JORDAN, Minnesota — It started as an apple orchard about 40 miles southwest of Minneapolis. Until, the weather wiped out the apple crops.

“The rule of thumb is you’re only supposed to get hail once every 10 years but we ended up getting it about three years in a row so we realize we need to do something different,” said store owner Robert Wagner. “We started experimenting with different things and yeah, we tried everything from selling milk to softener salt and what not and and then we head on let’s try a little bit of candy.”

Now, Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store has around 400 vendors selling food items, meats, and lots and lots of candy. Candy sales amount to around 50 percent of total sales.

“You know my dad always said, build a business that the kids wanna come to and the parents will follow,” said Wagner. “We still farm about 8000 apple trees and we sell all the apples right here, and we have our bakery. We have jams, jelly, salsa, meats, cheese, crackers, and coffee. We have a lot of things in addition to candy; candy is that thing that gets you in the door.”

The store has even worked to develop a group of patrons from the state of Iowa.

“We have a lot of customers from Iowa, specifically as far as like a demographic that is highly identifiable is in Iowa, said Wagner. “There is a group of individuals of Dutch heritage and we specialize or have a lot of Dutch candies.”

Wagner is working on a plan to make Minesota’s Largest Candy store, even larger.

“We found a piece of property that the federal government greatly desires so we are putting together a land exchange,” said Wagner. “With the land exchange we would acquire property directly adjacent to the store and then we would then we would just add onto the existing store.”

Learn more about Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store on their website. Don’t try to call. At last check there landline phone, for the store, does not work.