Malley’s Chocolates matriarch Adele Malley pens business-advice book

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Walk into a Malley’s Chocolates and you’re surrounded by a product Clevelanders have loved since 1935. But it takes more than just a love of chocolate to keep the company going all those years.

Adele Malley is proof of that.

To be sure, the matriarch of the family-owned business does enjoy the product, but the company is built on sound business principles. And at 86 years young, Malley has organized those practices to help retail businesses in her book, “Conversations with Adele: Business Owners’ Fundamentals for Success.”

She became involved in the business after getting married in 1959, waiting on customers at the soda fountain. She had four children in five years, then a hiatus of almost a decade before two more children came along. But the business was always a team between Malley and her late husband, Bill.

“I made decorations at night,” she said. “I’d have the floor spread out with some new gizmo I was making to surprise everybody. Even when Bill and I were dating that’s what we would talk about – how we were going to do this, wouldn’t it be neat if we did that? But I would say ‘if you did this’. I wouldn’t tell him what I was thinking. But I was thinking early on.”

Malley was always pondering. Driving she would be caught behind a bus, fumes spewing at her, but the mental wheels kept turning. She would gaze at an advertisement on the back of the bus.

“How do they afford to do that?” she would ask herself, “because I know this company, they’re just down the street. So it just made me go find out.”

What’s motivates Malley is the willingness to try to help others especially those starting out. And a key message is to realize the importance of the front lines – the person greeting customers in any business.

“When people are starting a small retail business they don’t have a lot of people to say, ‘Oh, you’re sick? Well, call Susie, call Bob, they’ll step in for you.’ They just have each other. It’s really tough. When you hire somebody to help you, say at Christmastime, who’s out there working with the customers? A small business is probably someone behind the register and a new person is out there with the customers. It’s so important that they train them and educate them who and what the culture of the company is.”

Malley’s textbook approach breaks chapters that cover all things business, but themes ring out: Self-confidence, advocacy, communication, preparation and attention to details.

“There is a lot of information,” she said. “I just hope the people will know more about how things work and what happens. How does a person propel themselves forward in business, their company and their community? That’s the biggest thing, to get the confidence in themselves and believe in themselves. Stop looking around and being so insecure – ‘Oh, I’m not good enough, I don’t know enough,’ and they keep waiting and the ship passes them by. And the other ones, who are so cocky having long lunches and in the meantime their business is not going anyplace because they’re not working it. They have to be right there to meet the customers because that’s where their culture is developed, and the people get to know them and be loyal. That’s if they have a great product.”

Growth is a key challenge for all businesses, and Malley’s wasn’t immune.

“You never know what the public is going to want,” she said. “One year we ran out of licorice jelly beans and we were so sorry. People who like licorice want it; they don’t have a lot of other flavors they like. Next year we loaded up on licorice jelly beans – and had them at half price after Easter. People went on to cherry flavor that year.”

But, she says, the most important thing is “training and educating – making sure they understand and it’s written down and they understand what they are supposed to be doing. Then we have conversations with them and hear what they have to say. That is the biggest challenge because our people are us. No matter how hard the family works, if our people don’t believe in us and want to see Malley’s go forward, then we’re not going to go forward.”

Economic downturns affect all industries and businesses, but Malley’s approach is to stay the course – “Believe in your product and your people, and it will come around,” she said.

Malley clearly knows the process and people; she’s been merchandising and marketing the beloved Cleveland-made treats for more than 60 years. Her expertise has grown, and her passion for the product never wanes. Get her talking about BillyBobs and your mouth will water.

“If you could see them going down the belt, the fresh-roasted pecans, then the golden caramel – the caramel is thicker so it kind of oozes down between the pecans – then it goes under a shower of Malley’s chocolates, that’s another bottomer of chocolate and one more topping,” Malley said. “Then it gets cooled down. (Workers) pick ‘em up and pop them in their boxes and get them all ready for us. They’re just the best.”

Nowadays, Malley is more likely to be behind a car that has the ubiquitous CHOC sticker with its soft colored pink and green stripes rather than bus fumes. But that doesn’t mean she has stopped thinking about the business, even though her title is chairman emeritus.

“It took me a while to get this written,” she said. “As soon as I passed the chapters on to my publisher, I thought – it was the same day – ‘Oh my goodness, I just passed on these ideas to people, but I didn’t tell them how to exactly do it. I’ve got to get busy and tell them how to do it.’ So I started writing another book that day. I am just finishing it right now.”

She added: “If I can save somebody from going through all the big steps to do all this, I will just feel like I am blessed.”

About the book

Book: “Conversations with Adele: Business Owners’ Fundamentals for Success,” by Adele Malley, Smart Business Books, 299 pages, $29.95.

To buy: Go to https://malleys.com/collections/adele-malleys-book. Books also are available in Malley’s Chocolates, which has more than a dozen stores throughout Northeast Ohio. Here’s the location finder.

Related coverage: After years of doing business abroad, Hall of Fame Village CEO Crawford publishes business-advice book

I am on cleveland.com’s life and culture team and cover food, beer, wine and sports-related topics. For my recent stories, here’s a directory on cleveland.com. Bill Wills of WTAM-1100 and I talk food and drink usually at 8:20 a.m. Thursdays. Twitter: @mbona30. My latest book, co-authored with Dan Murphy, is “Joe Thomas: Not Your Average Joe” by Gray & Co.

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