct tape and baling wire, and now we are a fully certified SQF facility – Safe Quality Food is what that stands for.
And so we’re doing a lot of things right, right now. We’re making good product. We’re shipping on time. And those are the things that keep the customer coming back for more.
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I keep coming back to the Mary Jane – folks might not know hearing it what that is, but if they see the packaging, they’ll remember. It’s this yellow-and-red-striped wrapped candy, and on the actual package, there’s this little girl.
Has that logo changed over the years? It seems very traditional. And that seems like something that you guys lean into there.
That’s an interesting question, because that is very traditional packaging design. And what we’re in the process of talking about now is taking that to the next level. So that’s good packaging for what it is. … you know, we acquired that from another company. So we needed to make that transition from the older manufacturer.
I think we’ve done that now, and now we need to take it up to, you know, turn up the heat on it a little bit with our graphics and our art.
Is the Chick-O-Stick kind of the No. 1 baby there at Atkinson, or is the Peanut Butter Bar. I mean, what’s kind of the dynamic?
Courtesy Atkinson Candy Company
You know, we acquire all these other brands and classic names and stuff like that, but the things that we started with are the things that carry us to this day, and that is the Chick-O-Stick and that is the Peanut Butter Bar.
And it’s interesting because the Chick-O-Stick in convenience, the big, long Chick-O-Sticks, are No. 1 at Atkinson Candy Company, no doubt about it. But a strong No. 2 is our Peanut Butter Bars. When they’re hanging side-by-side in big bags in grocery and Dollar Channel en masse and stuff like that, the Peanut Butter Bars is what reigns supreme. So it’s kind of interesting the way it works out.
I guess if folks stopped by the Chick-O-Treat, they got a little taste of this. But of course, you can you can find it all over the place, right? I mean, the Peanut Butter Bars are the sort of like a pinstripe packaging. And I think a lot of people know the Chick-O-Stick, right? It’s sort of a bright orange, and it like you said, it comes in different sizes.
What else do you want people to know? I mean, I guess they can visit you out there in Lufkin?
Yeah. We’ve got a good little company store that they’re welcome to come to and and load up. Of course they don’t have to drive all the way to Lufkin to do that. We have a website that they can purchase on.
And we are in every retail that we can get into. So it’s kind of a treasure hunt out there. Are we in the store that you go to? I don’t know. But sometimes we’re there. You just got to look.
Have there been challenges? Or do you feel like you’ve kind of made it over the hump of the pandemic, you know, product line restrictions and that sort of thing, and are moving full steam ahead?
It took us a while to get through that because we had a spike in demand for Chick-O-Sticks primarily during COVID, and we had to address that. And we couldn’t get employees. So that was a big challenge.
But as we have always done for 92 years, we get faced with challenges, we attack them, and we defeat them. That’s what we’ve always done. And we’ve had some pretty darn good ones this year. Every year it’s the same. But we’re up for the challenge.
