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1902 – sold on after 1968
Founded: Begun in 1902 as the Heit-Miller-Lau Company, named for its three founders: Anthony Heit, Joseph Miller and Thomas Lau.
Founders: Anthony Heit, Joseph Miller and Thomas Lau; from 1919 the rising man was W. Charles Dickmeyer, who had been sales manager for Perfection Bakeries.
What it did: Candy manufacture — above all the Bun Bar, the maple/vanilla-cream cluster bar that became a national confection; the company copyrighted "Vanilla Cream Bun" and the Bun Bar in its modern form in 1947.
Course: Locations ran from 1131 South Calhoun to 113 East Jefferson and finally into the old American Fork and Hoe plant in the 1950s. In 1930 Dickmeyer, having taken ownership, renamed the company Wayne Candies.
Fate: Dickmeyer died in 1968; his family sold the company (a process he had begun), and his son Richard opened Key III Candies. The Wayne Candies/Bun Bar business passed to national confectioners — first the Leaf division of W. R. Grace, resold in 1974 to the Curtiss Candy division of Standard Brands, and onward from there. The date Fort Wayne production ended is not fixed in this record.
Sources:
- Randolph Harter, "Wayne Candies History," Fort Wayne Reader, 19 January 2017, via the Friends of the Allen County Public Library — founding 1902 as Heit-Miller-Lau; the 1930 renaming; Bun Bar 1947; locations; the Dickmeyer succession; Leaf and Curtiss Candy ownership.