Oakhurst residents can look forward to a sweet addition to their town
OAKHURST – For more than 50 years, Reimer’s Candies & Gifts has been hand-crafting sweet treats at the little red candy factory in Three Rivers, California.
Now owners Lynn and Mary Ann Bretz are bringing their old-fashioned candy store and ice cream shop to the mountain area.With another store in Avila Beach, this will be their third location when they open their doors at 41969 Highway 41, just north of El Cid, and the past home of the Visitor’s Bureau and the Madera County Workforce offices.
“It’s a very large building,” Mary Ann Bretz told us. “About 6,000 square feet. So right now we’re only going to utilize about half the space, and we’ll see how that goes. We may decide later on to do a gift store in the other half.”
After several years of searching the mountain area for just the right location, Lynn and Mary Ann closed on their new building in February. They had hoped to be open for the holidays this year, but the permit process has been a little slower than they had anticipated.
“It’s definitely been a longer road than we had hoped for,” Bretz said.
A lot of buildings in the area were built before Americans with Disability Act requirements were in place, so as those buildings change ownership, “the county wants to implement some upgrades,” Bretz said. “We’re definitely not opposed to bringing things up to standards, but it has added some time to the process.”
Bretz says they have already gutted the interior of the building, to turn office space into a candy store. “We have replaced the Spanish tile roof, and will be painting the exterior our signature shade of red with white trim,” she said.
The Three Rivers shops include an old-fashioned candy store where you can peek through the windows and see them making their delicious confections. While the more complex candies like butter crèmes and clusters will still be made in their flagship location and shipped to Oakhurst, Reimer’s always makes their own waffle cones on site, and offers more than two dozen of their own original ice cream flavors, made from locally grown wild blackberries, peaches and nuts, and fresh cream.
They also feature over 80 varieties of chocolates, plus a large selection of candies, including licorice, chews, sours and homemade peanut brittle.
The Oakhurst location will be a somewhat smaller version of the store in Three Rivers, but the owners are open to the possibilty of expanding when they see how things progress with this latest venture.
Reimer’s is bringing more than a dozen new jobs to the area, and will be open year-round. They are hoping to be open early in 2013.
“Candies, gifts and ice cream will be the retail footprint,” said Bretz, “and hopefully we will find a niche there that is needed.”
You can visit their website at http://www.reimerscandies.com/home.html
