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The story of Hollister’s Marich Confectionery factory has all the elements of a great film filled with sadness and redemption. As a youth, in the Netherlands during World War II, founder Marinus van Dam watched his father being taken away at night by Nazi soldiers. According to his son, Marich co-owner Brad van Dam (now retired), the fifteen-year-old Marinus found janitorial work in a candy factory, until gaining the eye of the owner, who sent him to confectionery school. When he was 28, he came to the United States.
“He worked in candy factories, scraping floors,” said Marketing Manager Carrie Benson, “and got his passion for chocolate and candy making from there. He worked with a very well-known company to develop the Jelly Belly and decided he wanted to go out on his own.”
In 1983, he founded the first Marich factory in Watsonville, selling to candy and nut retailers like Morrow’s Nut House. “They carried us for the first year while we worked on getting new customers,” van Dam said. On the advice of DeBrito’s Chocolate founder Alene DeBrito, the company moved to Hollister in 1998.
Benson offered to give BenitoLink a tour of the factory, and when you enter through the lobby, the first thing that hits you as those doors open is an almost overwhelming kaleidoscope of aromas: cherries, blueberries, roasted nuts, caramel, popcorn and, of course, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.
(Anyone expecting a candy wonderland like Willy Wonka’s behind the doors at Marich will be disappointed—the closest it ever came to rivers of chocolate was when a valve opened overnight on one of the four 40,000-gallon vats of molten chocolate and flooded part of the factory up to the floorboards.)
Benson said the company uses 2 million pounds of specially blended fair-trade chocolate annually. The chocolate arrives molten, in large tanker trucks, to be pumped into the huge storage vats. A web of overhead tubes then carries the chocolate throughout the factory.
The chocolate vats resemble Jawa Sandcrawlers and occupy a single room at the factory. Another room holds a vat for storing caramel, and there is one for roasting nuts, which, Benson said, allows Marich to reach a precise texture and glossiness. There is also a warehouse filled with dried fruits and other products primarily sourced from the West Coast that will be used as the chocolate centers, called “inclusions.”
At heart, most of Marich’s candies rely on a simple formula: an inclusion is enrobed in an even layer of proprietary dark or milk chocolate and given a colored and flavored coating or a high-gloss finish. The process to get there, however, is painstaking.
The inclusions are put into huge rotating pans that look like cement mixers and then sprayed with chocolate as they turn. The chocolate is added layer by layer while the temperature is controlled to avoid clumping, keeping each one rolling as free as if it were marbles. An employee is always on hand to ensure that the candy rolls smoothly.
When the chocolate coating is thick enough, a colored and flavored layer is sprayed on top. Many of the machines at the factory doing this work are specially designed and proprietary, so there are no pictures of these in the article.
Marketing Manager Benson photographed a few products but nothing in the warehouse filled with row after row of finished products waiting to ship for a simple reason: many of them have non-Marich brand names and are covered by non-disclosure agreements. Benson says about 40% of Marich’s production is devoted to creating candy or products packaged under other, remarkably recognizable brand names.
One of those clients is a company that sells Marich-made cough drops, which are made by one of the more interesting machines in the factory, the starch mogul.
Trays are spread with a thick layer of cornstarch. They are fed into a machine that uses rows of dies to compress the starch under high pressure into small molds. The trays then move underneath a series of nozzles that dispense a fixed amount of product into the mold.
Once the trays are cooled, the product passes through a series of tumblers that remove the excess cornstarch. This process is used not only for cough drops but also for jelly beans and caramel centers.
Once the candies have cooled, they are loaded onto shaker tables that sort out flawed pieces.
An employee further checks to ensure that any less-than-perfect piece does not reach the packaging area.
“We take great pride in all our products,” Benson said, “So nothing that is not perfect leaves our doors.”
The final step is the packaging. Thirteen different products are wrapped in the familiar cellophane packages found in small shops and grocery stores worldwide, but most of Marich’s 60-plus product line is sold in bulk to candy shops or by mail order.
While its distribution and reputation are international, Marich is California-loyal. All the nuts and raisins come from Central Valley growers, the fruits are all West Coast sourced, and even the sugar and milk it uses are from California producers. But above all, Marich is rooted in the Hollister community.
“We’re not big on advertising,” said Benson. “We always support the Community Food Bank and fundraising events for charity or good causes. As a family business, we pride ourselves on this. We feel it’s important to give back to an area that has done so much for us.”
Marich candies can ordered directly from the company through their website and can be found locally at Windmill Market in San Juan Bautista, Bertuccio’s Market, Bene Gifts Hollister and most local grocery and drug stores.
The Chocolates of Marich
Milk Chocolate Cherries – The flagship of the Marich organization, this was the first product Marich produced and remains one of its biggest sellers. If you are familiar with any of their products, it’s probably this one. I’ve always wondered if the chocolate is infused with flavor, but Benson says it is just that the dried Bing cherries are soaked in cherry juice before being coated with chocolate and a dark red cherry coating. These are always going to be my favorite.
Milk Chocolate English Toffee Caramels – Rich and buttery, the toffee joins with the caramel to make a stick-to-your-teeth delight. Extremely rich, a skillful balance of ingredients keeps them from being overly sweet.
Dark Chocolate Barrel Aged Bourbon Caramels – The bourbon flavoring has a definite warmth, with hints of vanilla oak coming through in the finish, although, of course, there is no alcohol. The bourbon also gave the candy a different twist of sweetness which was quite pleasant. These are interesting and very mature.
Pastel Chocolate Apricots – I specifically asked to try these because I am a bit of an apricot junkie. I grew up with an apricot tree in my backyard in Concord, and one of my first great delights in relocating to San Benito County was discovering that pretty much everything that can be made of apricots is being made here. These do not disappoint; the dried apricot center has a great leathery texture, but the infused flavor edges more toward apricot jam. These are almost juicy, and I loved them.
Yuzu Lemon Caramels – A new flavor for Marich, these caramel centers are coated with a blend of white chocolate and yuzu, giving the candy a light lemon yogurt flavor. Billed as “All sweet, no sour,” they still carry a hint of tart lemon peel and go nicely with a glass of sauvignon blanc.
Celestial Sour Gummies – Made with tangerine, apple and lemon juice, these have a very light sourness and a nice sugar coating. They will tickle your tongue rather than pucker your mouth. They are soft—not quite melt-in-your-mouth but close. The fruit flavors are vivid, and the celestial shapes—moons and stars—are nifty. I enjoyed these and would put them down as a must-try.
Dark Chocolate Razzcherries – These Bing cherries, wrapped in raspberry-flavored dark chocolate, are a great combination of the cherries’ sweetness, the raspberries’ tartness, and the dark chocolate’s deep bitterness. These are serious chocolates that would go exceedingly well with a nice port.
Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel Popcorn – Large popcorn kernels are coated in caramel and then wrapped in chocolate. What I like about these is that the salty popcorn flavor slowly turns, as the kernel dissolves, into a toffee-like chewy caramel chocolate clump. Not many candies change so dramatically in texture as you eat them. They are pure fun.
Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.
BenitoLink thanks our underwriters, Hollister Super and Windmill Market, for helping to expand the Eat, Drink, Savor series and give our readers the stories that interest them. Hollister Super (two stores in Hollister) and Windmill Market (in San Juan Bautista) support reporting on the inspired and creative people behind the many delicious food and drink products made in San Benito County. All editorial decisions are made by BenitoLink.
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