Read Online Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond - Free Book Online

sense of things, I viewed these companies as throwbacks to the bygone era of candy, when each town had its own individual brands. And the good peoples of this country would gather together in public squares with lots of trees and perhaps a fellow picking a banjo, and they would partake of the particular candy bar produced in their town and feel a surge of sucrose-fueled civic identity. What I really wanted to do was to visit these companies—if any still existed—and to chronicle their struggles for survival in this wicked age of homogeneity, and, not incidentally, to load up on free candy.
    But I needed a source still in the business. I turned to Lisbeth Echeandia, the former publisher of Confectioner Magazine . Echeandia, now a candy consultant, lives in Texas and is married to a Spaniard but is, in fact, confusingly, Australian. She thought my idea was just lovely, maybe even historically vital, given that so many smaller candy companies were going belly-up. The industry would eventually consist of 150 companies, she predicted, down from the 6,000 concerns that thrived during the boom years between the World Wars. This was not a particularly controversial forecast in the candy world. Echeandia was also a champion of the small, independent candy companies. “It’s so tough for them to survive,” she said, “with these slotting fees.”
    “What’s a slotting fee?” I said.
    “If you want your product on the racks,” she explained, “you have to pay a slotting fee. And they can be very expensive.”
    “Wait a second,” I said. “You mean companies have to pay to get their stuff into stores?”
    Yup.
    Echeandia explained that the larger retail chains charge tens of thousands of dollars to place a particular candy bar in the racks near the register. Very few people, after all, head into the supermarket with Twix on their shopping list. Instead, they get stuck in the checkout line and the candy rack starts to call out to them, sirenlike, and they take a look at the wrappers and get a freakbuzz, accompanied, invariably, by the Guilt Hammer, which strikes them just behind the left ear. And if you watch people carefully around these racks—as I do—you can see this terrible internal struggle played out: the sideways glance at the wrappers, the contrite straightening up, the useless effort to lose oneself in the gossip rags ( BEN EATS J-LO’S ASS IN BLOODY CANNIBAL FEAST !) followed by a second, lingering inspection, during which the consumer is, in fact, fantasizing about the various candy bars, imagining them naked, conjuring up that first, illicit bite, followed sometimes by a soft fingering of the wrapper, and, in most cases, a furious snatch of the desired bar, to be buried beneath the healthiest item in the basket. Oh woe to us so staggered by our self-love!
    If there’s a child involved, this conflict is neatly externalized. He or she plays the role of tyrannical id, while the adult, usually a mother already worn down by the rigors of guiding a tyrannical id through fourteen aisles, offers token resistance. (Note that the average height of most candy racks corresponds directly to the height of a child.) During a visit to my local market, I heard the following exchange between a girl of about eight and her father.
GIRL : Does everyone die?
DAD : You’re not going to die for a long time, honey.
GIRL : But everyone does die, right?
DAD : Not for a long, long time.
GIRL : Maddy told me everyone dies.
DAD : Maddy (inaudible).
GIRL : Aren’t you afraid to die, Dad?
DAD : You know what, sweetie? You shouldn’t worry about things like that. You know what you should worry about? Just being alive and being happy.
GIRL : (pause) Dad, can we get Hershey’s Kisses?
    Obviously, those companies without the financial resources to afford slotting fees are at a huge disadvantage. They can’t get stocked at the major chain supermarkets or convenience stores or pharmacies. They have to make do at the smaller, independent