Back in the late 80's, Tom Ehlke a local business man was standing in his friend's beach supply store and he noticed tourists coming in looking for salt water taffy. His friend was selling little boxes of taffy that looked bad (and tasted worse) for $4.98. Tom decided he could do better than that and went to work researching salt water taffy. Eventfully opening a full line candy store and then in 1992 moving to Destin, FL and opening the now famous Candymaker and becoming for all time the "Grouchy Old Candymaker".