Motorists plying Geneva’s Third Street in the pre-dawn gloom are accustomed to glimpsing a reassuring sight. There in the lighted picture windows of Graham’s Chocolate stands owner Bob Untied. Deftly handling the ancient tools of his craft–copper kettles, roller knives, double boiler–Untied concocts caramel s’mores, nonpareils, almond bark, chocolate-covered cherries and dozens of other handcrafted confections.
And as he does, the air fills with a chocolaty bouquet known to draw pedestrians from blocks away.
Just seven years after its founding, Graham’s ranks as one of Geneva’s tastiest draws–and for good reason. Not only can patrons satisfy their cravings for vanilla walnut fudge, malt truffles and homemade tiramisu ice cream, but they’re also treated to a visual display of the time-honored but disappearing craft of candymaking.
Candy experts who’ve watched him aren’t surprised that Untied is savoring the sweet smell of success. “He picked the right location, makes high-quality candy, displays it well and gives people value for their money,” said Paul Richards, the president of Skokie’s Knechtel Labs, an internationally known developer of candies and snack foods. “If you do that, you won’t go wrong in the candy business.”
Added John Mangel, president of Long Grove Confectionery Company in Buffalo Grove: “Bob and his wife are very hard-working and industrious people who really uphold the excellence of the fine chocolate business.”
Untied, 38, his wife and partner, Beckie, 36, and their staff of 10 employees sell 350 to 400 pounds of candies a week and on busy summer weeks have churned through as many as 125 2 1/2-gallon tubs of rich homemade ice cream. And it’s not just Genevans who adore the stuff. Orders for Graham’s Chocolates have arrived from as far away as Europe and Australia.
Despite all the exposure to chocolate, Untied remains remarkably trim. His secret?
“It’s normal to gain a few pounds eating candy,” he says kiddingly. “But when you eat massive, uncontrolled amounts of chocolate and ice cream, you go back the other way.”
That Untied became a master candymaker is more than a bit surprising, considering he started out to be a musician. After his 1979 graduation from Northern Illinois University in De Kalb, he took a job teaching instrumental music at the since-shuttered Forest View High School in Arlington Heights. On weekends, he played trombone for Chicago-area rock, pop, jazz and classical groups.
As he hooked up with one band after another, he found himself repeatedly running into a musician named Tom Treece. Like Untied, Treece indulged his performing inclinations on weekends, but he also had won a national reputation in candy circles as a consultant on confectionery and snack items for Knechtel Labs.
“Tom kept bending my ear about how interesting candymaking was,” recalled Untied. “I’d always been interested in making ice cream, which I did at home, but I’d never had an interest in making candy.”
That was about to change. In the spring of 1981, Township High School District 214 in Arlington Heights trimmed two positions from the payroll. As a relative newcomer, Untied was one of two teachers let go.
At the same time, an opening for plant manager emerged at a candy factory called Pistachio Farms, a Knechtel-affiliated company situated right next door to Knechtel in Skokie.
Untied interviewed for the post and, helped by the backing of Treece, wound up with the job.
Soon he was absorbing a crash course in candymaking, which included sitting in on luncheons attended by Treece, Richards and the late Herb Knechtel, founder of the company that bears his name and the man widely credited with developing the Frango mint for Marshall Field’s.
“Instead of reading a book on how to make cremes and English toffee, the book was talking to me,” said Untied. “To learn from those guys and get paid for it was the greatest thing. I learned stuff I’ll be using the rest of my life.”
He was anything but a passive listener, recalled Knechtel’s Richards. “He was always asking a lot of interesting questions,” he said. “He was a very astute, quick learner.”
Untied spent a couple of years as plant manager at Pistachio Farms, then moved to Long Grove Confectionery Company in Buffalo Grove as a production manager and head of research and development before returning to Skokie as a free-lance production consultant for Knechtel.
In 1987, he briefly considered returning to music, but his father, who was dying of cancer, convinced him that candy was his future. Heeding the paternal wisdom, Untied decided he would create confections on his own terms.
“I felt what I’d learned in this short period of time was incredible,” he said. “I had ideas for formulas and textures that were too different for the candy companies.”
Moreover, he wanted to demonstrate the skills he’d acquired showing patrons the tricks of tempering and hand-dipping chocolates, cooking caramels and making English toffee.
“I wanted them to see the processes, smell the smells and actually talk to the guy making the candy,” he said. “At one time, Chicago was filled with a hundred places where they made candy and ice cream. But no one was doing that anymore.”
Untied sold his Prospect Heights condominium, moved in with his recently widowed mother in Bellwood and scoured the Chicago area for a storefront he could call his own.
Soon Geneva’s stretch of grand old homes converted to shops caught his eye. It was a place where time had stood still, a perfect locale for an old-time candy emporium.
In December 1987, he purchased a fading candy shop that stood in the Berry House, across the street from his current location. He renamed the place Graham’s Chocolate, deciding his mother’s maiden name boasted a more mellifluous ring than his own.
Each day, Untied hopped the Metra train from Bellwood to Geneva and walked to his shop. “I didn’t make much money at first,” he recalled. “Everyone thought it was the same old candy shop that had been there before. But I just kept on plugging.”
Five months after opening, he hired Beckie Smith, a friend he’d met six years earlier when she was a singer in one of the bands with which he performed. The two married in December 1991, and by that time Beckie had become a full and equal partner in the business.
“When I started, I knew it was going to be a success,” she recalled. “He was a hard-driving man, and I felt whatever his dream was, it would come true.”
Helped by crowds drawn to Swedish Days, a summer festival held in Geneva each year, word gradually spread that this wasn’t just the same old candy shop. Before long, tourists were deciding Graham’s Chocolate was a not-to-be-missed stop when in Geneva.
“Then, in 1990, a local newspaper ran a readers’ poll that asked what were the top places they liked to go if they were feeling down,” Beckie recalled with a chuckle. “The results were: No. 1, church; No. 2, parks; No. 3, Graham’s Chocolate.”
By 1991, the same year Graham’s started selling ice cream, the business had outgrown its Berry House location. “We’d gotten as big as we were going to get there,” recalled Untied. “I had empty boxes, cones, cups, business supplies stored all over Geneva. Whenever we ran out of something, we had to run.”
Fortuitously, that summer a for sale sign went up across the street in the old house that Graham’s now occupies. Noting the showplace windows, Untied jumped at the chance to buy the shop and signed a contract just four days after it went on the market.
“It was perfect because of the glassed-in porch and its larger size,” said Untied. “The timing couldn’t have been better. If I was still in the Berry House trying to do what I do now, I’d be tearing my hair out.”
Now in its sixth year of 25 percent annual growth, Graham’s Chocolate is known by people far beyond the Fox Valley. Untied has sent candy orders UPS to folks in Alaska, Australia and Belgium, as well as to chocoholics across the U.S.
But the Untieds haven’t forgotten the community that first sustained them, pointed out Jean Gaines, executive director of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce. “They’ve gotten involved in festivals and committee work, and they’ve contributed both time and money to Swedish Days and other events in Geneva,” said Gaines.
Treece, who now lives in St. Louis, said he doesn’t see Graham’s becoming a chain or a huge candy factory. “The shop will continue to flourish and grow, with Bob having control over how the candy is made and sold. He’ll always be involved in the production; that’s what he enjoys. I can’t picture him ever not making candy.”
Untied, who lives in St. Charles with Beckie and their two daughters by her previous marriage, isn’t quite so sure he’ll never retire. “But I’d love to see handing it down someday to my daughters–and seeing it go on and on,” he said.
