How sweet it is to stop in Lakewood

Candy shop awash in sugary goodness, but also place for families to make memories
By: 
Lee Pulaski
City Editor

When thinking of where the sweetest place in Wisconsin might be, Oconto County’s Lakewood might not immediately spring to people’s minds.

Five minutes after setting foot inside Sweet Memories Candy Shoppe, however, it might be difficult for those people to come up with any alternatives. After all, a facility that’s home to 52 flavors of taffy, 50 flavors of Jelly Belly jelly beans and 36 flavors of fudge would be enough to mesmerize anyone with a sweet tooth.

That’s just for starters, though. Owner Wendy Wimberger has spent the last 34 years shaping and growing her candy empire so that, even at age 73, she has no intention of going into retirement.

“I just wanted this to be a place where families would make traditions,” Wimberger said. “When they would come up north, they could visit the candy store. I’ve got the third generation of kids in here now. They bring their babies in, and I watch them grow up. I’ve always said to the kids that we don’t sell candy here — we sell an experience, and we sell a fun time. The candy just happens to be there.”

The store started in a home that currently holds the honor of being the second oldest building in the town, according to Wimberger. Prior to Sweet Memories setting up shop, it was the home of Helen Isaacson, who lived in the home until she was 95. When Isaacson moved to a nursing home, the property was sold to Wimberger. Isaacson lived to be 103.

“Helen raised her granddaughter and a couple of nieces and nephews here,” Wimberger said. “The story is that Helen did not allow candy in her house. She allowed cookies and cakes, but not candy.”

It wasn’t long before Sweet Memories expanded to a nearby barn, but when customers weren’t making the trek up the hill to the barn, Wimberger had the two buildings connected together to make an impressive, two-story facility full of candy, gifts and, perhaps most importantly, memories.

“I said, ‘We need to connect this,’ and my husband said, ‘No, it can’t be done,’” Wimberger said. “I drew a picture, and we got it done.”

There have also been expansions since then, with the kitchen where the fudge is made being built in 2000, according to Wimberger.

A two-story children’s room filled with stuffed toys and other goodies was built in 2007 and opened in 2008. The room is lit up with fixtures that look like floating chocolate candies that she got from gift shows she went to, and shelves that look like the old tinker toys filled with goodies. A new addition this year is the Zoltar fortune-telling machine, a replica of the one used to turn a young boy into Tom Hanks in the movie “Big.”

“You can get your sweet memories, and then you can get your fortune told,” Wimberger said.

Also in 2007, an ice cream parlor was added to the business to make Sweet Memories even sweeter. Besides the addition of dairy products to one of Dairyland’s businesses, the parlor also has an old-fashioned player piano where a visitor drops in a quarter and listens to a tune played without anyone stroking the ivories.

If even a virtual river of sweets is not enough to convince people to make a stop when traveling north, perhaps some ghost tales might encourage them to check out Sweet Memories. Wimberger believes there are at least two spirits that haunt the business, one of them the home’s former occupant. She recalled one employee telling her of a time she saw a woman wearing an old-fashioned blue dress.

“After she (Helen Isaacson) died, strange things started happening in the candy store,” Wimberger said. “Spinners would spin, and when I came in the morning, the paper would fall down in the kitchen. There’s thumping on steps. There’s all kinds of strange things. We think that Helen’s telling us, ‘I told you, no candy in this house.’”

There was also at least one instance where a cup that was stacked on other cups went flying to the other side of the room, Wimberger said, and another instance where a little girl who inadvertently got locked in the bathroom claims she saw the ghost of a little boy in the bathroom with her.

“The bathroom used to have an old-fashioned lock with a key and a toggle switch,” Wimberger said. “She couldn’t get out, and we tried to explain to her how to turn things, but she couldn’t. We were just about to go break down the window in the bathroom to try and get her out, and the door opened. A lot of sassy things happen around here, and we blame it on the little boy spirit.”

During the interview with NEW Media, Wimberger found a sucker in the mouth of a stuffed toy fish in the kids room. While it could have been stuck there by a living juvenile prankster, she believes it could also have been left there by one of the dearly departed.

“He’s such a little stinker,” Wimberger said of the little boy spirit.

At one point, Sweet Memories was open seven days a week during the peak tourist season from May through October. However, the place is currently open Friday through Sunday due a lack of available employees, according to Wimberger, but the shop will be open on Mondays after Memorial Day. She estimated she receives as many as 1,000 visitors per day.

When Wimberger first opened Sweet Memories in 1989, she had no idea how to run her own business, she said. She took out $750 from the bank, and that is how she got her start.

“When I first started this business, I was a teacher,” Wimberger said. “When this came along, we were going home from our cabin one Sunday, and I said to my husband, ‘Lakewood needs a candy shop.’ He said that his horoscope said to go along with any business ventures that your spouse proposes.”

Wimberger said she didn’t even have any idea where to purchase candy to sell when she made the decision to open the shop.

“When a broker came by my house, and I asked him how much I needed to buy, he said $75,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God. How am I ever going to sell $75 worth of candy?’”

Wimberger’s most recent shipment of taffy was about 2,000 pounds, worth a lot more than the $75 she spent on her first order of candy.

“I’ve gotten over that,” she said with a laugh.


lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com