WILDWOOD – Dave Roach, the head chocolatier at Laura’s Fudge in Wildwood, is always experimenting: with custom chocolate molds, new flavors, new production techniques. He is always looking for new ways to excite generations of families who have visited the fudge shop since its beginnings in the early 20th century.
“We keep generations of families coming back to us,” Roach told the Herald as Christmas treat production kicked into high gear. “We must have a pretty good product or people wouldn’t come back!”
Roach and his wife, Lori, have owned and operated the fudge shop for 40 years. They carry on the tradition that Laura Jackson started when she hand-made vanilla and chocolate fudge at her Wildwood home and awarded it to those who spun her prize wheel on the Wildwoods boardwalk.
Jackson did not set out to start a fudge empire. Her business was born out of necessity, after her husband died in the First World War and she was left incomeless. Visitors eventually wanted to skip the prize wheel middleman and began buying fudge in large quantities by knocking directly on the front door of Jackson’s home.
In 1927 she saved up enough money to open a storefront in the now-closed Dayton Hotel in Wildwood. Business was so good that she built a custom storefront, designed from the ground up, on Wildwood Avenue in 1948 to accommodate fudge production.
Roach makes custom molds for many of the zany treats displayed behind the front counter. He loves to find action figures, statues and toys with unique shapes that he can use to cast his own molds. The boutique treat-making aspect of the business is more popular than it has ever been, he said, thanks to social media’s helping more customers see the hand-designed treats he makes.
He rattled off some of his favorites: a chocolate dragon emerging from a hand-painted chocolate egg, a Santa that looks like a porcelain statue and an ornate replica of his sleigh.
“I love to buy toys, take them apart and cast parts of the toy to make into chocolate molds,” he said. “For example, I’ll take an arm off a dinosaur and cast it into a mold which would be one part of the dragon.”
The final product, a cohesive chocolate dragon, looks like it was conceived all at once. But behind the design are a dozen molds unique to Laura’s Fudge.
Roach and his staff spend many of their working hours assembling and painting these lower-volume detail pieces. Brenna Farrell, a longtime employee, helps him hand-paint these special chocolates when holiday demand is high.
These small-batch treats have a lot of benefits for Laura’s Fudge: They give the staff something special to work on during the non-summer months, they present well on social media, they sell for more money, and they give the chocolatiers a creative outlet.
“I love it, I love the variety,” Farrell said. “I help paint chocolates, I work the cashier, but I especially love helping customers.”
Roach said: “I’ve always had an artist side to me. I started making bigger chocolate pieces. Each year I add something to them. It’s tough when you’re a seasonal business and people don’t know you’re even here in the winter. To sell something without social media was hard. These products have taken on a life of their own since social media.”
Still, their main seller is frill-free classic fudge. Vanilla and chocolate fudge, made with Laura Jackson’s recipes, are the base for every flavor sold at the store. Those recipes are unchanged from when Laura Jackson herself cooked the stuff, but increased demand necessitates a streamlined production process.
It would be nearly impossible for Laura’s Fudge to hand-whip fudge as was done a century ago; there is no tangible benefit to doing it this way, Roach said.
A lot of the process back then was dictated by limitation and necessity. Fudge was cooked and cooled at night because there was no air conditioning. It was whipped by hand because machines that could do the job were unavailable. ]
Today, much of the process is done by machinery: massive mixers, industrial ovens, conveyor belt coolers and enrobing machines that can evenly cover candy in a coat of chocolate.
Laura’s Fudge manufactures around 800 pounds of fudge a week, 1,600 in the summer. Even when the streets of Wildwood are whisper-quiet, they churn out fudge for locals and for mail-order fans around the country.
Covid made fudge shipments a viable revenue stream for the business. Folks who loved Laura’s Fudge but could not visit still wanted their favorite summertime treat. Between a spike in online orders and new processes to keep in-person visitors safe, Roach says that the summer of 2020 was one of the busiest he has ever seen.
“We got to see the world change down here,” he said. “The streets were full of pickup trucks with the tailgates down, families enjoying the summer sipping their drinks and eating their pizza and fudge outside.”
Just next door to Laura’s Fudge is Douglass Fudge, another storied chocolatier that has been in business for roughly a century. Cape May County has dozens of fudge shops, but when asked, Roach said that he is friends with many of their owners.
“We’re all doing the same thing, the thing that we love. The competition makes me better. And there’s enough business to go around,” he said.
“I’ve dedicated my life to this.”
Roach inherited the business from his father-in-law, his wife Lori’s father, Claude Bradshaw, after asking that his family cash bonuses go toward stock in the business instead.
Before working at Laura’s Fudge, he was a contractor who specialized in applying siding. He does most of the repairs needed at Laura’s Fudge himself. During his interview with the Herald, he was working to redo the ceiling tiles in the primary fudge-making room.
“But when I started here, I knew I wanted to do this for the rest of my life,” Roach said. “We really enjoy doing what we do here. Most of my friends have sold their businesses all around me and retired. They ask me: Don’t you want to retire? I say, Hell no, I’m just getting started!”
Contact the author, Collin Hall, by phone at 609-886-8600 ext. 156 or via email at chall@cmchearld.com.
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