Shop Local: Fantasy Candies

Maybe it was inevitable that Beachwood native Joel Fink became a chocolatier – even though his tastes ran to Swedish Fish, Now and Later and red licorice as a child and college student.

“I was a candyholic,” he said. “I’d say to my roommates, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if you
could go get fistfuls of whatever you wanted?’” he recalled. So his first business venture was the Candy Company, a Beachwood Mall shop stocked it with barrels of all his childhood favorites.

Soon enough Fink’s inner Willie Wonka emerged, and though he knew nothing about making chocolate, he bought “one little chocolate machine” and founded Fantasy Candies 21 years ago at the Greens of Lyndhurst.

He moved his enterprise to Mayfield Road eight and a half years ago so customers
could be greeted with the intoxicating smell of warm chocolate emanating from the
factory at the back of the shop.

Fink offers a full line of chocolates, from the ever-popular milk chocolate to dark and his favorite, heart-healthy high cocoa dark chocolate. He’s particularly proud of that last item, because it’s super-high in antioxidants as well as delicious. According to Fink, Fantasy Candies has the largest selection of high cocoa dark chocolates in the nation – from butter crunch high cocoa dark chocolate to high cocoa dark chocolate with bacon or figs, blueberries or various nuts.

His love of experimenting with new flavors also yielded the Chocolate Chia Cinnamon Bar, carried in the Cleveland Clinic’s wellness shop and and in Heinen’s stores with wellness sections.

“I have a knack for knowing what goes well together,” he said – with the possible
exception of the chocolate-covered nacho cheese Doritos. Awful. They never made it to the store’s shelves. But his chocolate-covered Cheese Doodles? Delish.

“I’m the luckiest kid adult in the world,” Fink said. “Every day I get to play with
chocolate.”