By Wendy Kilmer
Photography by Dave Hedge
As darkness falls and starry-eyed sweethearts drift off to sleep on Valentine’s eve, the lights are on and the night looms long at Candies by Vletas in downtown Abilene.
Hand dipping more than 17,000 fresh strawberries into their chocolate coating over a two-day period requires extra hours and stamina. It isn’t for the faint of heart, but it is for the sweet of tooth.
February all-nighters notwithstanding, Pam McCombs, owner of Candies by Vletas, says working in the candy business really is the dream job you might imagine it to be.
“It doesn’t get any better,” she said. “I can eat candy all day long with no one to tell me I can’t.”
More than a century ago, Greek immigrant brothers Nick and George Vletas may have had the same thought as they moved to Abilene and began making and selling candy. Twenty five years ago, McCombs (then Pam Goble) was a regular customer of those candies.
But one day as she hobbled into the store on crutches, George Vletas, then-owner and son of one of the founding brothers, suggested that perhaps she should become an employee instead of a customer, observing that she couldn’t work many other places with her injury. Employed cleaning homes at that time, McCombs couldn’t argue. With the acceptance of that offer, McCombs began an unexpected career that would ultimately lead to her owning the century-old Abilene candy business, and continuing the legacy of quality candy.
When Vletas began to consider retiring from the business his parents had started in 1912, his daughters weren’t interested in running the business, so he considered to whom he might sell it.
McCombs, who had only worked at the counter and was barely allowed to see the candy-making process much less do it herself, might have seemed an unlikely candidate. But with encouragement and a loan from Vletas himself, as well as loans from First Financial Bank and the Small Business Administration, plus re-mortgaging her home, McCombs purchased the business in 1999, as Vletas and his wife, Martha, prepared to retire.
“I just gave it to the Lord,” McCombs said. “I decided if it’s meant to be, it will work out.”
In 1999 the business also moved from its South 14th Street location to the historic R.E.A. Baggage Depot building downtown. Two months after retiring, Vletas came back to visit.
“I had purged a lot and changed a lot, and I was so nervous about what he would say,” McCombs says. “He walked around and looked everywhere and didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally he said ‘I’m so proud of you.’ And then he said ‘Why didn’t you do this before when you worked for me?’”
Now McCombs and her youngest daughter, Paaton Gailey, run the business together.
“My mom had me coming here in summers since I was about 6,” Gailey says. “I would be putting on the Vletas stickers, wrapping candy, dipping Oreos.”
Today, Gailey is involved in almost all aspects of the work, and is responsible for all the hand-dipping. The day Scene visited, she was working on milk chocolate nut clusters. The process involves pouring chocolate from its warming pot on to a baking sheet. Gailey then stirs the chocolate by hand to cool it down from it’s 95-degree temperature to get the right consistency.
“There’s not a specific temperature that I measure, I was just taught by feel how to know when it’s ready,” she said, using her fingers to keep the chocolate constantly moving on the cool metal of the baking sheet.
When it’s ready, she adds in a handful of nuts at a time and gathers a specific amount to move into the plastic molds.
“Cashews are my favorite,” she said. “I don’t have to count them out.”
All the chocolates made in the store are hand-dipped one piece at a time. Gailey is the primary chocolate dipper, and McCombs cooks all the pralines, peanut patties and brittle.
“The brittles, pralines and peanut patties are cooked in the original copper pots and poured on the original marble tables that were used when the business was started back in 1912,” McCombs said.
Another signature candy item for Vletas is white chocolate covered grapes. The Vletas family created this unique candy, inspired by sugar-coated grapes, a favorite treat in Greece. In an average year, Vletas dips and sells 800-1,000 pounds of grapes. Another favorite, pralines, sell around 8,000-10,000 per year, all cooked in house with the original century-old recipe. With that kind of volume, McCombs relies on both her daughters, nieces and nephews, her sister and several friends to help with dipping, packaging, making baskets, keeping the store stocked, boxing and shipping packages. Throughout December and as Valentine’s approaches, McCombs and staff come early and stay late nearly every day.
Still, she says she wouldn’t trade it.
“I may be tired sometimes, but I don’t ever dread going to work,” she said. “I am so blessed to have a business that I love and that makes so many happy.”
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