Rhéo Thompson
Rhéo Thompson Candies
Rhéo Thompson Candies is a Stratford success story. In 1959, Rhéo took an after-school job at Olin Brown Candies (see Wellington Street). He liked it so much that when he finished at the Stratford Collegiate Institute (SCI), he decided making candy would be his career. He worked at Olin Brown Candies until 1969. "To better myself, I decided I would not stay with the new owners," he says. Rather, he and his wife, Sally, thought they should at least try starting their own business.
They began making candy in the basement of their home at 32 Glastonbury Dr. Directly behind their house was the city's farmers’ market. They took a small stall there in 1969, and business was good. They were then befriended by John Sinclair, who had a drugstore on Wellington Street in downtown Stratford. He had recently lost his building to fire and was about to move into his newly built store. He told the Thompsons he had 1,000 square feet of excess space if they were interested in moving in. He made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
They opened their store on March 2, 1970, and after five months, both businesses were running out of room. So, the Thompsons moved into “old Odbert building” at 26 Brunswick St., where they remained until October 1996. Then they bought a third of the "old Woolco building” on Albert Street. There, they renovated the front facade to make it look like a free-standing building, which enabled them to have a much bigger retail store and more room for manufacturing. The front of the store was designed to blend with the other Victorian-style buildings on the street. The interior of the store was finished in cherry wood. Their store became one of the busiest candy shops on either side of the Atlantic Ocean selling “just candy.” In December 2002, they sold their business, but it continues to operate as Rheo Thompson Candies, and their signature "mint smoothies" are still on the shelves. Rhéo Thompson Candies
Mint smoothies are the iconic chocolate that built the Rhéo Thompson reputation and became the unofficial "official" chocolate of Stratford. Mint smoothies are a traditional confection made in most candy shops. They have been called various names, such as Bavarian Mints, Frango Mints and Mint Meltaways. Rhéo's elder daughter, Marni Thompson, has a chocolate store in Toronto. She calls hers Mint Melodies M Thompson Chocolates Source: Rhéo Thompson
