Elmer Candy Company, better known as Elmer Chocolate or simply Elmer’s, is the oldest family-owned chocolate company in the United States. The company is best known for its trio of Easter offerings—Elmer’s Gold Brick Eggs, Heavenly Hash Eggs, and Pecan Eggs—which fill store shelves around the Greater New Orleans area before the Lenten season begins. Though the chocolate company is no longer owned by the Elmer family, it still manufactures CheeWees brand cheese curls.

Beginnings

According to company records German immigrant Christopher Henry Miller—often called C. H. Miller in documents of the era—founded Miller Candy Company in 1855. The original factory was located in New Orleans on Jackson Avenue and New Levee Street (South Peters today). After a devastating fire in 1870, the company moved to Tchoupitoulas Street between Gravier and Natchez Streets.

Olivia Henrietta Miller, one of thirteen children born to Miller and his wife Mary Wetzel, married a Biloxi-born coffin salesman named Augustus Elmer in 1876. Augustus joined the family candy company, which was rechristened Miller-Elmer Candy by the early 1900s.

The company transferred to Augustus and Olivia’s five sons after Augustus’s passing in 1906 (C. H. Miller died four years earlier). A 1910 fire forced the company to relocate to the corner of Magazine and Lafayette Streets. In 1914 the family firm’s name changed to Elmer Candy Corporation. The company’s fortunes would soon skyrocket due to the popularity of three egg-shaped confections.

Elmer’s in the Twentieth Century

In the early 1900s rival A. G. Williams Homemade Candy Company, established in 1894, launched a local craze for Heavenly Hash, a marshmallow and roasted almonds treat enrobed in milk chocolate. Advertisements declared it the “Greatest Candy Creation of the Age.” After imitators abounded, Williams applied for a trademark and threatened lawsuits. Elmer’s appears to have acquired the Heavenly Hash brand in 1923. The company has since added dark chocolate and strawberry varieties.

Elmer’s Gold Brick Egg dates to 1936. Described on packaging as a “pecan melt-a-way,” the candy features chopped pecans enveloped in milk or dark chocolate. The Gold Brick and Heavenly Hash eggs are the company’s annual best sellers by a wide margin.

Newspaper advertisements touting Elmer’s pecan egg appeared around the same time as the Gold Brick. The candy wrapper describes it as a pecan and caramel-covered nougat egg.

Elmer’s has manufactured other candies over the generations. One favorite, peppermints marketed as Bubblets, were introduced in the 1930s before being discontinued a half-century later.

Efforts to inject some excitement into Elmer’s candy lineup during the Great Depression may help explain the company’s egg-centric offerings. Such efforts also explain Elmer’s savory snack pivot during this era. In 1933 the five Elmer brothers traveled to the Chicago World’s Fair, also known as the Century of Progress International Exposition. According to company lore they found a machine designed to extrude dry corn into a flaky substance suitable for animal feed. They bought one of the machines, disassembled and re-engineered its parts, and experimented with extruding corn meal, which puffed up, similar to popcorn. The corn curl was born.

The brothers baked and flavored the corn curls with cheese, canned the product, and labeled it Chee-Wees (eventually dropping the hyphen), the winner of a 1936 naming contest. (The cheese puff giant known as Cheetos would not be invented for another dozen years.)

A decade later, in 1946, the Elmer family split the business into two divisions: Elmer Candy Corporation and the snack-focused Elmer’s Fine Foods. That same year, the Elmers worked with manufacturers to develop the first snack bag packaging, originally made from a waxy, grease-resistant paper called glassine.

In 1963 Roy Nelson purchased Elmer Candy and moved the production facility and headquarters to Ponchatoula. Augustus Elmer’s descendants retained control of Elmer’s Fine Foods but, according to the terms of the sale, surrendered the name CheeWees. For the next three decades, the Elmers marketed a puffed curl product under the names Chee-T and, later, Cheez-Snax.

In 1993 Elmer’s Fine Foods reacquired the CheeWees name. Flavors in the product line include original, green onion, bar-b-que, hot-n-spicy, and, most recently, 400 hot degreez, in partnership with the rapper Juvenile.

Elmer’s in the Twenty-First Century

Managed by the third generation of the Nelson family and still headquartered in Ponchatoula, Elmer Chocolate has continued to expand its production facilities. Today the company is the second-largest Valentine’s Day–oriented heart box manufacturer in the country.