Maine
These 5 unique Maine candy stores are a real treat
If you’ve got a sweet tooth in Maine, you’re in luck. There’s a whole lot of candy to be had.
From artisanal chocolates and saltwater taffy to mass-produced products like Nerds and Haribo gummies, there’s a bounty of treats to taste and some pretty neat stores to explore.
We unwrap the details on five unique shops, from York to Round Pond, and share the sweet reasons why you should hop on the candy trail.
Orrin Smith 7, of Angier, North Carolina, picks candy as he fills a bag at Sweetz & More. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
MORE IS MORE
Sweetz & More opened in Wiscasset last year, in the space that was previously occupied by Big Al’s. It’s the first Maine location of a New Hampshire-based chain of five stores.
The place is enormous and, in fact, just might be the largest candy store in New England. The amount of candy, including chocolate, saltwater taffy, bulk candies, jelly beans, licorice, retro candy and a trove of other items, is mind-boggling.
Store manager Heather Barter said some of the bestsellers are Atomic fireballs and Nerds Gummy Clusters.
Sweetz & More also has its own freeze-drying equipment and sells bags of freeze-dried Skittles, Nerd Clusters and several other candies. A popular choice is freeze-dried, cotton-candy-flavored saltwater taffy. Barter said that freeze-drying renders the candy airy, making it not as hard and chewy.
Sweetz also makes several varieties of fudge in house and has an ice cream counter.
LIKE A ROCK
Originally called Hines Hall, the two-story Round Pond house that’s now home to Granite Hall Store was built in 1873. In the early 1900s, it was known as Fossett’s, a place to get ice cream and penny candy that shuttered in 1960.
Granite Hall Store owner Sarah Herndon poses by some of the candy. Photo by Aimsel Ponti
It’s changed hands a few times through the years, and when Eric and Sarah Herndon bought it in 1983, the previous owner suggested that they didn’t bother keeping the penny candy. But the couple thought better of that.
“The candy brings people here,” said Sarah Herndon, who has run the store with the help of her daughters, granddaughters and seasonal workers since her husband died in 2012.
Granite Hall Store sells plenty of other items, including housewares, Irish woolens, candles, toys and cards. The candy, however, is perhaps the most eye-catching offering, some of it displayed in old apothecary jars. Herndon said that Goetze’s Old-Fashioned Caramel Creams are a hot seller, as are Haribo gummy raspberries.
Candy displayed in an antique case at the Way Way Store in Saco. Photo by Aimsel Ponti
TIME WARP
When Peter and Bridget Scontras took over the Way Way Store in 2011, their plan was to run it for two years. Thirteen years later, they’re having so much fun, they have no plans to leave.
The Way Way Store, built by the Cousens family, opened in 1916 in a barn.
The current building was constructed with concrete blocks in the late 1920s. It closed in 2003 but was reopened eight years later by the Scontrases.
Gummy candies of all stripes are popular at the shop. “Any shape or size, you want,” Peter Scontras said.
He also said traditional candies like Necco Wafers and rock candy do well.
Peter Scontras at The Way Way Store in Saco. Photo by Aimsel Ponti
One thing you won’t find there, however, is candy or bubblegum cigarettes. “We don’t to get into the cigarette culture,” Scontras said.
The first thing you’ll hear when you walk into the Way Way Store is old-time bluegrass music, which adds to the charm of the place. Then you’ll be surrounded by candy, some of which is displayed in a glass case that’s more than 120 years old.
There’s a box that small children use as a step stool so they can see into the case. Peter says that he hears from adult customers that they remember standing on it when they were young.
The Way Way Store stocks a vast array of throwback candy, like Mary Janes, Chuckles, Sky Bar candy bars and Mallo Cups, wax bottles and multiple flavors of Tootsie Rolls.
You’ll also find plenty of contemporary goodies that are popular with kids, including Icee Squeeze candy, Toxic Waste sour candy and Rip Rolls.
The Way Way Store was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
In April of 2023, CBS News visited the shop for a story about preserving small-town general stores.
Lenny the chocoloate moose at Len Libby Candies in Scarborough. Photo by Christine Lyall
STUNNING VISUAL
There are many reasons to visit Len Libby Candies in Scarborough. Its massive inventory of chocolate comes in every form, including chocolate-covered blueberries, pebbles and seashells made out of chocolate, peanut butter cups, and dozens of other chocolate-centric delights.
The shop’s bestseller is Bangor Taffy, a rich, buttery caramel covered in confectioner’s sugar. It was originally sold on the Bangor-to-Boston passenger train back in the early 1900s, and it was the customers who gave the sweet its name.
Other popular items are Lemon Zest Bark and Needhams. Len Libby Needhams do not include potatoes as an ingredient. Raw coconuts are cracked open by hand with a machete, drained, and shredded into a pulp.
Len Libby also carries a line of Maine maple sweets, including maple sugar leaves, maple walnut bark and maple drops.
But the most whimsical reason that people flock to Len Libby Candies is not to get the latest gummy, bag of saltwater taffy, or package of licorice.
They want to see Lenny, the 1,700-pound milk chocolate moose. Lenny has been standing proud as a centerpiece of the shop since 1997, complete with a white chocolate pond.
The Candy Corner in York.
IMPASTABLY SWEET
The Candy Corner in York was opened in 1981 by Agnes and Johnny Biagioni and their daughter, Janie. The shop is affectionately or, if you will, confectionately referred to by locals as Johnny’s Candy Corner.
Aisles of penny candy and several cases of chocolate and other goodies fill the store.
Agnes said that Candy Corner’s bestsellers are the hand-dipped turtle chocolates and homemade fudge.
Chocolate ravioli at The Candy Corner in York. Courtesy photo
The other confection that Agnes said they can barely keep in stock is its chocolate ravioli. Available in milk, dark and white chocolate, the “pasta” is filled with caramel, raspberry and peanut butter. Agnes said that, as far as she knows, the Candy Corner is the only shop in Maine making chocolate in the shape of pasta.
The Candy Corner also carries a big line of taffy, which Agnes said comes from a company called Taffy Town. The pieces are individually wrapped and are nut- and gluten-free. The taffy is sold by the pound, or you can buy a box that features the Nubble Lighthouse.
Agnes said she’s allergic to nuts, making some of the store’s offerings off-limits to her, but she does have a personal favorite that she makes an exception for, in small amounts: “The peanut butter cups are to die for.” She’s also a huge fan of the shop’s chocolate fudge.
TOPSFIELD, Maine — Jenna Stoddard is not sure where her son will spend his days when he starts preschool next fall.
Sending him to East Range II School would be convenient and continue a legacy. Stoddard lives just down the street and her husband graduated eighth grade there in 2007, one in a class of three. Topsfield’s population has dropped since then. The school now has five students, two teachers, few extracurricular activities and nobody trained to teach music, art, gym or health.
Stoddard’s son is too young for her to worry about that now. But the school may not be open by the time he is ready to go. Topsfield, a town of just 175 residents, will vote on whether to close the school on April 30. If it closes, the boy would likely be sent to preschool up to 30 minutes away in Princeton or Baileyville.
“That’s a pretty fair distance for a kid, a 4-year-old, who is now on a bus all by himself,” she said. “[If] school starts at [7:45 a.m.], what time is the bus picking 4-year-olds up here? And what time is he going to get home at?”
Topsfield is an extreme example of how an aging, shrinking population and rising property taxes are forcing Maine towns to make difficult choices about their community institutions. Just over a dozen people came to a Wednesday hearing on the idea of closing the school. The crowd was mostly in favor of it.
“It is emotional to close the school in a town,” Superintendent Amanda Belanger of the sprawling Eastern Maine Area School System said then. “But we do feel it’s in the best interest of the students in the town.”
Teacher Paula Johnson walked a reporter through the building, which is small by Maine standards but cavernous for its five students. It has four classrooms, a small library, and a gymnasium. There is also a cook and a custodian for the tiny school.
A hallway trophy case serves as a reminder of when the school was big enough to field basketball teams. Topsfield’s student population has never been large, but the school’s population has dropped dramatically over the past few years. It had 25 students in 2023, with many coming from nearby Vanceboro, which closed its own school in 2015.
As the student population dwindled, the cost of sending students to Topsfield climbed. With fewer students to defray the costs, Vanceboro officials realized they would be paying $23,000 per student by the last school year. So they opted to direct students to nearby Danforth, where tuition was only $11,000 per student.
East Range lost seven students from Vanceboro, bringing its enrollment below 10. Under Maine law, that means the district may offer students the option to go elsewhere. Parents of the remaining students in grades 5 through 8 took the option and sent their kids to Baileyville. This school began the year with eight students; three have since pulled out.
In Topsfield, Johnson teaches four of the remaining five, holding lessons for pre-K through second grade in one classroom. Another one down the short hallway is home base for the other teacher. She focuses on the school’s lone fourth grader and occasionally teaches one of Johnson’s first graders, who is learning at an advanced level.
The other teacher, who holds a special education certificate despite having no students with those needs, plans to leave at the end of the school year. If the school stays open, that will leave Johnson responsible for educating Topsfield’s youngest students, though the school will need to budget for a part-time special education teacher just in case.
After 11 years at the school, Johnson is not sure what she will do if voters shut it down.
“We’ll see what happens here,” she said.
Topsfield’s school board, which operates as a part of the Eastern Maine Area School System, is offering its residents a choice: continue funding the school only for students between preschool and second grade at an estimated cost of $434,000 next year or send all students elsewhere, which would cost less than $200,000.
At Wednesday’s hearing, the attendees leaned heavily toward the latter option. Deborah Mello said she moved from Rhode Island to Topsfield years ago to escape high taxes.
“It’s not feasible for the town of Topsfield,” she said. “We cannot afford it and it’s not like the children don’t have a school to go to.”
Others bemoaned the burden of legal requirements for the small district, including the need to provide special education teachers even if they don’t need one. Board members also mentioned that in 2028, the district will become responsible for educating 3-year-olds under a new state law. That adds another layer of uncertainty to future budgeting.
“It sounds like we’ve been burdened something severely by this program and that program by the Department of Education, to the point where a small school can’t even exist,” resident Alan Harriman said.
“And that’s been happening for a long time,” East Range board chair Peggy White responded.
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.
BANGOR, Maine (WABI) – Good morning and Happy Sunday everyone. Skies are cloudy with fog across much of Maine this morning. Rain has entered locations along the interstate and to the northwest. Temperatures vary from the upper 30s to mid 40s. Winds are out of the SE between about 5-15 mph.
Today will be a wet and impactful day with rain and even snow anticipated as a large cold front passes through Maine. Skies will be cloudy with plenty of fog lasting through the morning. Rain will expand across the interstate by the late morning hours, reaching Downeast locations by midday/the early afternoon.
By the early to midafternoon, temperatures will start to drop across northwestern locations as the cold front passes through Maine. This will result in rain turning over to mixed precipitation and eventually snow across the Western Mountains, Moosehead region, and Northern Maine. Rain will continue steadily and at times heavily across the foothills, Interstate, Coast, and Downeast. A few thunderstorms are even possible closer to the coast.
Snow will expand across areas to the northwest of the interstate this evening, reaching all the way down to Interior Midcoast communities, the Bangor region, and Interior Downeast areas by sunset and into the start of the night. Precipitation will taper off across Western Maine shortly after sunset, before exiting the entire state around midnight tonight. High temps today will vary from the low 40s to low 50s with SSE to NW gusts reaching 20-25 mph.
Snowfall totals will vary under 2 inches across Western, Northern, and Interior Downeast locations. However, a few pockets of 2-4 inches are possible, mostly in higher elevations across the mountains. Rainfall totals will accumulate around a half inch to three quarters of an inch when all is said and done.
Precipitation will be out of Maine by midnight tonight, with cloudy conditions giving way to mostly clear skies by sunrise. Lows overnight will dip back below freezing across much of the state, from the low 20s to mid 30s tonight, so cover up any plants or flowers outside. WNW gusts will reach 20-25 mph. A Small Craft Advisory is expected offshore.
Skies will be partly to mostly sunny across the interstate and coast on Monday morning. However, by the late morning to midday hours, clouds will build with a few scattered rain and snow showers in spots. Conditions will remain on the cloudier side in the afternoon before clearing up around sunset into the start of Monday night. Highs will be chilly on Monday, from the low 30s to upper 40s. WNW to SW gusts will be a bit breezy, reaching 20-25 mph, which will add to the wind chill factor.
High pressure will build on Monday night, remaining overhead on Tuesday. Skies will be sunny in the morning, becoming partly to mostly sunny in the afternoon. Highs will remain cool, in the 40s across the board with North to SW gusts only reaching 15-20 mph.
A weaker low-pressure system could bring showers across Maine on Wednesday and Thursday. There is a bit of model uncertainty on exactly when it will impact Maine. The GFS has impacts on Wednesday, while the EURO, GRAF, and GDPS models have most of the impacts on Thursday. We will continue to monitor this system and potential impacts. All it looks to provide as of now are cloudier skies and rain showers, with some snow shower chances farther to the North.
By Friday and Saturday, conditions are trending on the drier side with sunshine and average temperatures returning to the forecast.
SUNDAY: Highs from low 40s to low 50s. Cloudy with AM fog. Rain becoming widespread throughout the day, turning over to snow to the north & west during PM. SSE to NW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
MONDAY: Highs from low 30s to upper 40s. Partly to mostly sunny early. Developing clouds with scattered rain/snow showers by midday/afternoon. WNW to SW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
TUESDAY: Highs throughout the 40s. Sunnier AM. Partly to mostly sunny PM. North to SW gusts reach 15-20 mph.
WEDNESDAY: Highs from low 40s to low 50s. Mostly cloudy with a few rain showers. Few AM snow showers possible North. SSE to SSW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
THURSDAY: Highs from mid 40s to mid 50s. Cloudier skies with rain showers possible. Some AM snow showers possible North. NW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
FRIDAY: Highs from upper 40s to mid 50s. Partly cloudy. NNW gusts reach 20 mph.
Copyright 2026 WABI. All rights reserved.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in September 2022.
When it comes to Maine hiking, summiting Katahdin is the ultimate achievement.
Maine’s tallest mountain stands at 5,269 feet, and there are a number of different trails hikers can take to get up and down Katahdin. And while some are harder than others, none are easy.
But the views are incredible.
Whether it’s the rugged terrain of the Knife Edge or the vast landscape of the 200,000 acres that compose Baxter State Park below, here’s a look at what it’s like to climb Katahdin.
Hunt Trail
Abol Trail
Chimney Pond Trail
Cathedral Trail
Saddle Trail
Northwest Basin Trail
Knife Edge
Tablelands
South Peak
Hamlin Peak
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