Just about everybody loves candy, and loves to talk about candy, too. Les Stier can prove that.
Stier, the owner of Hicksville-based Nassau Candy, one of the largest manufacturers of specialty and private-label confections in the U.S., was at a party recently, attended also by a brain surgeon.
The surgeon, Stier said, was stirring up conversation about his work, until the Candy Man told the gathering about his business, which makes chocolate-covered raisins and pretzels, English toffee, fudge, fruit slices, and other items.
“All of a sudden, no one wanted to talk about brain surgery anymore,” said Stier, with a laugh, in his Hicksville office.
But at Nassau Candy, candy is a serious business.
Nassau Candy has been on Long Island since the 1920s, operating for decades out of a storefront in Hempstead Village. It sold cigarettes and other tobacco products as well as candy.
In 1984, Stier and his brother-in-law, Barry Rosenbaum, bought the business. They immediately stopped selling cigarettes and other kinds of tobacco.
The family-owned business, which does not report sales or profits, is now a nationwide distributor with custom manufacturing capabilities in Westbury, and distribution centers in Michigan, Florida, Texas and California. It has a fleet of about 35 trucks on Long Island that deliver products as far north as Albany and south to Philadelphia.
The company has about 1,000 employees nationwide, and thousands of items in stock.
Nassau Candy is primarily a wholesale manufacturer that produces and supplies its own products to national retail chains and independent stores. It also supplies customers with imported candy, soda, gourmet items, health and beauty products and air fresheners and cleaning products.
New York State has a sweet spot for Nassau Candy.
Earlier this summer, the board of directors of Empire State Development, the state’s main business-aid agency, approved $300,000 to Nassau Candy, now that the company has completed renovating and equipping a 36,000-square-foot space in Westbury that will be used for the repacking of candies, mixes and other products.
The Westbury space is Nassau Candy’s third factory on Long Island. As a result of the expansion, the company added another 50 jobs to its payroll, Garrett Stier, the company’s manufacturing director, and one of four brothers who works for the business, told the Press.
Nassau Candy’s job creation had been so prodigious that Empire State Development awarded the company $700,000 in state tax credits, a few years ago.
“Nassau Candy has always met or exceeded their job goals,” Barry Greenspan, the economic development program administrator of Empire State Development’s Long Island office, said in an announcement.
Greenspan noted that Long Island is one of the most expensive places in the country to manufacture products in and that the state’s help was necessary to make Nassau Candy’s Westbury operation a place in which to expand.
Nassau Candy’s expansion has also included an acquisition, in 2017, when it bought Lanco Corp. of Ronkonkoma, a maker of chocolates and mints. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The candy business in the U.S. is doing quite well these days, according to the National Confectioners Association. The trade group reported that sales in 2023 reached a record high of almost $49 billion, with chocolate items posting $25.9 billion in sales. Non-chocolate candy came in at about $19.2 billion.
But the association says higher prices have brought about some changes.
“Budget concerns are changing consumer habits,” the association said in a press release. It said that 44% of consumers it surveyed said they buy chocolate and candy less often these days and that 30% buy such products only when they are on sale.
The soaring sales figures come despite a trend in America over the last few years of an emphasis on getting people to eat healthy food and snacks.
Garrett Stier, who along with his three brothers joined Nassau Candy around 2009, said the company is well aware of the trend toward healthy eating. He said the company offers thousands of healthy snacks and that it roasts its own nuts.
A walk through Nassau Candy’s 180,000-square-foot manufacturing space in Hicksville offers a treat to the nostrils as chocolate raisins and other chocolate-coated goodies roll out of manufacturing machines. The manufacturing process is a five-day-a-week operation, but it can be longer depending on the season.
“We’re already running for Halloween,” Garrett Stier said as he showed a visitor through the thrumming manufacturing space on a recent weekday morning.
Despite Long Island’s high costs and other issues, Nassau Candy plans to stay here.
“We are committed to Long Island,” Garrett Stier said. We’ve been committed to Long Island for a long time. Long Island is home.”
