A former pizza guy found a new recipe for retail success at Candy and Corn in Minooka in the form of delicious, homemade treats and a genuine love for the people who walk through his door.
Mike Tessone says his sweet desserts and savory popcorn flavors are just a few of the ingredients of his success. His secret sauce, he says, comes from all the heartfelt smiles he dishes out to his customers.
“I’m not here to get rich,” Mike says. “I’m here because I love our customers. I’m here because I love working with the community. I’m here because I love cooking for people. Cooking makes people happy.”
That philosophy has carried Mike through more than a decade in Minooka and through a retail journey that, at one point, seemed almost impossible to imagine, because Mike’s roots in cooking can be traced to tomato sauce, not caramel and chocolate.
Mike grew up around pizza. His grandfather and father both owned pizza places. Naturally, he says he followed the family path.
“I started in the food industry as a pizza guy,” he says. “I really enjoyed being in the kitchen.”
Eventually, he opened his own pizza restaurant in Joliet, and he said that career filled his cup. He loved the food. He loved the kitchen. Most of all, he loved the freedom.
“I loved the fact that I had creative control of everything,” he says. “I was able to make things that I wasn’t able to do at other stores.”
His pizzas were anything but ordinary. There was a Reuben pizza. A teriyaki chicken pizza. And “Papa’s Favorite,” named for his grandfather, with tomato, basil, garlic and Italian sausage.
For Mike, creativity was never a luxury. It was part of the fun.
Then he met Christina, the love of his life.
Christina was opening a candy store and needed someone to make pizzas for birthday parties. Mike happily filled the role. He also started spending more time around the candy business. And somewhere between the pizza kitchen and the candy store, his career took an unexpected turn.
“I thought I was going to be in the pizza business for my entire life,” Mike recalls with a slight smile. “But then I met Christina, and I loved her more than I loved the pizza business. And so, that’s how I got into the candy business.”
As much as this turned out to be a nice love story, Mike’s journey is a reminder in retail that traditional doors do not always open great opportunities. At times, the road less traveled leads to a fortuitous path.
From spinning pizzas to dipping chocolate
Mike eventually sold his pizza restaurant, the property, and the equipment, and committed himself to the candy business.
There was just one significant problem. He did not know chocolate. And so, the chef became a chocolatier.
“I’m a chef at heart, so I had to get back into the kitchen somehow,” he says.
So, he went back to school, taking classes at Wilton Sweet Studio in Darien and learning the craft of chocolate and confectionery.
Caramel, he quickly discovered, was a very different animal from pizza dough.
“Working with sugar was a whole different beast than that I had ever worked with before,” Mike stressed. “Temperatures are critical.”
“I had no idea of this whole world of a different kind of cooking,” he says. “This was not anything I had done before, but I absolutely loved it. And I ended up thriving doing it.”
Mike learned how to temper chocolate, make caramels, brittle and fudge, and eventually started baking and making more of the products sold at the store.
Hands-on creativity is one of the things Mike loves most about being an independent retailer. He can experiment. He can create. He can respond to what customers want, and he can make something that is impossible for a big chain to duplicate.
He is the owner of a small-town store with a big community role.
Today, Candy and Corn occupies a storefront in Minooka, a community of roughly 13,000 people in the far southwest stretches of the Chicago suburbs. Minooka is the place where Illinois agriculture makes its first, bold statement to anyone heading downstate. That small-town setting is part of what makes the business special.
“We absolutely love the town, the community. We do a lot of community events. We do a lot of fun stuff with the community,” Mike said while noting the Candy and Corn sponsored treasure hunts and Easter celebrations that give customers another reason to stop at his store.
“You’re going to come in for one of our Pecan Charlies,” Mike says. “You might like something like that. But your kids are going to love a cupcake. Your husband is going to love our garlic parmesan popcorn. So, we do carry something for everyone.”
That variety is important. But so is the experience. The store offers customers something increasingly difficult to find, because it is a place where the owner knows the products and knows the customers.
“I love retail because, we can interact with the community,” Mike says. “They’re coming in, we swap stories, we get to help them out. We get to give them a little treat, a smile on their face.”
COVID forced a new recipe
Like virtually every brick-and-mortar retailer, Mike saw his business turned upside down when COVID arrived. Before the pandemic, Candy and Corn relied heavily on face-to-face sales, concessions, farmers markets, and events. Suddenly, those opportunities disappeared.
“COVID was definitely a game changer for our store,” Mike recalls.
The business had to reinvent itself quickly. Candy and Corn started offering cupcake and cookie decorating kits, Easter baskets, porch deliveries and curbside pickup. The business also moved further into online sales. Mike noted that something unexpected happened, because the geographic reach of the business expanded.
“We had orders going out everywhere at that point,” Mike says. “And that really changed everything for us.”
The pandemic helped open the door to larger wholesale orders, with Candy and Corn products eventually reaching businesses beyond the immediate community.
That experience reinforced a lesson that Mike believes every retailer eventually learns.
“With retail you have to constantly be reinventing yourself,” he says.
For Candy and Corn, that means watching trends, responding to customers, a being receptive to try the next thing.
“If it’s on TikTok, if it’s on Facebook, if it’s on YouTube, we have to be on there because we need to make sure that we’re making those products that everybody is looking for.”
The realities of life as a “little guy”
For all the fun of selling candy, popcorn, and cupcakes, Mike is candid about the challenges of running a small, brick-and-mortar business.
“It’s tight sometimes,” he says. “We reinvest. We keep reinvesting back into the company,” he says. “That’s what makes it better.”
But one of his biggest challenges is something many independent retailers understand all too well, and that is finding talented labor in his small community.
Mike says he believes small businesses face a fundamental disadvantage when competing with large chains and big-box employers for workers.
“If I had the opportunity to talk with state legislators here in Illinois, I would let them know our biggest issues,” he says. “Taxes and increases in minimum wage. We can’t compete with the big guys.”
Large companies have deeper pockets, greater resources and the ability to offer compensation and benefits that can be difficult for a mom-and-pop operation to match.
“We’re a mom and pop shop,” Mike says. “We can’t offer those benefits.”
That does not mean he takes his employees for granted. Quite the opposite.
“I’m blessed that I have amazing staff here at the store,” he says. “Without them, I couldn’t do this.”
The advice from a candy-making pizza guy
Ask Mike what he would tell someone thinking about getting into retail, and his answer is simple, and perhaps, somewhat surprising. He says, “keep smiling.”
“There’s going to be rough times. There’s going to be hard times,” he says. “It’s going to be times that money is tight.”
He notes that those difficult days are balanced by the moments that make the work worthwhile.
“By doing what you do, you make somebody else’s life happier.”
For retailers looking to grow, Mike has another piece of advice. He wants you to get out from behind the counter and talk to people. Not just your customers either. Ask businesses if they would be interested in carrying your products, and offer up free samples.
“If you believe in your product, it’s going to sell itself,” he says. “So you just need to get out there and you need to talk, and you need to hustle.”
That hustle helped Candy and Corn develop a wholesale business alongside its brick-and-mortar operation, creating another revenue stream while putting its products in front of new customers.
But even as the business evolves, Mike has not lost sight of why he got into retail in the first place.
It certainly was not because candy was easier than pizza.
It was because people are happier when they walk into a candy store.
“When I had the pizza place, I had great customers. I loved my customers,” he says. “But you would get someone that would be coming in from work. They’re tired, they’re worn out. They just want to get their dinner and go home.”
“People come here because they’re happy. They come here leaving happy.”
At Candy and Corn, the shelves may be filled with sugar, chocolate, popcorn, and other temptations, but the thing Mike Tessone seems to value most is something that cannot be packaged, shipped, or sold by a big-box retailer. It is his reason for a career in retail.
“Being able to know that we’re making somebody else’s day, that’s why I do this.”
