Saltwater taffy is a Boardwalk confection that was invented in Atlantic City in the late nineteenth century and that has been continuously made and sold here since. The product is a chewy, slightly tacky pulled-sugar candy in roughly cylindrical pieces, individually wrapped in waxed paper twists. It is sold in cardboard boxes, in cellophane bags, and by the pound from glass cases. It is one of the city's most-recognizable export products and the foundation of a small but durable industrial sector that has persisted across boom-and-bust cycles that have washed away most of the other consumer-product industries the city has had.
The origin story of the name is contested in the historical record. The most-repeated version involves a Boardwalk vendor named David Bradley whose stock was soaked by a high-tide overwash in 1883 and who sold the now-soggy candy as a novelty he called saltwater taffy. The story is plausible, undocumented at the level of contemporary record, and probably partly true and partly mythologized. The economic history of the product, which is what actually matters for understanding the contemporary trade, is somewhat better documented and considerably less romantic.
The principal makers and the family histories
Three families have dominated the saltwater taffy trade in Atlantic City across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. James' Salt Water Taffy, founded by Enoch James in 1880, was the earliest of the major operations and remained in family hands for several generations before consolidations changed the ownership picture. Fralinger's, founded by Joseph Fralinger in 1884, was the principal competitor through the early decades of the trade and remained a major presence through the twentieth century. Steel's Fudge, which entered the broader pulled-sugar trade in 1919, became a third major operation and remained in the Steel family across multiple generations.
The contemporary ownership picture is more consolidated than the family histories suggest. James' and Fralinger's operate under common ownership today, though they continue to maintain separate retail brands and continue to use distinct production methods that produce somewhat different finished products. Steel's has remained more independent and continues to operate as a smaller-scale family business. Several smaller operations have come and gone across the decades.
The family histories matter for understanding what the trade actually is. The recipes are family recipes that have been refined across generations. The production methods involve specific equipment, specific timing, and specific quality-control judgments that are passed within families and within the trained workforce that the families have employed. The trade has not been heavily mechanized in the way that mass-market candy production has been mechanized. The making of saltwater taffy in Atlantic City still involves human judgment at multiple steps in the production process.
How the candy is actually made
The base for saltwater taffy is a mixture of sugar, corn syrup, water, glycerin, butter, salt, and flavoring. The mixture is cooked to a specific temperature that varies slightly across producers and that affects the texture of the finished product. The cooked candy is then poured onto a marble cooling slab where it is worked by hand or by machine to incorporate air and to bring the candy to the temperature and texture appropriate for pulling.
The pulling step is the most distinctive part of the production process. The candy is hooked over a mechanical pulling machine — or in the smaller operations, pulled by hand on a hook — and stretched and folded repeatedly. The pulling incorporates additional air and produces the characteristic glossy texture of the finished product. The duration of the pull and the specific technique used affect the final texture in ways that experienced operators can adjust by feel.
The pulled candy is then run through a sizing machine that produces the cylindrical pieces of approximately uniform size. The pieces are wrapped individually in waxed paper twists, either by machine or by hand depending on the operation. The wrapped pieces are sorted into the boxes and bags that are the principal retail packaging.
The flavor lineup varies across producers but typically includes the traditional flavors — vanilla, chocolate, peanut butter, molasses, mint — and a substantial number of fruit flavors and seasonal specialties. The recipe for each flavor is generally proprietary to the producer and is part of the family tradition that distinguishes the producers from one another.
The economics of the trade
The economics of the saltwater taffy trade are not what the storefront presentation suggests. The retail business along the Boardwalk operates on substantial seasonal swings, with the bulk of the annual revenue produced during the summer tourist season and considerably reduced revenue through the rest of the year. The operations have to size their workforce and their production capacity to handle the summer peak while not over-investing in capacity that sits idle through the off-season.
The wholesale and mail-order business has been a significant component of the revenue mix for the larger producers across the twentieth century and remains so today. Mail-order saltwater taffy is shipped throughout the United States and to a smaller extent internationally, with the orders concentrated around holiday gift-giving periods. The mail-order business produces revenue that is less seasonal than the Boardwalk retail and that has historically helped the operations through the slower months.
The casino-era boom in tourism produced a substantial increase in the retail trade along the Boardwalk, which benefited the saltwater taffy operations along with most other Boardwalk retail. The 2014 casino closures produced a measurable decline in foot traffic and a corresponding decline in retail revenue that the operations had to absorb. The contemporary trade is recovering from the 2014 decline but operating in an environment that has structurally less Boardwalk foot traffic than was available a decade earlier.
What the trade looks like on a working day
A working day at a saltwater taffy operation begins early. The first batches are typically cooked and pulled before the retail floor opens, with production continuing through the day to keep the visible production process running for the visiting public. The visible production is a deliberate part of the retail experience — the marble slabs and the pulling machines are typically arranged so that customers can watch the candy being made as they shop.
The workforce is a mix of long-tenured production staff who handle the cooking, pulling, and sizing steps and a more variable retail and wrapping staff that scales with the seasonal demand. The long-tenured staff is the operational core of the business and represents a meaningful institutional investment that the operations have to maintain across the seasonal swings and across the decades-long boom-bust cycles.
The retail floor through the summer day is busy. The operations move substantial volumes of pre-packaged boxes through the cash registers, with additional volume moving through by-the-pound sales from the glass cases. The pace of the work through the peak summer afternoons is substantial, and the operations rely on experienced staff to move the volume through without errors that affect the customer experience.
The continuity of the trade
The saltwater taffy trade has been one of the more durable commercial categories in Atlantic City's economic history. The trade has persisted through the decline of the early-twentieth-century resort era, through the economic difficulties of the post-war decades, through the casino-era boom, and through the post-2014 adjustments. The continuity reflects several structural features of the trade — the strong product identity, the established mail-order business, the relatively low capital intensity of the production, and the family-business structure that has supported continuity across ownership generations.
The contemporary operations are smaller in number than the historical peak but more stable in operation than the broader retail picture along the Boardwalk. The operations that have persisted have done so by maintaining the product quality that the brand identity depends on, by managing the seasonal economics carefully, and by adapting the wholesale and mail-order channels to the changing retail environment.
The trade will probably persist over the coming decades in roughly its current form, with continued consolidation of the smaller operations into the larger family-affiliated operations and with continued reliance on the seasonal-plus-mail-order revenue mix. The product is distinctive enough and the brand identity is strong enough that the trade has the structural foundation to continue. Whether it grows or shrinks from its current scale will depend on the broader Boardwalk foot-traffic picture and on whether the operations continue to invest in the production quality and brand identity that the trade has historically depended on.
