"Mmmm ... that is so good ... I need to do this in private."
-A new Rebecca-Ruth customer

Long ago, two candy companies set up shop along the road that used to be the area's main right-of-way. At opposite ends of Central Kentucky on Highway 60, Rebecca-Ruth Candy Company and Ruth Hunt Candies have both served the urgent chocolate needs of Bluegrass residents for nearly 80 years. And that's not all they hold in common.

The international devotion to candy has spawned a thousand names for sweetness. But it just so happens these two enterprises share the same lady's name. The founders of both companies, Ruth Tharpe Hunt and Ruth Hanly Booe, started up their own outfits at a time when the majority of Kentucky women were more concerned about which one to wear. Their stories run parallel beginning just after World War I, when Prohibition had both removed sinful alcohol and limited our collective adult sugar intake. Folks were chomping at the bit to taste something sweet with maybe just a touch of vice.

Now candy is dandy ...

Enter Ruth Hanly and Rebecca Gooch, two substitute schoolteachers in their mid-twenties who thought there might be a better living to be made. (Hanly told the school board that $40 per month didn't quite cut the mustard, even in 1919.) Both ladies had a flair for the dramatic and had already made names for themselves cooking up gift candies for their friends.

J.J. King, the manager of the Old Frankfort Hotel, had a dormant barroom, and Hanly had a big marble countertop she'd purchased from the Old Capitol Hotel for $10, so they started up the business right there.

"The hotel needed something unique to do with their barroom, and she needed a place to operate, so it was a nice marriage for both of them," says Rebecca-Ruth President and Hanley's grandson Charles Booe. "We call it Edna's table, after Edna Robbins, who just retired last year at age 90. She was with us for 67 years."

Employee longevity is no anomaly for either company, with several families having contributed the labors of multiple generations. Cooks are especially enduring, not to mention crucial to the process. Before Junior Carroll arrived at Ruth Hunt, Ernest Martin had cooked for over 50 years. The current Rebecca-Ruth cook, Joe (who didn't want to give his last name) has been there more than 30 years.

No matter which way you're traveling on Highway 60, the Rebecca-Ruth "Bourbon Candy" sign has long served as a landmark -- either signaling your arrival in Frankfort or your nearness to Keeneland. In 1999, the company's main facility in downtown Frankfort will celebrate 80 years in business. The outlet was opened in 1960.

"A lot of people think all we do is bourbon candy," says Booe. "We actually make about 120 varieties of candy, and only seven have liquor."

The names roll off the tongue: creamed pull candy, cognac and bourbon balls, scotch, mint julep, and rum candies, butter creams, opera creams, chocolate-dipped butter pecan crunch, pecan brittle.

"We introduce new candies on a fairly frequent basis," says Booe. "One of the newest would be the raspberry truffle, and two companion pieces -- the mocha cappuccino truffle and the chocolate mint truffle."

One of the tough things you have to do when running a candy company is tasting. Booe readily admits to having to sample up to half a pound a day. Now that's dedication.

A loyal following

The first piece the company was renowned for is the Mint Kentucky Colonel -- a mint center with two salted, butter-sauteed pecans on the inside, enrobed in dark chocolate. Hanley developed this candy during the Depression while experimenting with various recipes. By that time, she had married Douglas Booe and sold the business to Gooch when she moved with her husband to Fort Thomas. She sold candy successfully in the Cincinnati area, before returning to Frankfort to tend to an ill family member. The untimely death of her husband followed shortly thereafter.

Even after Gooch got out of the business in 1929, Hanley's calamities continued: first the Depression, and then a fire that gutted everything but the marble slab. Thanks to a kind loan from a hotel house-keeper named Fanny Rump (yes, that's right), Hanley rebuilt her business. The accolades grew: Mint Kentucky Colonels at the Daniel Boone Day dinner, booming sales at the Derby, and the advent in 1938 of the Bourbon Kentucky Colonel. Even during the sugar rationing of World War 11, loyal customers would bring in their rations for Hanley to make candy for them. Since that time, praise has come from such publications as the New York Times, Gourmet, and Town and Country. In 1996, Kentucky received first runner-up prize in the Quest for America's Best competition (sponsored by shopping channel QVC).

Famous fans have included Governor Ruby Laffoon, U.S. Senator Wendell Ford, Fay Wray, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

"We are not an aggressive marketer. Our perspective is that as long as we make the best candy, people will find us," says Booe. "We're a small family business -- no marketing department, no photography department -- so it has to be simple. We just like to concentrate on making candy. As long as we do that, we'll always be able to take care of ourselves."

Ruth Hanly Booe died in 1973, long after handing the company on to her son, John, in 1964. Now the third generation minds the store.

"Not only was she a pioneer as a woman entrepreneur -- in 1919, how many women were going into business by themselves? -- but she was a very social person with a dynamic personality," says her grandson.

That drive and energy ensured her place in the recently published book Kentucky Women: Two Centuries of Indomitable Spirit and Vision. Charles Booe aims to carry on the tradition of quality passed on to him by his grandmother and father.

"As long as you do what it takes to keep the word-of-mouth perpetuating your business ... being so customer-oriented that you're doing everything it takes to keep them happy ... you'll project yourself into the future."

Generations of hearts and hands

When you walk into the Ruth Hunt Candies store on West Main Street in Mount Sterling, you might run into an older gentleman picking up some pulled creams. You might ask him how long he's been buying candy here.

"Oh, since about the day they opened," he might say. In this case, that would be 1921. You ask his name, but he walks out with his sweets, not one to care for publicity.

There is a certain aura of privacy about this business: the cook at Rebecca-Ruth, who's been there for 30 years but won't let you photograph him; the minister who named Ruth Hunt's famous Blue Monday bar, because it was on blue Mondays that he came in for some sweet relief. Let's face it -- chocolate is an intimate thing.

"People love candy. But so many people get it and hide it -- a special treat for themselves," says Ruth Hunt president Larry Kezele.

Since 1921, Ruth Hunt Candies has operated out of Mount Sterling and the candy still flows from its factory -- a building with a couple additions, yet pretty much the same as it was in 1930. So is the delightful pulled cream candy the company has made famous.

"Handmade" is the essential word that infuses Ruth Hunt Candies. From the wall-mounted candy hooks to the hand-dipped sorghum suckers and the special twist used to wrap them, the process is labor-intensive and traditional. A few years ago Kezele introduced a wrapping machine for some of the 70-plus varieties of candy -- and certain customers lamented it.

"They said we were getting too modem," Kezele relates with a grin. "We get a lot of interesting letters from people who have moved away. Every Christmas, we ship a little to every state in the country."

Ruth Hunt makes mallows, toffees, sugar-free brittle, turtles, and melt-aways, but their pride and joy is the Blue Monday bar and the pulled cream that forms its center. The key to the pulled cream process is temperature. "A difference of a couple degrees can make a big difference," says operations manager Toby Moore. The candy is poured onto a special metal table with cool water piped through it. From there, it's pulled, cut, and left to set into the mouthwatering candies customers have come to love.

An old-fashioned secret to success

While Rebecca-Ruth uses a system of pipes and pumps to keep the chocolate flowing, what stands out at Ruth Hunt Candies is the ancient machinery. Almost all the machines are quite old, meaning breakdowns may be more frequent. But it also means they're simple to operate and fix.

"The key to good candy is freshness," Kezele maintains. "Our biggest competition is Stover, Whitman's, and Brach's. But the smell when you open a box will tell you the difference."

Ruth Hunt knew that when she started the business, setting the candies that she'd been making for years for Christmas gifts and bridge club favors. Her daughter, Emily Tighlman Hunt Peck, was born about the same time as the company, and dedicated most of her life to running it. Kezele left a position as director of the city of Lexington's fleet services to take over the company in 1988, realizing a dream of running a small, family-oriented enterprise.

In the candy business, word-of-mouth is a literal expression. Like Rebecca,Ruth, the company depends on such relationships for its marketing, though some modem marketing methods have been introduced. (Even a website is in the works.)

Kezele made the decision to pull out of the regional Wal-Mart stores recently, citing the size as incompatible with the kind of attention and quality on which a company like Ruth Hunt depends.

At the same time, the firm scored a big coup three years ago when Churchill Downs selected them as the official candymaker of the track and the Derby. The special Churchill box is everywhere, and large orders even receive a complimentary Derby julep glass. Kezele reports sales over the $700,000 mark in 1997.

Like Hanly, Hunt devised a recipe and stuck to it. Through the years, their successors have been wise enough to do the same, knowing that no cut comers or whiz-bang gimmicks can improve on a certain core combination of sugar, water, cream, butter, and chocolate. They have also continued to rediscover the beauty of smallness. There are no strategic franchise plans or massive marketing campaigns because their standards for freshness and quality wouldn't permit it, and there's no system that replicates the quality of their relationships.

So the question remains: why were so many parents in the 1890s naming their baby girls Ruth? Well, the name happens to be a female adaptation of Rutherford B. Hayes, the country's 19th President, whose death in 1893 may have inspired tribute. The name's Biblical roots have infused the name with such qualities as "friendship" and "companion." Certainly the generations that have grown up tasting the products of these two coincidental and enduring companies can identify with those words.