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“No one would want to set up a candy-making in Singapore” declared candy-maker Wayne Lim.
And yet the 25-year-old, armed with some kitchen experience and a passion for candy-making decided to rope in a pair of childhood friends to sell hand-made rock candy made fresh each day in flavours and styles limited only by the imagination.
It’s not hard to spot the store in the basement of United Square along Thomson Road when Wayne and his pals are whipping up a fresh batch of candy.
Crowds can’t help but be drawn to the counter set up at the front of Made in Candy.
“Kids love candy and adults like to see candy” observed the boyish-looking chef who worked out the concept of the simple, yet stylish store which features a wall dressed with packets of bright-coloured candy standing opposite ‘the lab’.
This is where Wayne, Bryan and Kian work, standing in front of a shelf of bottles filled with liquids of varying hues and what oddly seems to be a stainless-steel hat-rack in one corner.
It’s only when they start to work at the L-shaped, glassed-off counter that the picture gels, just like the hot, molten sugar that the confectioners transform into hand-made sweets.
If you have the time, it’s worth standing around for half an hour or more.
The first thing that hits you during the candy-making process is the smell.
The scent of lemons hung in the air on my first encounter at the candy store, apples the next, and a heady blend of citrus fruits on another occasion.
This happens when the candy chef pours out the freshly-boiled sugar mixture onto a black granite counter and starts working the mixture with an instrument you’d expect to find in the hands of a brick-layer spreading cement.
Candy-master Wayne works quickly with deft strokes that hide the care that’s needed as the gooey mixture cools from a scorching 150 degrees.
Wearing many burns on his thin but muscular arms, the effervescent chef chats away, telling the growing crowd just how he makes the candy.
Wayne admits that he enjoys “performing”, which is not just part of the fun of the business, but what sets apart Made in Candy from other candy stores.
"I help manage the place, while Wayne runs the show” explains partner Ong Wei Kian, better known as Kian.
As the candy starts to take shape, other partner Bryan Ong, springs into action.
The man of few words who traded skills in maintaining life-boats for another skill that’s a life-saver (at least in the books of the sweet-toothed), is adept at pulling the candy draped on one of the arms of the ‘hat-rack’.
As Bryan works the candy-puller in stretching and adding air to the mixture, on the white counter warmed by tea-lights, Wayne is rolling and moulding another sticky, sweet mound.
“You must have patience” said a member of the audience watching the candy-maestro.
“Nah... you must love it” Wayne says with a grin without breaking a sweat in the rolling and pulling of the candy.
It’s actually the crowd that needs patience as the candy-making process can take anything from half an hour to 45 minutes.
The reward at the end, is a taste of warm, fresh candy which you can also buy home in small, resealable bags that keep the sweets fresh.
“It was very interesting” says a mother of two of the candy-making she’d just observed, as she put away half a dozen packets of candy picked off the shelf.
As she conferred with her teen girls on whether to store all the sweets in a jar for a colourful mixture, another woman clutched at a lollipop rolled on the spot from one of the fresh strands of candy.
Wayne’s mum, Jean, starts working the cash-register as the kids in the candy store, both big and little, stock up.
“There’s nothing like fresh candy” says Kian as he hands out more samples to the crowd now happily munching on morsels of candy flavoured with rose and even chilli.
But it’s not the flavours that distinguish Made in Candy sweets.
Being masters of their own sweet fate, the creative team will roll out candy that encircle special designs in the centre.
“If you look closely, you’ll see the jagged edges of the mint leaf” Wayne proudly declares as he holds out a piece of mint candy which went ignored as I’m not sweet on sweets.
A batch of lemon-flavoured Halloween-themed candy, complete with grinning black and white skulls in the middle also went un-tasted even though it had come fresh off my first Made in Candy ‘show’.
Wayne had earlier sketched out the design which stayed hung on the glass panel that is thick and tall enough for kids to safely peer through as the chefs work their magic.
It’s not unusual to find the team whipping up special orders at $50 a kilo or working on designs with customers, such as a 12-year-old who wanted some special candy for his birthday bash.
“How do you spell Rishi?” asks Wayne as he sketches busily.
“Do you want your name in the middle, the side or all round... what colour... pick your candy flavours...” he rattles on to the young man wandering wide-eyed around the candy store while literally savouring it.
The candy-chewing schoolboy and his 12-year-old buddy are the same age as the 20-something trio when they first met and formed a bond that led to Made in Candy.
“I didn’t hesitate” confides Kian when asked how he got into the candy business after some eight years of managing food courts.
The idea came from Wayne who had researched the 200 year old art of candy-making after some years of training and working as a chef.
“My hands would be my future” said Wayne of his career choice after quitting his Marine Technology studies at Ngee Ann polytechnic, and the decision to set up shop which he said he made while standing in a candy store.
Wayne chose his brother’s chip shop as the location for his start-up as he knew he’d have a captive audience - kids from the many learning centres in United Square and their parents.
And while he may seem like a kid in a candy store, the fresh entrepreneur had keenly observed, “showing people how you make candy is not going to guarantee money.”
Reason enough for the partners to invest in quality flavours for their candy and user-friendly bags that seal the sweets so they stay fresh and tasty.
There’s also another reason why care goes into making the candy.
“Every single piece” says Kian as he gazes around the store, “is our baby.”
Staring at the bag of candy that I surrendered into buying on hearing that it tasted of popcorn, I reminded myself to relish each baby.
As I began crunching on a tiny handful of candy, Wayne’s voice rang in my head, “one batch (of candy) is only one chance”.
Reflecting on that one chance that makes hand-made sweets so special, and the off-chance that brought me to the store, I reached for a second handful of candy.
-CNA/sf
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