Aigner Chocolates has been on the corner of 71st Road and Metropolitan Avenue since 1930.
A big seller is called a Vampire Poop Emoji Pop.
“The pop itself is milk chocolate, the eyes are filled in with white chocolate,” Anna Artinger, the manager of back of house, explained.
The chocolate kitchen first opened as Krause’s Candy Kitchen in Forrest Hills, Queens.
“The Krause family owned it from 1930 to 1960. And then in 1960, it was the Aigner family. And when we bought it from the Aigner family, they had actually recently rebranded, so it was Krause’s up until 2007. And the reason we decided not to change the name from Aigner to anything else is because people are still referring to the place as Krause’s Candy Kitchen,” Rachel Kellner, the owner and president of the shop, said.
This year, Kellner became the sole owner of the store. When she and her business partner bought the business in 2015, they bought the German-Austrian style candy recipes and the machinery needed to make it downstairs from the storefront.
“I would say like 99% of people don’t get to come downstairs and see where the magic happens. People want to know, ‘are your Oompa Loompas down there?’ Yes, my Oompa Loompas are downstairs. These are my Oompa Loompas,” Kellner said, referring to the characters who work for Willy Wonka in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Three full-time staff make the candy creations five days a week and sometimes interns are in the mix too. Aigner will soon have a space at John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Terminal 6, so production could potentially be seven days a week.
Halloween candy production began in July, and the staff is already halfway through Christmas production.
Kellner, who was a therapist before getting into the chocolate business, says she is proud to keep the tradition going.
“There’s a lot of chocolate healing here, and you know I’ve had incredible people in my life that have supported me to get to this point and so to be able to be a woman-owned business, to be able to lead us into 100 years of being here is a really big deal and hopefully other woman are gonna, you know, know that it’s possible, that anything is possible right now.”