The historic buildings that flank the pedestrian pathways of Findlay Market are bright — painted brick structures in celery green, salmon pink and shocking blue, with overflowing window boxes of impatiens, petunias and marigolds. And that color saturation is seeping past the boundaries of the market and onto buildings like the newly opened OTR Candy Bar, whose white brick exterior, teal columns and orange architectural accents open to something that’s just as colorful inside.
Located on Elm Street just across from Findlay’s main entrance, the candy bar is owned and operated by friends Mike Petzelt, Stephanie Recht, Pat Muck and his father, Jim Muck. They had all witnessed the uptick in investment in Over-the-Rhine, and Petzelt and his family became area regulars, often frequenting OTR brewery Rhinegeist, where he met Sarah Thomas of Grey Rock Property Development, who bartends on weekends.
“That relationship is really why we were able to just get started so quickly,” Petzelt says.
And he does mean quickly: Recht and her husband, along with Pat Muck, purchased the building that houses the retail space in 2014, with renting tenants already in it. “There was just so much excitement going on around here,” Petzelt says. They originally planned to renovate the building and rent out the first floor. Then the tenants moved out.
There was no absence of people who wanted to take their place, but they all had another idea. “We all just kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Well, why don’t we try to do something?’ ” says Recht, a teacher by trade. “And everyone was tossing around all sorts of ideas — at one point, Pat was saying he wanted to do a sock shop. All kinds of crazy stuff.”
But it was around this time that Muck took a trip to San Francisco, where he discovered something he liked even more: a candy store.
“I was actually here [in the store] when Pat called and said, ‘Let’s open a candy store,’ ” says Thomas, whose company did all the architecture, planning, design and custom work for OTR Candy Bar.
After Muck’s sugar-filled revelation, Petzelt immediately started working on a business plan. It was a perfect fit for Petzelt, who used to work as a candy broker (which, gloriously, is a real job) and has a lot of contacts in the industry. “I handed the business plan to Pat and Stephanie,” he says, “and, literally, I think the next day Stephanie was ordering candy. We basically did everything in six weeks.”
“We all had our jobs and just hit the ground running,” Recht says.
The shop feels a bit like the candy store from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, chock full of sticky sweets, an entire table devoted to out-of-the-box candies, like bacon lollipops, and rows upon rows of brightly colored sodas, including retro styles like Spiffy Cola, grape Jac Jic and a rainbow assortment of Fanta flavors. Then there’s an actual bar — think soda shop, not cocktails — upon which a sharply dressed candy barista will make you a float using the soda of your choice, dressed with a piece of old-fashioned stick candy.
And the candy bar is very much focused on keeping things local: Its wall-spanning confectionary-themed mural is by Alex Frank, who has done murals for Liberty’s Bar & Bottle and Myrtle’s Punch House, and the large logo, hanging above fridges filled with soda, was created using string by local artist Gabriel Clements.
They sell both local and national artisan and bulk candies — Lucite containers hold everything from jelly beans and malted milk balls to butterscotch and bubblegum, which you can scoop yourself to fill paper bags. Recht is from Michigan, so you’ll also find homemade products from the state, like Shurms caramel apple candies, which taste like the caramel apple lollipops you ate as a kid, only exponentially better. Just a few weeks ago, Recht says she called to order more (they’ve proven incredibly popular), but the supplier told her they were backordered — they were having a problem with their apple cider producer. “Can you believe that?” she says. “She literally has an apple cider person!”
There are other small-batch goodies from around the country, too, like pecan fiddlesticks from Tennessee. Recht says they try to order and stock unique candies from different states.
“We just want to do something cool, something fun,” Petzelt says. “Something you can’t find when you’re just walking around the other markets.”
OTR CANDY BAR is located at 1735 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine. More info: otrcandybar.com.
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2015.