Josh Early next generation leadership looks toward sweet future for candies
On a quiet summer afternoon at Josh Early Candies in South Whitehall Township, a customer was loading up with a few boxes of sweets.
A woman from Philadelphia made a special trip to the Lehigh Valley to pick up chocolates and other candy for her mother. “I love this place,” she said on the way out the door.
The business has been a fixture in the Valley for more than 60 years. It has been owned by one family stretching back to its 1904 founding in Reading. That personal service has resulted in a sweet existence that is continuing with a new generation of leadership.
Josh Early recently underwent a changing of the guard as Barry Dobil Jr., known as “Bub,” and his sister, Amy Dobil Barnett, took over from their parents.
They will be Josh Early’s fifth generation of family ownership.
The company announced the retirement of Marcy Early Dobil and her husband Barry Dobil Sr. on June 2. The two had been involved in the family business for more than a combined 80 years. Marcy is the daughter of Josh Early V, grandson of founder Josh Early III. Another family member who had been a longtime employee, Lisa Early Medero, retired in November 2021 after running the company’s Bethlehem Township location for several years.
Both Barry Jr., 44, and Amy, 47, admit it will be a tough act to follow, but both say the groundwork has been set for continued success. He will focus mostly on the production side, while she will concentrate mostly on customer service.
“There’s this yin-yang between Amy and I to where we really work well off of each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” Barry Jr. said. “I’m primarily on the production side and have zero sense of style when it comes to the shop. Amy is a master at customer service interaction and so I’m primarily on the production side of everything from sourcing raw materials to turning it into a finished product.”
Little change
Both are able to work in all areas of the business, from the kitchen to the retail counter. It’s an example set by the previous generations. The company has 63 employees between both locations and a goal is to delegate more authority to them as their strengths are identified.
“One of the things that was instilled in us for many, many years, really by my grandparents, was the importance of culture, a positive working culture, a family environment,” Barnett said. “We tell any new hire that comes in here that when you come in to Josh Early Candies you are part of an extended family. We are seeking those people within to bring them into a greater fold and involve them in more. We have amazing buy-in from the staff. We have individuals who came to us in their 60s looking for a part-time job and they’re still with us in their mid-80s.
“So it speaks to the culture and the family environment that you have is very, very important to us. The end goal is to put everyone that’s here into the best place they’re suited.”
Barry Jr. said customers will notice little difference, from the longtime candy recipes to the experience of shopping at the company’s retail locations at 4640 Tilghman St. and 3620 Nazareth Pike.
“The future is interesting because we are very, very cautious to change too much,” he said. “There are a number of things that have worked for us since the inception of this business. First and foremost are recipes. There’s those that are tried and true. They will remain the same and remain consistent.
“Customer service is important to us and we want this experience for anyone coming in whether it’s something that you grew up with, or you’re new to our business, to be positive.”
The family business
After spending its initial decades in Berks County, Josh Early Candies opened its first Lehigh Valley location along Hamilton Boulevard in 1961. That store relocated to Tilghman Street in 1986 during the construction of Interstate 78. The Bethlehem Township store opened in 1982.
Marcy Early Dobil was alongside her parents when they arrived in the Valley and she started working full time for the company in 1994 after raising her own family. Barry Sr. started in 1972, worked closely with Josh Early V and learned how to run the company. He celebrated his 50th anniversary with the company in February.
Barry Jr. said his parents had already been talking about retirement for a year.
“I think it was early 2021 that there were murmurs,” he said. “They said, ‘You know, we’re thinking about retiring.’ And that kind of started the sequence of events.”
With Medero retiring later that year, keeping the Bethlehem store running was part of the process. Getting the hang of the South Whitehall location, because it has the production area, took a little longer. Barry Jr. said it was an “emotional journey” for his parents during those months.
“As a family business, we knew we would figure out the ins and outs of the transition map from one generation to the next,” Barnett said. “But unless there was a reason for my dad to be out of town, he was here every single day. Hands on, seven days a week, contributing something. It could be five minutes, it could be five hours, it could be 18 hours, but he knew this place like none other. How could that not be any emotional part of the session? So it really brought us together in a beautiful way and just identifying that and reestablishing the blessing that five generations is to be able to say you’ve carried a business through for five generations.”
Part of the community
One thing that will remain the same is Josh Early’s philanthropy. The company coming out of the COVID pandemic reinforced that philosophy.
Even though Josh Early Candies was considered an essential business by the state, the company closed for three weeks around Easter in 2020, which is traditionally a big holiday for candy sales. Barry Jr. said it was done for the employees’ health.
Josh Early ended up donating its entire stock of candy to various organizations, including first responders and nonprofit organizations. It culminated on Good Friday when Barry Jr. and Amy filled the company’s 16-foot box truck with 466 pallets of chocolates for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“It set the tone for us to recommit ourselves to the community in a beautiful way and ever since then, I think they’ve responded in a beautiful way by remaining as dedicated customers as they’ve been for decades,” he said.
Barnett said Josh Early’s philanthropy efforts will remain involved in a lot of causes.
“Our hands are on a lot of things in the community that are extremely important to us,” she said. “We’re celebrating the 17th year of being involved with the Women’s 5K breast cancer walk. So the entire month of October, we sell pink nonpareils and the entire purchase price of those nonpareils go to the cause. We’ve been doing that for 17 years.
“We have close ties with the Salvation Army, foster care and adoption. We get inundated with everything from the church basket bingos to the bigger entities and we want to be able to say yes to everybody, but we’re looking to really come up with a more structured engine in which to to put that out there and be able to do as much as we possibly can.”
“I think COVID was a nice reminder on the beauties that come from that business community relationship because it really reinvigorated us to recognize the power that comes from that center ship and really continue to engage in the community at a level that is best in class,” Barry Jr. said.