Donells Candies in Casper, Wyo., has BBB stickers on the sign behind the cash register and on the doors and windows of the shop to help promote his business.
Donells Candies in Casper, Wyo., has BBB stickers on the sign behind the cash register and on the doors and windows of the shop to help promote his business.
“I think people look for things like that, especially new customers,” said Mike Stepp, co-owner and CEO of Donells Candies, Inc., 201 E. Second St., with his son, Ryan. “Customers want to see that the place they’re shopping at is sound and is going to be around for a while and the BBB says that.”
Donells Candies joined the Better Business Bureau Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming in about 2005, half a century after opening in 1956 to sell homemade chocolates and candies. The candy store, which later added ice cream and an espresso bar, was founded by Mike’s parents, Don and Elma, who combined their names to create Donells. Donells Candies is their official name, but the business also is listed as Donells Chocolates and Donells Candies and Ice Cream.
Starting out with about 20 to 25 flavors, Donells Candies grew to sell 150 different flavors of chocolate, fudge, brittles, popcorn, pretzels and ice cream. Before opening the shop, Don worked as a dishwasher for Peter’s Popcorn in Greeley, soon moving up to making candy and confections and later operating the store.
“He liked doing something that made people happy, and he liked working with his hands,” Mike said. “He was never afraid of work. He was a hard-working guy.”
Within three years, Don saw that he couldn’t advance, so he and Elma moved to Colorado Springs and opened Stepp’s Candy and Popcorn in 1951. They operated it until about 1955, when they sold it and relocated to Casper, which, at the time, was booming.
The Stepps opened Donells Candies in the Hilltop Shopping Center on St. Patrick’s Day 1956. They chose that day because Elma was Irish and the store name reflected her Irish heritage with O’Donnell shortened to Donell, plus she and Don wanted to be sure to start selling before Easter. They remained at the mall until 1995, when it went through a large remodeling project.
To keep their business going, the Stepps relocated their shop to an empty space in the Atrium Plaza, a mini-mall in downtown Casper reconfigured from an old JCPenney store. “It seemed like a good location for us. It’s a high-traffic street on Second Street,” Mike said.
After doing some remodeling work, the Stepp’s were able to reopen their store in less than a month on March 17, 1995, reminiscent of their original opening date. Mike took over the company at that point—Elma had died in 1985 and Don in 2014, working at the store until then.
The new space spanned 2,500 square feet, nearly double the 1,400 square feet in the original location. In 2014, the Stepps expanded into the empty space next door, adding a storeroom, a larger production area and a coffee shop for a total of 4,200 square feet. The production area includes a candy kitchen and space for packaging and chocolate dipping by hand, which allows for greater attention to detail and increased quality.
Mike opened the coffee shop, in part, to help cover the costs of expanding the production area. He’d already added ice cream in 2007 to bring in an additional item and to grow the business, which was primarily busy around the holidays. “We needed something to generate enthusiasm in sales across the summer months,” Mike said.
The Stepps make the small-batch ice cream in-house, using Ryan’s recipes and displaying it in a display case within the candy store. “We create the ice cream base ourselves rather than buying it from a dairy and churn it ourselves as well,” Mike said. Ryan makes 40 different flavors, rotating through 16 at a time, since that’s what the display case can hold. The big sellers tend to be vanilla, cookie dough and white chocolate Oreo, plus chocolate fudge éclair.
“We have always maintained good quality ingredients. Using quality ingredients gives us quality products and a taste you won’t find anywhere else,” said Ryan, vice president of Donells Candies. “A lot of our customers just find their way in from the smells on the street.”
The recipes for Donells Candies’ other chocolates and goodies come from Don and what Mike and Ryan create based on existing recipes, their research and candy-making sources. Don and Mike sell more than 100 flavors of chocolates, chocolate truffles, creams and nut varieties, such as chocolate-covered nuts and nut clusters. They also have eight flavors of fudge and offer English toffee and a pecan pixie similar to a turtle.
“We try to use high-grade blended milk chocolate and dark chocolate,” Mike said. “We go toward looking at the best flavor profiles rather than the lowest cost.”
The coffee shop, which seats about 12 inside and another 40 in the mall lobby, serves a standard lineup of espresso, lattes and cappuccinos with the coffee beans coming from Coal Creek Coffee and TAP in Laramie.
“What stands apart is our commitment to quality and excellence and our commitment to our customers, giving them the best products at a fair price and as good of service as we can,” Mike said.
That commitment to customers is why Mike joined the BBB, but in 2015, he took a three-year hiatus following the Wyoming oil bust. Ryan became co-owner that same year, and they rejoined the BBB in 2018. They’ve since been a Torch Award for Ethics nominee in 2018 and 2022.
“We wanted to be part of an organization that encourages ethics in business and protecting the consumer,” Mike said. “The BBB is an organization that encourages businesses to treat people fairly. That’s what I believe in, too.”
Donell Candies’ standard is customer-first service for its customers, vendors and business partners, making sure to do what’s right. The Stepps employ the BBB Accredited Seal on their website, which they started in the late 1990s and relaunched in 2016, plus use it for marketing there and in the store.
“It’s a mark of excellence having that symbol out there saying that we’re a member,” Ryan said. “Our customers can trust us to do the right thing whether it’s in their transactions or what we do in the community.”