Calibration takes time - the caramel's temperature must be controlled, or it will gum up the system - so the McCabes hand-wrapped all their holiday caramels. "We got in here too late to get running before the holiday rush," Elaine says, pointing to the machine's serpentine system of pulleys and belts. In late October, the McCabes were cooking caramel in the new space with help from two employees.īetween Halloween and Christmas, the company created and shipped more than 200,000 caramels - and hundreds of orders for toffee, chocolates and nougat. FireMixer and a $60,000 German machine that cuts and wraps caramels. The McCabes purchased additional equipment including a second $20,000 Savage Bros. In August of that year, workers from Pierson Brothers Construction began renovating their new space into a state-of-the-art candy kitchen. When plans to move into the historic East Thetford train station fell through, after a year and a half of work on the space, Red Kite leased 2,000 feet in a warehouse in nearby Bradford.īy 2015, Red Kite was selling 10 times as much product as it had in its early days. In 2013, the operation was outgrowing its basement location, so the McCabes began looking for space elsewhere. In 2012, McCabe met a buyer for New England Whole Foods stores at a Vermont Fresh Network mixer. Other accounts followed, including the three co-op food stores in nearby White River Junction and Hanover and Lebanon, N.H., and at Healthy Living Market & Café in South Burlington. In 2010, King Arthur Flour began carrying the handmade confections in its Norwich bakery shop. "Sales were pretty paltry," she says of her first couple of years in business. She sold her sweets at farmers markets and gift shops in the Upper Valley. "I was laying there on the table at the hospital, and it was just like I knew what I was going to do," she says.īy late 2009, Elaine was producing caramels and toffees from a makeshift (but certified) commercial kitchen in the basement of her Thetford Center home. Then, while undergoing treatment for breast cancer in 2007, Elaine had an epiphany. "I never wanted to turn it into a business," she recalls, standing in the kitchen, decked in a red gingham apron. As an adult, she kept up the hobby, giving caramels as holiday gifts. Since then, the couple's attention to detail has served them well, landing their Vermont candies in Whole Foods Markets and on upscale wedding spreads.Įlaine started making buckeyes - the peanut-butter-chocolate treats common in her native Ohio - in high school. She founded Red Kite Candy in 2009, just after her youngest son entered kindergarten. "We like to do as many of these little things as we can," Elaine says, as she ties another ribbon around a candy heart. It holds a few white boxes, each tied with a ribbon and filled with the caramels, toffees and chocolates that McCabe and her husband, Mike, produce in the confectionary kitchen behind their retail store. "This is what happens when you finish construction one day, then open the next," she says, nodding to an area below the counter cluttered with tools and office supplies.įrom the front, the counter looks clean and professional. Elaine McCabe hangs my coat on a chair behind the marble countertop in her new Bradford store.
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