Hercules Candy Company has the goodies

VILLAGE OF EAST SYRACUSE – The family behind East Syracuse’s own Hercules Candy Company is always trying to think outside the box of chocolates.
One of their more recent novel ideas was the creation of orange cream, chocolate-covered bunnies with mini marshmallows stuck to the back to resemble tufts of fur.
Another time a while back, company co-owner Terry Andrianos was carrying four stacked boxes of Oreos down a staircase when she stumbled and came close to dropping them. At that very moment, she considered what could be done if, in an undesirable scenario, the contents of the boxes were flattened and crushed to bits. What came to mind was cookies and cream bark.
“Sometimes a silly little thing happens, but it leads to something,” Terry said. “You just have to keep your mind open to the possibilities, and that comes naturally to us.”
At first, the ideas bounced back and forth for Hercules Candies are tried out on a small scale. If the popularity isn’t there, the batch of prototypes is halved in price, but if all goes well, the Andrianos make more and more of that product.
“We go by the seat of the pants,” Terry said. “If you’re a big company, you gotta get it to the board of directors and have market research, but I know what my customers like.”
Though the shop has moved spots over the years and changed names, the business’ operation in the heart of the village of East Syracuse dates back to 1910.
It was founded on Terry’s husband Steve’s side of the family as the Boston Candy Kitchen by his grandfather, Robert, and his brothers Jim and Pete after the three arrived in America from Greece through a Boston port.
In 1918, the homestead on West Heman Street was purchased, but the family would later run the candy kitchen in Fulton for seven years until returning in 1931. In 1945, Robert rebranded the store as Hercules Candy Company after the given name of his father.
As time went on, every one of the older brothers took a turn running the company until it was closed in 1972, but with fond memories of making sweets alongside his dad—the last brother to take the helm—Steve decided to buy ample ingredients and save up enough money to reopen the shop in 1977 at the age of 21.
He and Terry were married in 1984, and the two ran the business together out of the West Heman Street house until September 2018 when they entered the storefront at 720 W. Manlius St. with their three children helping out, marking the shop’s third separate stint on that street.
By that point the candy shop was being bolstered by the ad revenue from its monetized YouTube channel, which started in 2017 and already has upwards of 700,000 subscribers.
“Every so often, a video will go viral and drive business,” Terry said. “We gained a lot of followers during the lockdown because people were watching and then ordering.”
When the couple’s son Craig was diagnosed with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy his freshman year of college, he started viewing YouTube videos to gather helpful information. He soon discovered from a piece of advice that turning to a plant-based diet would tamp down the inflammation of his disorder.
“Then his recovery just skyrocketed,” his mother said. “He was improving exponentially even though he was supposed to be on his meds for life. Now he has a little bit of muscle atrophy in his calves, but that’s it, so he basically healed himself.”
He eventually started a personal YouTube channel called “No Egg Craig,” which presents a variety of vegan food options.
One day Craig thought to film his parents making ribbon candy at the Heman Street house, and to their surprise the resulting video had a noticeably positive reception. Eventually, though, the viewers wanted to see chocolate being made from scratch, and since there was milk in the chocolate, he committed to giving the shop its own YouTube channel to show the full scope of its creations.
With its eye-catching thumbnails, in-video graphics, and a healthy dose of humor, the channel’s surging following has been a lesson to the Andrianos about drawing good from the bad.
“We try to be very positive people—whatever life throws at you, you find a way to deal with it,” Terry said. “Sometimes we look around here, and it’s like if Craig didn’t get sick we wouldn’t be here in this building and people wouldn’t have jobs, because we took on three or four more full-timers just to keep up with the demand.”
Packaged with labels customized in-house, the shop’s goodies include thin cashew and pecan brittles, chocolate-covered animal crackers, coconut cream eggs, strawberry lemonade and watermelon hard candy, and filled ribbon candy in the flavors of green apple, peppermint and cherry. The top-selling products as of late have been their s’mores bark and the cookie bark topped with peanut butter chocolate, and sometimes pretzels, caramel and fruity pebbles are thrown into the different mixes as add-ons.
“Candy makes people happy,” Terry said. “That’s our motto, but it’s true.”
The candy-making process involves steps like pouring hot, liquid sugar onto a marble table and tossing it on a hook to aerate it and alter the pliability. To round out hard candy a manual chopper is used, while candy canes are cut with scissors and chocolate coverings are made possible with enrobers.
Year to year, the Christmas season tends to be the busiest for Hercules Candies because people buy from them for party dessert tables, assortments gifted to neighbors, and stocking stuffers. Easter, however, comes in second, seeing as how the shop goes through a few tons of chocolate during this present stretch.
“The love of Hercules is passed down from generation to generation, and we’re really a big part of people’s holidays,” Terry said. “Like if they can’t have us on the holiday, the holiday’s all wrong.”
Like the Hercules of ancient Greek lore, the business has persevered through hard times, whether it be the Great Depression or the COVID era, and equipment like the antique starch printer and copper boiling pans have remained in use for the last century to keep up tradition.
Something else that has never changed: the presence of the Andrianos family at the core of the local candy-selling company.
“It’s just amazing how all these nice people appreciate what we do, because there aren’t too many full-time candy shops left anymore that actually make everything they sell,” Steve said. “My grandfather would be really proud to see this now.”