Farley's & Sathers Candy Company history

1904 - Emil J. Brach invested $1,000 into the opening “Brach’s Palace of Sweets,” a candy store in Chicago, Illinois.

1911 - Brach’s was producing 50,000 lbs of candy per week.

Ironically, they were the first to break the penny candy barrier by offering wrapped caramel squares for a whopping $.05! 1913 - Always at the forefront of quality, Brach’s became the first candy factory with a food safety laboratory.

The company first started producing Jujubes and JuJyFruits in the 1920s.

1921 - As demand boomed, the company invested $5 million into creating a new factory, big enough to keep up with the high demand.

He would run the business until his death in 1931, after which one of his sons, Andrew Heide, assumed control.

John Sather, a local grocer in Round Lake, Minnesota, established the Sather Company in 1936.

In 1946, he was joined by his son Ken, who had just finished a stint as a bomber pilot in World War II. Ken was instrumental in the company, adding almond bark and other candies to the bagging operation and expanding distribution to five Minnesota counties.

A third generation of the Farley family, Preston Farley, took over in 1951, when the company moved to Skokie, Illinois.

In 1953, he sold his company to a father and son partnership, Harry and Joseph Klein, who named the enterprise Phoenix Candy Company.

Using state of the art production technology, Brach’s rebuilt the plant and soon became the largest candy manufacturer in the world employing over 4500 employees! 1958 - Success continued with the debut of the Pick-A-Mix.

Underwood worked in sales management for Farley before assuming the presidency in 1962.

Majority control passed out of the hands of the Farley family in 1968, when it was sold to Raymond Frank Underwood, a Nebraska native who held an MBA from Harvard Business School.

General Mills picked up Super Bubble in 1969.

The company continued to expand and in 1972, Sathers went nationwide with product distribution when it secured half of the national Kmart business.

He held that post until 1974, when he sold the business to William H. Ellis.

In 1981, the company acquired a Chicago Peter Paul-Cadbury plant, where it made a full line of chocolate candies, a variety of candy coated peanut treats, and gummi, jell, and starch confections.

Huhtamaki Oy acquired RainBlo when it bought Leaf in 1983.

In March 2002, Kraft agreed to sell the unit to Catterton Partners, a Connecticut private equity firm focused on consumer industries. It was founded in 1990 by J. Michael Chu and Frank M. Vest, Jr.

Also in 1991, Sathers added a Rogers, Minnesota, packaging company.

1994 - Bertram Johnson also purchased Brock Candy Company of Chattanooga and merged the two companies, eventually changing the company name to Brach’s Confections.

Favorite Brands Created in 1995

Hershey then bought Leaf in 1996.

Revenues for the company fell off, dropping to $764 million in fiscal 1998.

1999: Favorite Brands is acquired by Nabisco.