#Treats is all about family and the memories

SHELLEY — More important than innovating cotton candy, bringing back sweet memories and delivering treats around town, the owners of #Treats wanted to teach their children the value of hard work.

Eastern Idaho has always been home to Flint and Stephanie Christensen. Flint grew up in Rigby and Stephanie grew up in Rexburg. However, with Flint’s military career they spent 18 years moving around the country and a stint owning an events center in North Dakota. Finally, in 2018 they made it back to Eastern Idaho.

“Idaho has always been home so as soon as we could, we moved back,” Flint said with Stephanie adding, “Shelley was where we planted and that’s where we’ll stay.”

Having settled down in Shelley, the couple decided they wanted their children to learn the value of hard work like Flint did growing up.

“He grew up taking care of chickens and what they didn’t grow or raise they didn’t eat. He always had that kind of work to do around the house,” Stephanie said about her husband’s childhood. “Well, our kids, they haven’t had anything.”

With that in mind, they decided they wanted to open up a store where their kids could work and learn valuable lessons. So, in 2019 they opened #Treats. A candy store selling dozens of different candies from old fashioned to new innovations like the CottonPops, the couple created.

“The whole idea behind it was bringing back the old-time storefront,” Flint said.

But they hadn’t always planned on opening a candy shop. In fact, when they set out to open a store, they didn’t really know what they wanted to open.

“We actually fell in love with the location before we knew what we wanted to put in it,” Flint said.

Stephanie explained that they fell in love with it because it was a corner store right on State St. and had large windows all the way around.

“The irony is that we had all of the inventory and everything to open a ceramics shop. But we thought ‘no, candy would be funner,'” Flint said.

Stephanie said the idea for a candy shop came after visiting another candy shop in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“I loved it. The second I walked in I thought, ‘this is so cool.’ It had a lot of the old-time candies that you just can’t find anymore. At that second I realized this is what I want to do. This is awesome. Because the feelings that I was feeling with seeing all of these old candies — I wanted to bring that back for the older generations,” Stephanie said and Flint adding, “and give it to the new generations.”

Flint said a few local senior citizens have become regular, loyal customers.

“They gravitate towards the memories. And you can see their eyes light-up when they see our memory wall and they’re like, ‘wow, I remember walking to so-and-so drug store back in the day.’ They’ll come in for a treat and they’ll spend 20 minutes talking about a memory. That’s what it’s about,” Flint said and Stephanie added, “that’s why I opened up.”

It hasn’t always been easy for the couple since opening nearly two years ago. They’ve found that one of the difficult parts about having a candy shop is keeping an inventory.

“A lot of the candies, we have to search far and wide to get them in,” Flint explained. “And a lot of them, we actually don’t make any money on them at all. Some of them we take a loss on. A big part of that is because we are not willing to charge the prices that we would need to to make them profitable, but we still recognize that we need this candy in here.”

However, #Treats is gaining attention for the creation of the CottonPop.

“We’ve kind of grown into the cotton candy business with … taking regular hard candy and turning it into cotton candy. We didn’t come up with the idea, but we kind of perfected it with our CottonPops,” Flint said.

The CottonPop is a cotton candy treat where the cotton candy has been spun from one of many different hard candies.

“We’ve tried everything from Zots, they work. We’ve done Warheads,” Flint said.

Stephanie said caramel hard candies like Werther’s Original make a very finely spun cotton candy.

That cotton candy is then placed into a tube. The tube is sealed on both sides with chocolate and a stick is placed in the bottom. It’s eaten like a pushpop.

Flint said he come up with, and Stephanie perfected, the CottonPop out of necessity because there wasn’t a good way to package the cotton candy they were making.

“Cotton candy, even the regular cotton candy, you see comes in little Tupperware containers which works as far as preserving it, but it takes all the fun out of eating it,” Flint explained.

So they began looking for a way to preserve their cotton candy while still keeping the fun.

“Having the chocolate cap on the top and bottom creates that seal from the oxygen and it stays fresh for months on end,” Flint said.

As well as being a popular item at the shop, stores in South Eastern Idaho and Northern Utah have begun selling the CottonPop.

Stephanie said they first approached Smith & Edwards in Ogden, Utah to see if they would be interested in selling it. After trying some samples, the store placed an order for 100 CottonPops.

“Then she ordered another hundred. And then she ordered another hundred,” Stephanie said.

Flint said that they began working their way back from Ogden to Shelley, pitching the CottonPop to stores along the way.

“We actually haven’t been turned down by any place where we’ve pitched them,” Flint said.

They also spoke to the owners of Love at First Bite in Idaho Falls.

“I’m still working on their last order,” Stephanie said. “This last time they ordered 200 from me.”

The orders first started pouring in towards the end of last year. With the rate stores are ordering, Flint and Stephanie are worried they might be reaching their limit on what they can produce.

“It’s just me making them,” Stephanie said.

Even if the CottonPop hadn’t taken off like it has, Flint and Stephanie said they would keep the shop open as long as possible.

“Even if this store didn’t make a lick of money, we’d still keep running until at least all of our kids are out of the house. We want them to have some element of work ethic,” Flint said. “Kids today, if they know how to run any of the apps on their computer or anything online, they’re certainly capable of running a little candy shop.”

Stephanie said it’s for this reason she spends her days working in the shop.

“That’s why I want to be here. I want my kids to learn that work ethic,” she said with Flint adding, “in a town that still appreciates it.”