By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer
Don’t be fooled by the name. The Frankford Candy and Chocolate Company is not based in Frankford. In fact, it wasn’t even founded there.
In this case, the Frankford stands for Frankford Avenue — the part that extends through Kensington and ends in Northern Liberties. That’s where Samuel Himmelstein started Frankford Candy in 1947, before a 1963 move to 21st Street and Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia.
Yet, company officials have always kept the Northeast Philadelphia-sounding name. Next month, Frankford Candy will finally become a true Northeast institution when it moves into the former Crown Cork & Seal plant at 9300 Ashton Road.
CEO Stuart Selarnick, the grandson of the founder, explained the move by citing his company’s need to consolidate its operations and give itself room for continued expansion.
The family-owned firm is already fast-growing, the owner said, despite being one of the few remaining independent candy manufacturers in the region.
The new building, with a combined 500,000 square feet on a single floor and ceilings as high as 30 feet, has been vacant since Crown moved its corporate headquarters to a sparkling new site on Roosevelt Boulevard and phased out its local operations in the mid-1990s. The metal and plastic container manufacturer had occupied the Ashton Road site for nearly 40 years.
Ironically, Frankford will spend almost as much purchasing, renovating and moving into the site — about $20 million — as Crown did in building its new headquarters, about $23 million. Frankford will benefit from low market-level interest rates and city-sponsored low-interest financing.
“It’s a major renovation,” Selarnick said. “We looked at the building and saw it was a good frame. We tore down the facility from wall to wall and rebuilt it.”
Currently, the company offices and manufacturing operations are at the Washington Avenue location, which is a cramped 175,000 square feet over five stories. Distribution is based at Castor Avenue and Tulip Street in Port Richmond. The company leases three other locations for additional warehouse space. In all, there are about 250 employees.
“We have (several) facilities in the city. We’re going to consolidate them all into one,” Selarnick said.
The move will occur in phases. The first phase will transfer all distribution operations to the facility by Oct. 1. Renovations to the remaining portion of the building should be finished in May, followed by the spring 2005 transfer of manufacturing operations and executive offices to the facility.
Traditionally, Frankford has specialized in manufacturing seasonal chocolate products. Himmelstein started out making Easter bunnies.
Now, the company also imports non-chocolate candy products and markets them throughout the United States with the help of some of today’s biggest children’s TV characters and toys.
“That was a big shift in our business,” Selarnick said. “For the first fifty years, we were a seasonal chocolate manufacturer. Three or four years ago, we changed our strategy.”
Frankford has exclusive license agreements with the Nickelodeon cable network and Mattel, among others. That means it can use trademarks like SpongeBob SquarePants, the Rugrats, Barbie, Hot Wheels and Scooby-Doo on candy packaging.
The strategy has produced big returns. Selarnick declined to disclose specific financial information, but a recent article in the Philadelphia Business Journal quoted vice president of product development Harry Hoffman, another Himmelstein grandson, claiming an average annual sales gain of 20 percent for the last three years.
The CEO describes it as a high-risk strategy, but one that has helped the company develop a reputation for innovation within the industry and overcome competitive disadvantages in the chocolate market against giants like Hershey’s, M&M Mars and Nestle.
“In today’s marketplace, you need to deliver some brand-new goods,” he said. “We basically try to level the playing field by licensing and co-branding.”
Frankford products can be found in most of the nation’s major retail chains and supermarkets. The company is now pushing toward Canada with bilingual packaging.
Selarnick recognizes that it’s not every day that a firm with such lofty goals decides to relocate within Philadelphia, a city with high business and wage taxes and other disadvantages.
“There were a lot of opportunities outside of the city. The places that were really pursuing us were (New) Jersey and central Pennsylvania,” he said. “It was not the best financial decision to stay in the city.
“The key factor was our dedication to our employees. We felt loyalty to the employees who helped us build the company.” ••
Visit the Frankford Candy and Chocolate Company on the Web at www.frankfordcandy.com
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com