Responsibilities include: “leading candy board meetings, being the chief taster … and anything related to fun.”
But Hijazi also sees the attraction. “Imagine your best memories of candy and every day at work,” he said.
Based out of Toronto, Candy Funhouse is led by a quartet of 20- and 30-year-old siblings who grew up in the area and whose parents owned donut shops and a local restaurant.
“My brother Mo, who has a sweet tooth, founded it in 2018, and my mother was employee #2,” Hijazi said, adding that he and a younger sister and brother later joined the firm.
The family hoped to differentiate their company from other highly successful online competitors such as Mars, Hershey and Amazon with a “weird” range of products, no minimum order (“we’ll sell one lollipop”), and a strong social media push.
2021 sales, boosted substantially by the pandemic, were “just under $15 million. I’m not kidding,” Hijazi said.
The family retains 90% of the shares.
The company said the position of chief pastry chef is open to applicants as young as five, although parental permission is likely to be required. Many parents filmed their child completing the application and posted it online.
The company has 340,000 followers on Instagram and three million followers on Tik-Tok, including the Kardashians, Hejazi said, although he declined to specify which.
Hijazi also pointed out that social media reports that the head confectioner would have to eat 3,500 candies per month are incorrect. (That number represents the different varieties the company has.) “That would be 117 a day,” Hijazi said. “It’s too much”.
