Business & Tech
Open All Winter: Shriver's Salt Water Taffy and Fudge
The granddaddy of the Boardwalk has been open every day this mild off-season, selling its famous confections, souvenirs and coffee.
ADDRESS: 846 Boardwalk
PHONE: 609-398-2288
Find out what's happening in Ocean Cityfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
INFO: www.shrivers.com, Facebook
OWNERS: Founded by William Shriver; purchased by four brothers in 1959. Now owned by Meryl and Blue Vangelov.
Find out what's happening in Ocean Cityfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
YEAR FOUNDED: 1898
EMPLOYEES: Four in off-season, 60 to 80 at the height of the summer
HOURS: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily; 9 a.m. to midnight from Memorial Day to Labor Day
HOW TO PAY: Cash (ATM on premises); major credit cards
OTHER STUFF TO KNOW: You don't have to be in Ocean City to get your salt water taffy fix. The seashore staple and tons of other Shriver's products and merchandise are available for order on Shriver's website.
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has been around for 114 years and calls itself the oldest business on Ocean City's Boardwalk.
For tens of thousands of vacationers, a stay in Ocean City is not complete without a stop at Shriver's for a supply of famous homemade salt water taffy — in some 40 flavors — and fudge in 18 flavors this time a year. At summer's peak, the number of fudge varieties grows to about two dozen.
Holly Kisby, general manager, said owners Meryl and Blue Vangelov, who bought the business in the last couple years from her mom and uncle, Ginny Berwick and Hank Glaser, decided to keep the store open all winter for the first time. They offer coffee to help draw in customers and the fortuitously mild weather has made the move worthwhile.
“The weather has been extraordinary,” said Kisby, who is excited for spring to come and recently began making 4- and 8-ounce coconut cream eggs, big sellers at Easter.
Easter is the unofficial start of the spring season, of course, but first comes St. Patrick's Day — and Shriver's has Irish potatoes, a cream-cheese-and-coconut concoction rolled in cinnamon — to help you celebrate.
Of course, taffy is Shriver's bread and butter. Through a window at the back of the store, customers can watch as it is mixed in 100-pound batches in giant kettles, then stretched and pulled by huge machines. Additional flavor and color are added before the pieces are cut and wrapped at a rate of about 600 pieces a minute.
You might be interested to know there's no actual salt water in Shriver's taffy. Legend has it the taffy was so named in jest by an Atlantic City man named Bradley who suffered flooding in his candy store and sarcastically suggested his taffy had been doused. The name stuck.
Most popular flavors are chocolate and vanilla. Kisby said employees sometimes come up with new flavors — like peanut butter and jelly, a fairly recent creation.
On a recent unseasonably mild afternoon, Liz Rizor of Bucks County, PA, stopped by Shriver's with her teen-age daughter to pick up a couple pieces of fudge — chocolate marshmallow, vanilla nut and chocolate peanut butter. Turns out she worked at Shriver's for a summer in 1986. She remembers dusting the numerous candy jars that decorate the store during slow times.
Shriver's has generations of alumni, as you can imagine for a store that has been around more than a century.
“Everybody has worked here at some point or knows someone who has,” Kisby laughed.
The rest of the population includes those of us who have shopped there. After all, who can resist?
