The aroma hits as soon as you step inside: hot sugar and rich chocolate, a perfume of nostalgia that you can’t help but smile at. It’s seeped deep into the bones of this building, where generations of confectioners have worked since 1863. Today, Ryan and Eric Berley continue the sweet tradition.
The interior boasts painstakingly preserved pressed tin ceilings and intricate woodworking, with details painted white against pastel blue, a shade borrowed from inside Independence Hall. Rainbow-hued penny candies fill old-fashioned jars that line the shelves to the ceiling, and chocolate-dipped bonbons gleam under glass display cases like jewels.
Peek into the back of the store, and you might catch a worker grinding freshly roasted cacao beans to make the chocolate that goes into all those handmade treats. Sign up for a tour, and you’ll be whisked away to the mini Willy Wonka-esque workshop upstairs, where antique candy molds line the walls and 19th-century copper pots rest over gas flames. And when you’ve finally made your selection, a candy clerk in period dress will ring you up at an antique cash register from 1911.
“The vision from the beginning,” said Ryan Berley, “was to create this immersive historical experience. We’re in a high-traffic tourist area that is rich with the incredible history of our nation, its founding.”
and Eric Berley
bought the historic
candy shop in 2010. (Courtesy of Shane Confectionery)
The Candy Capital
It’s rich with a sweeter kind of history, too. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, “Philadelphia was the confectionery capital [of the country],” said shop manager Laurel Burmeister, who also leads Shane’s historic tours and outreach programs. The city was a key port in the sugar and cacao trade, and the Delaware River ferried both ingredients and customers to the more than 100 candy and chocolate makers that sprung up across town.Among them was renowned confectioner Samuel Herring, who opened a wholesale shop at 110 Market Street in 1863. Edward Shane, a young local businessman, bought the shop in 1910, when experiential shopping was all the rage. He set up a retail business and gave the store a makeover to match: In came the ornate woodworking, the stained glass windows, the storefront displays to draw in sweet-toothed window shoppers. For 99 years, the Shane family peddled handmade buttercreams and sugar-coated memories to generations of Philadelphians.
When the family decided to sell the shop in 2010, it was a natural opportunity for the Berley brothers; they were already running an old-fashioned soda fountain, Franklin Fountain, down the street in another restored old building—this one an 1899 beauty. After extensive research, they recreated the whole experience, from the housemade fruit syrups to the vintage, silver-plated glassware to the bow ties each soda jerk (that’s a server) was trained to tie himself.
“Traditionally, soda fountain shops often had a candy counter: The same people that were slinging ice cream in the summer would make candy around the holidays, and they would sell it in the same stores,” Ryan explained. The candy shop would complete their business and expand their production space—not to mention save a Philadelphia landmark.
They kept the Shane family name and restored the candy shop to its original 1910s glory, earning an award from The Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia. “The lessons of the past, the way that stores were built, the attention to detail, it was much more elevated than it is today,” Ryan said. “Preserving the buildings is something that will outlive us. That, for me, is a really important contribution that we’re making culturally.”
Sweets With Stories
If anyone was born for this business, it’s the Berleys. Their love for antiques and Americana runs deep. In their childhood home in Media, Pennsylvania, their mother opened an antique store called the Saturday Evening Experience—a tribute to the Saturday Evening Post—and they grew up “surrounded by old things; even our dining room was designed by our parents in the style of an old ice cream parlor,” Ryan said. “That deep appreciation for history was there from the start for both of us.”Their dedication to historical preservation extends to the sweet treats, too. They’ve made some 300 kinds of candy, with about 50 in rotation at the shop at a time, Ryan said, many of them revived from the pages of historical confectionery manuals they’ve collected. “A lot of these stories are classics, and we’re just elevating the quality of the ingredients,” Eric added. Cacao beans are ethically sourced from Central and South America, but many other ingredients are sourced locally, often from small businesses.
The buttercreams are a Shane family original: The 100-year-old recipe for the creamy, chocolate-covered confections was inherited with the candy shop building. They’re still made with the original equipment, too, a 1910s cast-iron cream beater named “Bertha” that churns out 200 pounds of filling at a time.
Another rare specialty is clear toy candy, a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition that dates back to the 18th century. Boiled sugar syrup is cooled in special antique molds—the Berleys have a collection of 1,200—creating a menagerie of colorful, translucent animals, locomotives, Santa Clauses, and more that overtake the shop each holiday season.
There are more contemporary creations, too, like salted caramels and impressive single-origin chocolate bars that are more suited to modern palates. But it’s the classic candies that have the most fervent fans, with locals and tourists alike clamoring each year for a taste of nostalgia. These crafts “are kind of a lost art,” shop manager Burmeister mused, that “we want to revive for people. It’s our job as a historic confectionery to keep it going.”
