Helen's Huckleberries: Goodbye to a Libby institution

Libby lost one of its oldest export companies last week when a quaint, family-operated candy factory loaded up its last box of huckleberry confections and moved to Washington. 

Helen’s Huckleberry Candy Factory finished a 29-year run in Libby on Jan. 22 when Kendra and David Gaustad sold the business to candy distributor Spokandy, which plans to continue selling Helen’s products from its headquarters in Spokane. 

The signature huckleberry candies, syrups and jams will continue to carry the Helen’s brand name, solidifying the legacy of the farm-to-market candy factory. But the closure of the storefront on Highway 2 sent another shockwave through the local business community. 

Helen’s departure follows the closure of the Rodeway Inn in December and Nickel Auto in January, combining for a loss of 16 local jobs within a month. Seven employees were on the payroll at Helen’s. 

Kendra Gaustad, who purchased the candy factory along with her husband in the summer of 1989, said the business has struggled financially since the recession began in 2008. Closing the business was the only option, she said, until Spokandy offered to buy it. 

“The economy – it’s like the door just closed and the phones shut off,” Gaustad said. “After the fifth year of losing money, it becomes a hobby. When business expenses start coming out of your pocket, it’s time to call it quits.”

Todd Davis, president of Spokandy, said buying Helen’s allows his company to offer another line of top-quality confection products to its network of retailers across the region. But keeping the operation in Libby didn’t make sense from a business perspective. 

“I’ve seen Helen’s in the marketplace. I know their cordial line. It’s a premium product,” Davis said. “Our objective was to enhance our confection line. We’re not changing any recipes. We’re only taking the product and pushing it into marketplace to make the Helen’s brand even stronger.”

Helen’s never achieved the same stature in Libby as the large timber and mineral ore export companies that operated here over the years. However, to many sweet-toothed residents across the Northwest, huckleberries are the city’s most desirable resource and Helen’s is the name they remember. 

In fact, Helen’s has shipped more than 1 million huckleberry candies to grocery stores, specialty shops and regular folks since it was founded in 1985. And that’s a conservative estimate. 

Kendra Gaustad said Helen’s routinely sold “tens of thousands” of hand-wrapped candies during busy months. She hesitated to guess how many candies were shipped each year, but she said nearly 90 percent of the orders came from outside Lincoln County. 

“We used to work six days a week,” she said. “Christmas used to be a nightmare because we’d have orders stacked up an inch thick, and we just hoped we could get everything out on time. But we haven’t had that problem in several years.”

 The Original Helen

Helen Bundrock, 81, remembers picking huckleberries in the early 1980s as therapy for her husband Art, who was told by a doctor to spend more time outdoors at high altitudes to ease the symptoms of asbestosis. 

“We went to the woods at the top of the mountains, and he felt better up there,” she said. “So we picked huckleberries almost every day, and that’s how we got started.”

Soon, Bundrock and her daughters began experimenting with huckleberry jams, huckleberry syrups and huckleberry-infused chocolate candies. 

“We tasted some huckleberry candy that another company had made, and I knew we could do it better,” Bundrock said. “So, we made them at home and sold them at the bakery next door until we had enough space of our own.”

The Bundrocks expanded their operation in the mid-1980s by setting up a small candy factory and retail shop in a building near their home in White Haven Tracts south of Libby. They grew the company during the next several years by marketing their products to retailers in Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

“We had some really good sales people,” Bundrock said. “One lady in Portland was a go-getter. She even sold our products to a store in London where the queen buys her groceries. Can you imagine that? The queen of England might have been eating our candy.”

In 1988, as her husband’s health was failing, Helen Bundrock decided to sell the candy factory and move to Troy. She had developed early-stage asbestosis and was unable to continue making candy. 

“I could only work on the shipping side because I was coughing so much,” she said. “So it wasn’t as much fun as working in the kitchen.”

Establishing a Legacy

Kendra Gaustad was living in Louisiana when she received a Christmas card from her longtime friend Mary Bundrock, who stated that her mother and father were trying to sell Helen’s Huckleberry Candy Factory. 

Gaustad, who grew up in Libby, and her husband, Dave, who is from Livingston, saw the business as an opportunity to return to Montana. Within a few months, they had quit their jobs and were making candy for a living. 

At the time, Helen’s had only two employees. And the storefront was several miles from Libby’s commercial district. 

“Helen’s had a reputation even back then, but most of it was mail-order,” Gaustad said. “The Bundrocks had targeted Washington because other businesses in Montana were already making items from huckleberries.” 

The Gaustads successfully marketed their products in grocery stores across Montana and grew the wholesale business large enough to require 600 gallons of huckleberries during peak years. The company also expanded its product line to include several fruit-chocolate combinations, flavored honey and caramels. 

“We sold to anybody who sells candy – we even shipped our products to a bootery in Billings,” Gaustad said. “Every year, our business got bigger and bigger.”

By 2000, Helen’s had grown substantially and needed additional space to display the products.  So, the Gaustads purchased commercial property along Highway 2 and constructed a building as a co-venture with Frank Fahland, who owned Frank’s Pharmacy before it became Granite Pharmacy. 

The business thrived in that location for several years until the price of raw material and labor ate away the company’s profits. The price of chocolate, for instance, rose to $3 per pound from $1.25 per pound in less than four years.

“Sales have gone down, prices have increased and wages have gone up,” Gaustad said. “You can only raise prices so high. And we’re a luxury item. Unfortunately, you don’t need white chocolate huckleberries to survive.”

The Distant Future

Todd Davis, the president of Spokandy, knows a thing or two about confections. He has more than 20 years of experience in the candy industry, and he is in charge of a company with a 100-year-history of selling candy. 

With credentials like that, Davis is considered an expert on delicious. 

“With our history, we would only buy a company with as much integrity as we have,” he said. “We’re pretty serious about our industry, and we only do things that are fantastic. So, this could be even better for the Helen’s product line in the future.”

Davis said nothing will change in the way Helen’s candies are made or marketed. The ingredients will stay the same. The packaging will stay the same. And the huckleberries still will be picked in Northwest Montana.

“The only thing that is changing is the location,” he said. “I definitely understand what that means to a small community, but there was no way to keep pricing competitive while maintaining a location there.”

People in Libby still will be able to purchase their favorite Helen’s confections. But they will have to do it online instead of over the counter. Spokandy is planning to relaunch Helen’s products March 1 at www.spokandy.com. 

Helen Bundrock, who now lives in Arizona, said she’s glad to hear her huckleberry candy recipes will continue to carry her name. But, these days, she is busy developing new flavors with different fruit concoctions – for family and friends only. 

“I kind of got tired of huckleberries,” she said. “Now, I’ve changed over to using blackberries for everything. We don’t have huckleberries down here in Arizona.”