The New England Confectionery Company used to be located on Mass Ave in Cambridge, and when you got anywhere near it, you got a whiff of that wonderful sicky-sweet candy smell.
In the early aughts, Necco moved out to Revere, just north of Boston, but they still kept making Necco Wafers, Sweethearts, Sky Bars, Candy Buttons, Mary Janes and Squirrel Nuts. Childhood standbys – even those Candy Buttons which were half-paper.
Even with the annual Valentine’s Day sales goose that Necco gets for Sweethearts, those little candy hearts with the message on them, Necco is ailing/failing. Unless they find a buyer in the next couple of months, they may have to layoff most of their workforce: 395 mostly worker bees, with a few execs thrown in for good measure:
Employees who could be affected include cooks, hard candy makers, truck operators, various machine operators and attendants, and administrative positions — including the chief financial officer and chief executive. (Source: Boston Globe)
Necco Wafers have been around since 1847. In truth, sometimes when you bite into a Necco wafer the feeling you get is that your roll might have been one of the first ones to roll off the line. Still, it’s hard to imagine a world without them. Even though, once I stopped playing Mass and using white Necco wafers for communion – and that would have been 60 years back – I have probably averaged one Necco wafer a year. And that’s a wafer, not a roll.
And a world without Sweethearts. Sigh. I just like the idea of them. So much so that, when some young friends had a baby on February 13th and invited me over to MGH to meet her on Valentine’s Day, I stopped by the pricey kids’ store on Charles Street and bought an absolutely adorbs little two piece outfit decorated with Sweethearts.
And I will sorely and surely miss my annual Mary Jane and Squirrel Nut, purchased (only if they’re fresh!) at Brookfield Orchards when my sister Trish and I make our annual apple run and load up on penny candy. I guess I’ll be okay as long as Happy Apple still stocks Boston Baked Beans and maple sugar candy (that wonderful New England invitation to a diabetic coma).
Ah, it’s so hard when these little blasts from the past fade away.
All may not be lost.
Necco chief executive Michael] McGee stated in the March 6 notice that the company “has been in ongoing negotiations with potential buyers to allow for its continued operations,” but that if a sale is not completed or if the company opts for layoffs, employees could be terminated as soon as 60 days from the date of the notice.
I worked at a couple of places that, because of the volume of jobs impacted, had to stick with this 60 day layoff notice. And it was always hell. Everyone would pretend to work – which is possible in a white collar professional environment in ways that it most decidedly would not be in a candy factory – but spent most of our time speculating about who was going to get the axe. Certain product lines? Certain departments? People hired after x? People hired before y? People at or above a certain level? People at or below a certain level?
We would make black-humor jokes. And tell layoff horror stories, including the one about the guy who had a heart attack and died the day before Layoff Day. At his desk. And, yes, he had been on the list.
Those who felt most vulnerable would update their resumes.
Those who knew people who knew people would try to glean whatever stray bit of inside scoop they could, even if they were sworn to secrecy and couldn’t share it.
Those were the days. Days that I don’t miss at all.
In high tech, whether we were staying (this round anyway) or going, most of us were pretty sure we’d find comparable work somewhere else. Not so likely this will happen in candy land. Cooks, hard candy makers…Not a lot of jobs like that around.
“We deeply regret and understand the uncertainty this action may cause our valued employees,” McGee said in the letter.
Not as much as those cooks and hard candy makers…
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Nearly a decade ago, I did a post on Necco’s quality control guy (and, of course, on my Necco memories).
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