43
Traditional Daffin’s tour attracts thousands
FARRELL, PA.
With only one hour left to go of the Daffin’s Swizzle Stick Day chocolate factory tour, the line still wound outside and around the building.
Parents and children waited patiently, with the Easter Bunny and Mickey and Minnie Mouse doing their best to help entertain out there.
Inside, there was definitely some kind of magic going on, because parents were coming out the side door at the end of the tour with some pretty happy kids.
Mia Walters, 9, of Howland, was kind enough to stop and explain.
“We went through it,” she said, adding that she saw workers melt chocolate and put it in molds.
They produced 3,600 chocolate bars an hour, she said.
“You remembered!” said her mom, Kathy.
Obviously, there were some pretty impressive sights in there, not the least of which was a giant, chocolate-filled rabbit, Mia said.
But what exactly were these swizzle sticks?
“Little balls, with fruit and nuts and coconut you get to sample,” she said. I tried coconut!”
Hmmm — sounded intriguing to the uninitiated.
“And, we got these chocolate bars,” Mia concluded, holding up a free one she got inside just like the fundraiser candy bars that are a familiar sight to parents of schoolchildren.
“You do Daffin’s fundraisers at school,” Kathy pointed out. “We love Daffin’s!”
Just inside the door, in a large foyer, the tourists were actually being greeted by not one, but several giant chocolate rabbits — the biggest one standing 71/2 feet tall and weighing 700 pounds.
just beyond the foyer was the plant — where workers were busy getting chocolate ready for Easter.
Guide Grace Anna Boggs pointed out a line of rabbits coming out of a cooling tunnel, where a worker waited to take them out of molds. Nearby, designers worked on intricate chocolate baskets, which would be filled with novelty chocolates, she said.
Across the room, pretzels were being “enrobed” — or covered in chocolate, Boggs said.
And at the end of the tour were the swizzle sticks. Workers were dipping fruit-and-nut-, peanut-butter-, and coconut-filling balls on sticks in melted chocolate and giving them to everyone to eat, lollipop-style.
Daffin’s makes its own chocolate and its own fillings at the factory. The fillings are made in copper kettles from recipes — nothing comes pre-mixed.
The family-run business has a long history and employs aunts, uncles and cousins to this day, said company president Diane Daffin. Family matriarch Jean Marie Daffin is the CEO.
Started by Diane’s great-grand- father, George Daffin, in 1903 in Woodsfield, Ohio, it was run by her grandfather, Alec, and then her father, Paul, and his mother, Georgia, in Canton until Paul left to serve in World War II.
When her father came back, she said, his family had moved to Sharon, Pa.
Her father, who was only 16 when his father died, apprenticed for a number of candy stores in the Sharon area, she said — “but he decided he wanted the biggest and best candy store in the world.”
“In 1951, he married my mother and the store was on Washington Street,” she said. “And we lived above the store.”
In 1974, she said, her father bought a grocery store’s building on East State Street, and that’s where the store is now.
Swizzle Stick Day is a tradition that dates back to the 1960s, Diane said.
Her mother and father, she said, came up with many ideas so that children would have activities and attractions.
The Chocolate Kingdom at the store on East State Street, which includes a chocolate castle and creatures such as a giant turtle, frog and deer, was just such an attraction, she said.
Swizzle Stick Day started with 50 children, then increased to 100, then to thousands, she said.
“The kids that come today are our customers of tomorrow,” she said.