CLEVELAND, Ohio – Walk into a Malley’s Chocolates and you’re surrounded by a product Clevelanders have loved since 1935. But it takes more than just a love of chocolate to keep the company going all those years.To be sure, the matriarch of the family-owned business does enjoy the product, but the company is built on sound business principles.
Malley was always pondering. Driving she would be caught behind a bus, fumes spewing at her, but the mental wheels kept turning. She would gaze at an advertisement on the back of the bus. “When people are starting a small retail business they don’t have a lot of people to say, ‘Oh, you’re sick? Well, call Susie, call Bob, they’ll step in for you.’ They just have each other. It’s really tough. When you hire somebody to help you, say at Christmastime, who’s out there working with the customers? A small business is probably someone behind the register and a new person is out there with the customers.
But, she says, the most important thing is “training and educating – making sure they understand and it’s written down and they understand what they are supposed to be doing. Then we have conversations with them and hear what they have to say. That is the biggest challenge because our people are us. No matter how hard the family works, if our people don’t believe in us and want to see Malley’s go forward, then we’re not going to go forward.
“If you could see them going down the belt, the fresh-roasted pecans, then the golden caramel - the caramel is thicker so it kind of oozes down between the pecans - then it goes under a shower of Malley’s chocolates, that’s another bottomer of chocolate and one more topping,” Malley said. “Then it gets cooled down. pick ‘em up and pop them in their boxes and get them all ready for us. They’re just the best.