Alan Williams of Modoc, Kansas says his wife, Tonja, is like the Willy Wonka of western Kansas.
As Kansas Agland reports, while there are no Everlasting Gobstoppers or rivers of chocolate flowing through Tonja’s Toffee, as the name suggests, there is toffee, and lots of it this time of year, as Tonja works to fill Christmas orders that will make their way to 26 retail locations, including one in Missouri and one in Colorado.
She calls this time of year her harvest and even though her little candy shop is located in the remote High Plains, the Internet has helped Tonja’s candy sales spread across the nation.
It all started when Tonja was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2008, which prompted her to earn extra money to fund travel to Houston to get drugs for a clinical trial she was participating in.
At that time, she posted a message on a bulletin board in the faculty lounge of Scott County Elementary School, where she is employed as a Title 1 reading teacher. While this netted her several sales, it wasn’t until 2013 that her business really took off, after she began marketing her toffee through Facebook to help her son raise funds for a mission trip to the Ukraine.
"It just blew up," she told Kansas Agland. Her son had raised his money in a matter of weeks. "That is when I thought maybe this is something I should pursue."
She then tested the market by setting up a booth at Scott County’s annual craft show, Whimmydiddle, where she said she sold 167 pounds of candy in one day.
In January 2014, her farmer-husband turned their single-car garage into a food production kitchen and then Tonja began selling her toffee, which come in milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, butter and butterscotch flavors, as well as peanut brittle, online and at craft shows.