Oliver’s Candies moved their candy manufacturing operation to Elba from Batavia in June. On Saturday afternoon, they officially cut the ribbon on the 30,000 square feet of space that includes a new production facility and store.
“It’s all about needing to grow,” says Jeremy Liles, owner of Oliver’s.
“We have been in need of space for 5 years, we’ve been busting at the seems growing every year.”
Liles says there was no reason they chose Elba other than this is where the building was located.
“This building was a wood skeleton, we had to gut out all the lights, all the power, we put in walls, floors, ceilings and plumbing, we can now spread out over 3 rooms instead of 1 room,” like in the Batavia store which is about 14,000 square feet.
Liles says since moving to the new location they have picked up several new large customers.
“Before a customer would come to us and say, “Can you make us 20,000lbs. of French cremes?” We were like are you kidding me? Now we are able to say yes because now we have the capacity to say yes.”
Liles says he has added several employees also. In Batavia they had 28, now they are up to 35 and may add more people in the future as Liles looks to add a sit down area serving Oliver’s Coffee in the Batavia store. They have also added new equipment and several new delivery trucks.
“We are meeting with an architect next week, I am envisioning a coffee culture seating atmosphere where people can sit and WIFI. We have to figure out what we can do because it is an old building, it has been Oliver’s for 86 years and we have added on so many times, so we have to juggle all that.”
Liles some days have been stressful during the expansion.
“Everyday you have to make sure you have the customer base, but on the other hand we want to make sure we don’t outgrow our britches, I want to make sure we are not growing too fast, we want to maintain our quality that everybody expects from Oliver’s. We are not going for customers like Wal-mart or Wegmans. I don’t want to be a mass producer. We want to maintain our quality and excellence, customer service is important to us.”
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