Giving a tour of his Jordan store, Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store owner Robert Wagner points out the store’s decorations while detailing his products which include candy from around the world as well as fresh baked goods, local meats, teas, puzzles and other games. The displays in the massive yellow barn include life-sized statues of comic book heroes and Disney princesses, an animatronic band and an authentic British telephone booth.
When he reached the final room, filled with spaceships and their famous fictional pilots, a child stopped him to ask if he worked there.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing up toward a replica of the Borg Cube from Star Trek hanging from the rotating ceiling, which is painted with stars and galaxies.
The decorations that inspire moments of wonder like these are set to become even bigger after Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store made plans to move to a new location in three years.
The move comes after a new interchange on Highway 169 was planned that would remove the store’s access to the road, Wagner said. After trying and failing to lobby for the creation of a new frontage road to serve his store, Wagner said Scott County presented him with an offer: swap the land for a new, much larger parcel less than a mile away near the Jordan Taproom.
The move provides Wagner with the opportunity to expand, which he said he hasn’t been able to do since 2016. The current yellow barn at 20430 Johnson Memorial Drive measures some 27,000 square feet.
When asked what changes will come to the current store in the three years before the move, Wagner addressed the decorations first — there will be no new murals, although they may bring in new sculptures that can be moved to the new location.
Its emphasis on decorations and experience are what separate his store from other retail stores, Wagner said.
“Our family saw retail as being really boring,” Wagner said. “Just tipping up four huge concrete walls and putting a flat roof on it, and you walk in and it’s pallet racking and product. There’s just nothing there to engage, especially to engage the youngsters.”
Wagner said he joined the family business, which was founded by his father, in 2001. Around 2002, he started building decorations for the store as a way to both engage his passion for woodworking and craftsmanship and also bring more life to the store.
He started with smaller displays, he said, but they got good reactions. As he took on more responsibilities at the store, he had less time to create decorations. Now, artists from around the world create sculptures or fly in to paint murals for the store.
While he loves the current decorations, Wagner said he will be able to do even more at the new location.
“What the new store will allow us to do is to have more of that, but in far greater [complexity],” Wagner said. “Where you can create a scene where we couldn’t with the limitations of vertical space.”
Wagner said he plans on making the building itself a spectacle in addition to the decorations inside.
“The design of the building is going to be eye candy from the road,” Wagner said. “We want to take the marketing of the store to be not just what we do inside the store, but also what we do on the outside of the store.”
The new store will be a classic yellow barn, which aren’t built often anymore, according to Wagner.
Beyond the decorations, inside and out, the store will also finally be able to increase product offerings, according to Wagner. The store has been trying new products and taking note of what customers like most, and those products will be brought to the new location.
Wagner said that the new store will also group similar products together and create new themed areas based on those groupings. For example, eastern Asian candy is very popular, he said, so he plans on creating a “little Chinatown” at the new location. He said he has more such themed areas planned, but is keeping them under wraps until they are revealed when the new location opens.
Beyond new decorations and new product offerings, Wagner said the store is also looking to take on a new title — world’s largest candy store.
“We are greatly confident that we will qualify as the world’s largest candy store,” Wagner said. “Certainly the largest store in the United States.”
While Wagner has big plans for the new location, its opening is still three years away. In the meantime, customers can still enjoy Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store, which is currently open to customers in a “soft open” state and officially opens for the season on May 1.
