'It's never around that long.' Koch Caramel continues to delight customers

FREEPORT – Bob and Donna Koch, owners of Koch Caramel, have developed a reputation for selling a chewy confection that is hard to resist if you have a sweet tooth.

One time, a customer asked what the shelf life was on their caramel. The Kochs' son-in-law responded: "Nobody knows, it's never around that long."

More about cooking:Daughter Lovina shares humor, fond memories

The business is housed in the Koch family home at 232 E. Muskingum St. When you walk into the house, you come into a room that is used to display the different products they sell. On a counter are buckets filled with the five different flavors of caramels ‒ vanilla, sea salt, pecan, walnut and chocolate. They also sell a caramel dip and popcorn balls.

Caramels are $8 a pound.

The recipe for the caramels comes from a 1904 cookbook. The ingredients are simple — corn syrup, sugar, half and half, salt, vanilla and butter. But what makes the difference, Bob Koch said, is that no preservatives are used.

Sometimes, people are hesitant to come into a private home to shop for caramels.

"We have some people come and they'll say, 'I was afraid to knock on the door. I didn't know what was going to be behind it,'" Donna said. "Then when they get in here, they're so excited. It's amazing."

Added Bob, "People will come up on the porch. The man will go sit on the porch swing and the women will come in and get the candy. This past winter, we had a football game on. My wife was in the other room, and the men went in and sat down and got to watching the football game while the wives got the candy. I want them to feel at home. I want them to be comfortable when you come through the door."

From January through October, the business is open if the Kochs are at home.

"November and December, we're here around the clock," he said.

The Kochs do most of their work in an addition at the back of the house, where the caramels are cooked, cut and hand-wrapped. They have seven young Amish women from the Freeport area who help them.

In addition to running the caramel business, Bob also serves as chief of the Freeport Volunteer Fire Department.

History of caramel making

The Koch family has been making caramels for generations. Family members on Bob's grandmother's side of the family had a candy store in Canton in the early 1900s. They made candy and sold it, but that came to end when the U.S. entered World War I and sugar became hard to get.

Bob's father, David H. Koch Jr., continued the tradition. A funeral director all his life, David Koch would make 50 pounds of caramels each year and give them away. But he stopped when the caramels became too much work and too expensive to give away.

After Bob Koch got married, he decided to resume the tradition. One year in the early 1980s, he and Donna made 20 pounds of caramels and gave them away. The next year, they made 30 pounds. Donna took them to a craft show in Freeport, where she sold 18 pounds. But most people wanted them for Christmas, so she began taking orders. She ended up with orders for 100 pounds.

They made that 100 pounds and put them in brown paper bags from the grocery store. When it came time to deliver the caramels, there was snow on the ground. So they put boxes on sleds and walked around Freeport making deliveries and collecting money.

The business continued to expand. This past year, they made 7,200 pounds of caramels. The majority of their sales comes from people who stop at their home, but they also ship caramels to nearly every state, as well as overseas to military members stationed in places like Japan and Germany.

Koch Caramel can also be found at Fresh the Market in New Philadelphia and the Van Horn Grand Tea Room in Carrollton.

Bob's ultimate goal is to get to the point where they produce 15,000 pounds.

"I want to do it by the time I'm 68 because I'll have 50 years in the volunteer fire service, and that's when I'm going to step away from the fire department," he said. "I will stay on as their chaplain. I will stay on as a counselor, but I will step back as being an active member. I thought 50 years is enough."

He will retire as fire chief in four years.

Bob and Donna have two sons and a daughter, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. None of their children are involved in the candy-making business.

"My dad never forced any of us boys into the funeral business, and I will not force any of my kids into the candy business," Bob said. "They were forced to wrap when they were growing up, and that's why they say they don't like the business."

Their youngest granddaughter, Kensington, 16, has gotten involved, helping with boxing and packaging.

Koch Caramel plans expansion

Now, they are planning on expanding their home again with a second addition to accommodate the growing business.

"We have outgrown our home," Bob said, "when you have to set up an eight-foot table in your living room to do all the packaging, because you have no room anyplace else because you bring in a whole skid of sugar, you bring in 45-gallon buckets of corn syrup, and the vanilla comes in four one-gallon jugs and everything's in bulk to the point where I'm running out of room to put things and all our bags and boxes and everything we else we have. So the candy has taken over the house."

The planned addition will triple the size of their candy-making area. Bob is also going to buy a candy-wrapping machine. He said he likes that his candy is hand-wrapped, but the business has gotten to the point where they can't keep up with orders.

He loves making candy.

"Of everything I've done in my entire life, I've never enjoyed anything more," he said.

This article originally appeared on The Times-Reporter: Koch Caramel of Freeport sells caramels around the U.S.