Confection Lovers’ Paradise in Bakersfield

It doesn’t get much sweeter than Dewar’s Family Candy Shop and Ice Cream Parlor, a Bakersfield institution that pays tribute to the days when girls swooned at soda jerks. Built in 1928, the long green building with pink awnings still has its original candy shop and soda fountain with 26 pink leather stools. “Customers tell us their grandma described it, and they come back 50 years later and they’re amazed that it’s exactly the same,” says Paul Pavletich, Dewar’s vice president of marketing.

James Dewar created the company in 1909, and his family still owns the company. Fourth-generation members make Dewar’s candy and ice cream every day, churning out 50-pound blocks of caramel, fudge, peanut butter or peanut brittle along with giant taffy pulls and thousands of gallons of ice cream. The fountain serves floats, malts, shakes, freezes, sundaes and double banana splits overflowing with syrup and nuts. “We don’t make a sugar-free product,” boasts Pavletich. “We haven’t changed the ingredients.”

Nor will you see much change in employees: one has been with the company for 54 years. The shop sells peppermints, lemon candy and five-pound boxes of chocolate but is most famous for its peanut butter chews, a sweet white toffee with a homemade peanut butter core. Local hero and pro football Hall of Famer Frank Gifford is a patron. “It’s his first stop when he comes to town,” Pavletich says of Gifford, once a gridiron star at nearby Bakersfield High School. A framed letter from Gifford confessing, “I love my peanut butter chews” is proudly displayed next to a 1911 City of Bakersfield business license. Another Dewar’s fan is California Republican State Sen. Charles Poochigian, who drives 115 miles from Fresno with his wife, Debbie, just for the ice cream. Many Bakersfield High students still come to Dewar’s for the sweets, but 15-year-old Brittany Robertson says she loves the atmosphere. “It takes me back.”

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Dewar’s, California Avenue and Eye Street in Bakersfield; (661) 322-0933.