Sky Bar Saved From Extinction by Massachusetts Grandmother

A candy bar dating back to World War II is still flying high, thanks to a small-business owner in Massachusetts.

Louise Mawhinney is the owner of Duck Soup, a general store and gift shop in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

The small-town mainstay has sold goodies from all over the globe since before the Scottish-born, former-biotech CFO took it over in 2014, but Mawhinney is credited for making one notable upgrade to the shop: a compact, adjacent factory that produces the Sky Bar, a candy introduced in 1938.

“In 2018, one of my customers, who had asked me to bring Sky Bars into Duck Soup, got in touch with me and said, ‘Oh, no, NECCO is going bankrupt,” Mawhinney tells TODAY.com. “Everybody around the area knew that, because that was a big, big deal in Massachusetts.”

At one point, NECCO, or New England Confectionery Company, was one of the biggest candy companies in the country. The company was founded in 1847 and released history-making candies such as Conversation Hearts and the eponymous Necco Wafers. It also created the Sky Bar, a four-chambered candy confection that became a hometown hit.

The Sky Bar was invented in 1938 by Joseph Cangemi, who devised four compartments filled with caramel, vanilla, peanut and fudge.

The bar is named for the way it debuted: Back in March 1938, a skywriter announced the name with mile-high letters made of smoke.

NECCO thrived for decades before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2018. When it closed, it sold all its brands at auction.

“So, they sold off most of the assets, and then they put together just one final auction to get rid of the stuff in the building,” Mawhinney says, adding that Spangler Candy bought Necco Wafers and Conversation Hearts.

“The night before the last auction, I just happened to see the local TV, and the commentator said, ‘Everyone’s talking about Necco Wafers, but nobody has bought Sky Bar,’” she continues. “I thought, ‘What? It’s beloved, and I knew it was. I thought that was crazy.’”

Mawhinney decided that maybe she should be the one to save the beloved candy bar but didn’t think it would happen the way it did. After a bit of research and phone tag, she called the right number to leave a bid — and she was the first.

“He said, ‘Oh, you know, hopefully in half an hour, you’ll be the proud owner of Sky Bar.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I hope not,’” she says with a laugh. “I waited and the phone rang, and he said, ‘Congratulations.’”

But she didn’t want to just start selling the bars again willy-nilly. For the next two years, she found a space for the new factory, kept the label and bar design and streamlined the process. After testing all the recipes, she chose one from the 1970s, which has a distinctly vintage, velvety texture.

The Sky Bar’s new home produces the same amount as it did in the NECCO factory: about 2 million bars a year.

“It’s a very, very high-speed, state-of-the-art, computer-driven machine that does all four centers and the top and bottom in one shot, in about a second,” Mawhinney says, adding that the old machine was too enormous to keep.

The new machine’s compact nature has an added benefit: Customers browsing Duck Soup can see the Sky Bars being made.

“This thing is very fast,” she explains. “For each run, we make about 2,800 bars,” and the store does one to two runs a day.

Now 70, the grandmother of three grandsons, aged 10, 8 and 5, says being a small-town Willy Wonka might have come by chance, but she welcomes it.

“I think there’s a sort of a theme through what I’ve been doing recently,” Mawhinney says, adding that keeping her shop afloat fits into that theme.

“I wanted to make sure that Sky Bar didn’t die,” she says. “I don’t think I can rescue anything else, because I have my hands full now.”