Frango mints are a brand of chocolate

Chocolate

Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...

 truffles

Chocolate truffle

A chocolate truffle is a type of chocolate confectionery, traditionally made with a chocolate ganache center coated in chocolate or cocoa powder, usually in a spherical, conical, or curved shape...

 first created for the Frederick & Nelson

Frederick & Nelson

Frederick & Nelson was a department store chain in the northwestern United States, based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1891 as a furniture store, it later expanded to sell other types of merchandise. The company was acquired by Marshall Field & Company in 1929...

 department stores. Traditionally flavored with mint and widely popularized by the Marshall Field and Company department store, they are now produced and distributed by Macy's

Macy's

Macy's is a U.S. chain of mid-to-high range department stores. In addition to its flagship Herald Square location in New York City, the company operates over 800 stores in the United States...

 department stores. Frango is also the brand name of a line of various other related food products.

Historically associated with the Midwestern and Pacific Northwest

Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest is a region in northwestern North America, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Definitions of the region vary and there is no commonly agreed upon boundary, even among Pacific Northwesterners. A common concept of the...

 regions of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, the candy is sold in various outlets throughout the country. Frangos were created by Seattle

Seattle, Washington

Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

, Washington's Frederick & Nelson

Frederick & Nelson

Frederick & Nelson was a department store chain in the northwestern United States, based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1891 as a furniture store, it later expanded to sell other types of merchandise. The company was acquired by Marshall Field & Company in 1929...

 department store in 1918; the company and Frango trademarks were both acquired by Chicago's Marshall Field's

Marshall Field's

Marshall Field & Company was a department store in Chicago, Illinois that grew to become a major chain before being acquired by Macy's Inc...

 department store, which introduced its recipe in 1929. For many years, Frango mints were produced in large melting pots on the 13th floor of the flagship Marshall Field's store on State Street.

Origins

The origins of Frango mints go back to 1918, according to a trademark

Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...

 document from the U.S. Patent Office. Originally, the Frango was the name for a frozen dessert sold at the sophisticated Tea Room at Frederick & Nelson's department store, at Sixth Avenue and Pine Street in Seattle, Washington. The first Frango frozen dessert was available in maple and orange flavors.

There are a few different theories as to the origins of the Frango name. One theory is originated by the combination of "Fr" from Frederick’s and the "ango" from the word tango. Employees trained at Frederick and Nelson were taught that the name was an acronym for FRederick And Nelson COmpany. The C was changed to a G since Franco suggested a different meaning. Some have also said that Frango is an acronym for FRederick And Nelson GOodness.

A much-repeated theory—repeated, at times even by people very close to the stores concerned—states that Frederick & Nelson originally called the chocolates Franco Mints. In the 1930s, after Frederick & Nelson's was acquired by Marshall Field's, the name was changed to Frango mints after the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

, when Generalísimo Franco

Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

 met with Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

, to avoid similarities to the Spanish dictator's name. However, the brand name Frango was trademark

Trademark

A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...

ed June 1, 1918.

In 1926, the consistency of the Frango Dessert was described as flaky, requiring the use of a fork, not a spoon as you would use with ice cream. The Frango name eventually was extended to ice-cream sodas, pies and milkshakes sold at the store. It wasn't until 1927 that Ray Alden, who ran Frederick's in-store candy kitchen, developed the Frango mint meltaway chocolate

Chocolate

Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...

. Alden's secret recipe used chocolate made from both Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

n and South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

n cocoa beans as well as triple-distilled oil of Oregon peppermint and 40% local butter.

Two forms

A few months after Marshall Field's agreed to buy out Frederick & Nelson's and take control of the Seattle company in 1929, the Frederick & Nelson candy makers in Seattle were summoned to Chicago to introduce Frango mints to Marshall Field's to help build slumping sales during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. Soon, the candy kitchen at Marshall Field's had produced its own Midwestern interpretation of the Frango Chocolate recipe. Although the Northwest version still uses the original Frederick & Nelson recipe, the Marshall Field's recipe has been modified a few times. This, as well as the use of different ingredients and equipment, would account for any difference in taste between the two versions.

Packaging variations

One crucial distinction between the two types of Frango chocolates is the packaging. Midwestern Frango chocolates are sold in traditional flat candy boxes, with the chocolates set in candy papers. By contrast, Northwest Frango chocolates are individually wrapped and sold in distinctive hexagon-shaped boxes.

Frederick & Nelson Shuts Down

During Marshall Field's many decades of stewardship over the Frederick & Nelson chain of stores, Field's preserved the Frederick & Nelson name and regional character. However, the 1982 the purchase of Marshall Field's by BATUS Retail Group (a unit of BATUS Inc.) proved ill fated for the Frederick & Nelson subsidiary. By 1986, an overstretched BATUS decided to dispose of Frederick & Nelson, selling it and Spokane, Washington

Spokane, Washington

Spokane is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city of Spokane County of which it is also the county seat, and the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region...

 based retailer The Crescent

The Crescent

The Crescent was a small chain of department store founded and based in Spokane, Washington. Once a subsidiary of Marshall Field & Company, the chain was sold to BATUS Retail Group in 1982. BATUS renamed the stores Frederick & Nelson, the company's Seattle, Washington division, in 1988. Frederick...

 to a Washington state-based investor group. Despite this ownership turmoil, Frederick's continued to distribute Frangos, albeit under license from Field's. In 1992, continued financial difficulties led to the final closure of all Frederick's locations. By that time, Field's itself had changed hands, becoming a unit of Minneapolis-based Dayton Hudson Corporation

Target Corporation

Target Corporation, doing business as Target, is an American retailing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the second-largest discount retailer in the United States, behind Walmart. The company is ranked at number 33 on the Fortune 500 and is a component of the Standard & Poor's...

. Seattle civic leaders quickly engineered a deal under which Dayton Hudson agreed to let Seattle's remaining full-line department store, The Bon Marché

The Bon Marché

The Bon Marché, whose name means "the good deal" or "the good market", was the name chosen for a department store launched in Seattle, Washington, United States, in 1890 by Edward Nordhoff. The name comes from Le Bon Marché, a noted Paris retailer and one of the world's first department stores,...

, continue to sell Frangos in the northwest.

Seattle Gourmet Foods

This solution proved highly problematic. While Frederick & Nelson was still in business, the candies were made on the 10th floor of the chain's flagship Pine Street store. After Frederick & Nelson's demise, a former Frango candymaker founded Seattle Gourmet Foods, which won a production contract with The Bon and moved candymaking to a new site. Seattle Gourmet manufactured the meltaways using much of the same equipment Frederick & Nelson used to manufacture the mints.

The Bon Marché files suit

After ten years of using Seattle Gourmet Foods to manufacture the chocolates, The Bon terminated the contract in early 2003. The candymaker retaliated by producing its own line of "Frederick & Nelson Fine Chocolates," using hexagonal packaging similar to that of the traditional Frangos box. The Bon promptly sued, but Seattle Gourmet Foods countersued, claiming that the contract termination was unlawful. Late in 2004, the parties reached a settlement in which The Bon made an undisclosed payment to Seattle Gourmet Foods, in exchange for exclusive rights to the recipe, the use of hexagonal boxes, and the Frederick & Nelson and F&N names.

The Bon, the Bon-Macy's, Macy's

Today the Pacific Northwest version of Frango Chocolates is sold at Macy's Northwest locations in Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon. This is as a result of Federated Department Stores unifying all its regional department stores under the single Macy's banner. Another local Seattle company, Seattle Chocolates, now makes the Frango chocolates for Macy's Northwest.

Marshall Field's candy kitchen shuts down

The Midwest version had been produced on the 13th floor of the Marshall Field's flagship State Street

State Street (Chicago)

State Street is a large south-north street in Chicago, Illinois, USA and its south suburbs. It begins on the Near North Side at North Avenue. For much of its course, it lies between Wabash Avenue on the east and Dearborn Street/Lafayette Avenue on the west...

 store from 1929 until March 1999. However, demand for the chocolates overwhelmed the in-house facility; consequently, then corporate owner Dayton-Hudson Corp. handed over the production contract for Frangos to Gertrude Hawk Chocolates in Dunmore, Pennsylvania

Dunmore, Pennsylvania

Dunmore is a borough in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, adjoining Scranton. Dunmore was settled in 1835 and incorporated in 1862. Extensive anthracite coal, brick, stone, and silk interests had led to a rapid increase in the population to 8,315 in 1890, 12,583 in 1900, 17,615 in 1910, 20,250 in...

 and closed the Field's candy kitchen, letting go virtually all of the candy kitchen's employees. This infuriated many Chicagoans and enraged Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley

Richard M. Daley

Richard Michael Daley is a United States politician, member of the national and local Democratic Party, and former Mayor of Chicago, Illinois. He was elected mayor in 1989 and reelected in 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. He was the longest serving Chicago mayor, surpassing the tenure of his...

, who sought to have the by then iconic chocolates made by a local Chicago company.

Gertrude Hawk production process

The process begins using giant blocks of Chicago's own Blommer chocolate, melted at nearly 200 °F. Tiny rectangular molds receive the combination of milk and dark chocolate, plus a special mint oil, after the mixture is tempered to 83 °F. Air bubbles are eliminated by shaking the molds. The product is cooled via a trip through a long, refrigerated tunnel. The chocolates are then sent through an enrobing machine

Enrober

An enrober is a machine used in the confectionery industry to coat a food item with a coating medium, typically chocolate. Foods coated by enrobers include nuts, ice cream, toffee and other miscellaneous candy items, biscuits and cookies. Enrobing is essentially a mechanized form of hand-dipping...

, where more chocolate is poured over them. The Frango mints are cooled once again, then boxed by hand, sealed, wrapped and packaged for shipment.

From Marshall Field's to Macy's

In 2004, Marshall Field's and the Frango trademark were acquired by St. Louis-based May Department Store Company

May Department Stores

The May Department Stores Company was a national department store chain in the United States, founded in 1877 by David May. The company ceased to exist in 2005 when it was merged with Federated Department Stores, Inc . Prior to the merger it was headquartered in Downtown St. Louis, Missouri...

. Field's new owner, the May stores, refused to renew Macy's license to the Frango trademark. As a result, Macy's Northwest re-branded the Northwest version of Frango as "Frederick & Nelson, the Original" in February 2005. On August 30, 2005, Macy's corporate owner, Federated Department Stores

Federated Department Stores

Macy's, Inc. is a department store holding company and owner of Macy's and Bloomingdale's department stores. Macy's Inc.'s stores specialize mostly in retail clothing, jewelery, watches, dinnerware, and furniture....

, completed its acquisition of the May Stores. As a result, a license was no longer needed for Macy's Northwest to use the Frango name. The acquisition reunited the two branches of the Frango family for the first time in two decades. Macy's Northwest promptly renamed the Northwest version of the mint meltaways as "Frango."

Return to Chicago?

Because of controversial and very public protests from former Marshall Field's customers and Chicago Mayor Daley, Federated chairman Terry J. Lundgren

Terry J. Lundgren

Terry J. Lundgren is the CEO, Chairman of the Board, President, and Director at Macy's, Inc., the parent company of Macy's and Bloomingdale's department stores....

 announced in September 2005 that Macy's would look into moving production back to Chicago. In making the announcement, Lundgren noted that Macy's would look into "our contractual obligations" to determine if the chocolate production could be moved back to the Windy City; however, Lundgren stressed that he was not making any promises regarding moving all or part of the production back to Chicago.

Unfortunately, the demand for Marshall Field's Frango mints was far greater than demand for Macy's Frangos. No longer a unique product of Chicago's famed Marshall Field's, the Macy's-branded Frangos are viewed as just another mint; at 75% off retail, sales of Frango mints under Macy's remain significantly below previous years' sales at Marshall Field's. However, this may also be due to Chicagoans' hostility to Federated, Macy's and Lundgren in particular over the demise of the Marshall Field's stores and the way the stores changed after their absorption into Macy's, becoming middle-tier retailers rather than the high-end competitor that the Marshall Field's stores had been during much of the 20th century. Macy's is considered to be a lower-tier retail chain than Federated's own top-tier retailer Bloomingdale's; the folding of the Field's stores into Macy's was seen by Chicagoans as both a demotion of a 150-year-old Chicago institution and an insult to the city itself, and critics urged a boycott of Macy's after the Macy's takeover.

In July 2009, Macy's announced that Chicago candymaker Cupid Candies would begin production of one-pound boxes of Frango mint chocolates. Cupid Candies is a 73-year-old Chicago candy maker located on the city's south side. Frango mints made by Cupid Candies will be shipped to Chicago-area Macy's stores. All other Frango candies, as well as Frango cookies, will continue to be made by Gertrude Hawk Chocolates, located in Pennsylvania. However, the contract with Cupid Candies, though cheered locally, may be a case of too little, too late for Federated as Macy's sales figures, including those for Frango mints, continued to stagnate or slump even before the current recession began.

State Street viewing kitchen

In the meantime, the Frango Viewing Kitchen on the seventh floor of Macy's On State Street, closed in 1999 when Frango production was moved to Pennsylvania, was reopened. The kitchen allows store guests to see the enrobing

Enrober

An enrober is a machine used in the confectionery industry to coat a food item with a coating medium, typically chocolate. Foods coated by enrobers include nuts, ice cream, toffee and other miscellaneous candy items, biscuits and cookies. Enrobing is essentially a mechanized form of hand-dipping...

 process where Frango chocolate centers are covered in chocolate to create the outside layer. These enrobed chocolates are later used for sampling.

Frango: only at Macy's

By 2006, The Midwest version of Frango chocolates and related items became available for sale online on the Macy's website. In the former Bon Marché stores, Macy's sells the Northwest version of the chocolates, while the Midwest version is sold elsewhere nationwide.

In the Northwest, Frango chocolates are sold in various flavors, with seasonal flavors added year round. During Christmas time, Macy's Northwest sells a stuffed Frango teddy bear and various other gift packages. In 2006, gift packages with a Frango mug, drinking chocolate, biscotti and a box of Frango chocolates were sold.

In continuing the Marshall Field's tradition, Macy's North sells the entire line of Frango products. Along with the classic mint Frangos, chocolates featuring other flavors, special edition Frangos, coffee, hot chocolate, truffles, cookies, and liqueur

Liqueur

A liqueur is an alcoholic beverage that has been flavored with fruit, herbs, nuts, spices, flowers, or cream and bottled with added sugar. Liqueurs are typically quite sweet; they are usually not aged for long but may have resting periods during their production to allow flavors to marry.The...

s are among the products sold under the Frango brand. In 2006, Macy's announced that famed Chicago cheesecake baker Eli's Cheesecake

Eli's Cheesecake

Eli's Cheesecake is a cheesecake company based in Chicago, Illinois. Eli's original plain cheesecake, which has been called "Chicago's most famous dessert", is made of cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla in a butter shortbread cookie crust...

would once again produce Frango cheesecake for sale in the Macy's North region stores; Eli's had previously made Frango mint cheesecakes for Marshall Field's during the 1980s.

Also as part of the seventh floor food offerings at Marshall Field's on State Street is the Frango Café, which features sandwiches and salads along with other sweet treats.

Marshall Field's packaging

The Marshall Field's packaging is featured on boxes sold today by Macy's in the Midwestern region of the United States. Candies featuring the Marshall Field's signature logo are made using a variation of the 1929 recipe created by the department store. The retention of the Field's packaging in the Midwest is thought to be an attempt to regain favor with lost customers still loyal to the Marshall Field's brand; it's unclear that this strategy has worked for Macy's, although changing the packaging to feature the Macy's name instead would probably result in yet another uproar for the beleaguered chain.

Macy's packaging

Designed when Macy's was just a licensee to sell the Frango brand, its distinct logo graced the packaging of candies sold in the Pacific Northwest. After Macy's acquired the Frango brand from the owners of Marshall Field's, Macy's continued use of the logo. Candies packaged in this style use the original Frederick & Nelson recipe.

External links

• Frango at macys.com
• Remembering Marshall Field's WBBM-TV 9 September 2006 (Includes archive video from Marshall Field's 13th Floor candy kitchen)]
• Macy's Hopes To Sweeten Takeover WMAQ-TV 14 July 2006
• Frango bubbles into beauty care Chicago Sun-Times 17 November 2006
• In a sweet spot: New Seattle Chocolates CEO has big plans Puget Sound Business Journal 8 August 2003
• Marshall Field's fans Chicago