Kid Review: Len Libby Candies

By Cam O’Toole, 10

Len Libby is a candy store on Route One in Scarborough. Its claim to fame is that it has the world’s only life-size chocolate moose. The store started in 1926 and the owners still use the same recipes from back then. The Bangor Taffy recipe is over 100 years old. Len Libby has been a family-run business for four generations.

When you walk through the door, you smell fresh chocolate and sweets. All of the staff are kind. They help you with anything you need and have free samples every day. The samples are Bangor Taffy and Lemon Zest Bark that is made with real lemon zest. They are both the store’s top sellers.

My brother and I went on a special tour given by one of the owners, John DeGrinney, and we saw where they make the candy. We saw all their machines. Most of the equipment is old because it’s easier to repair if it gets broken. On the tour, we got to make nonpareils. You put a bunch of little sprinkles onto a tray, then you take a funnel with a stopper and put melted chocolate in it. You hover the funnel over the tray and lift the stopper and let a little bit of chocolate fall out on top of the sprinkles. Then you put the tray in front of a fan in a cold room. Ten minutes later you… eat the nonpareils! You eat as many as you can until your mom tells you to stop and that you can eat the rest at home.

Later on the tour we tried a Needham. A Needham is a small rectangle of coconut that has chocolate on all sides. I personally don’t care for coconuts but when I ate a Needham the chocolate made the coconut so much better. It was amazing. Len Libby Needhams are made with real coconuts that they peel and shred themselves. So, if you do like coconut then you would probably like it so much that you would spend $100 for one piece. (But don’t worry, they don’t cost that much.)

The people who would like to go to Len Libby are kids, grandparents who like to spoil their grandkids, and… basically anybody, even gluten-free people because they have some glute-free options. Their biggest holidays are Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Easter. Father’s Day is coming up so if there’s a good father out there, consider going to Len Libby for a gift.