Les Frères St. Laurent opens its doors in Midland

Kat Johnston was ready to make “chocolate” Monday morning at the new St. Laurent Brothers store in the Midland Mall.

The business, which sells candy, nuts and peanut butter, among other things, held a grand opening at 10 a.m. after a soft opening last Thursday. This is the second St. Laurent location to move in with the original downtown Bay City store that opened in 1904. Midland Mall owner Jordan Dice purchased St. Laurent last September.

“I didn’t waste any time getting here,” said Johnston, a Freeland resident. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this. It’s exciting. I’ll enjoy eating chocolate.”

A glance in the display case reveals jawbreakers, bottles of wax, sour cherry jellies and clusters of peanuts.

“I’m a man of priorities, and my priority is bottles of wax,” another customer said with a smile as an employee weighed the candy for purchase.

Deputy general manager Robert Dingwell said free peanut butter smoothie cups would be offered to the first 200 customers on Monday.

When asked which item he would recommend most, Dingwell said, “It’s like making me choose my favorite child.” After some thought, he suggested the Dark Chocolate Coconut Clusters.

Dingwell said the mall store has been “packed” since the soft opening.

“We’re thrilled and overwhelmed,” he said of the customers. “A lot of people say they’re thrilled we opened. They just wanted a place to stop (to buy nuts and candy).”

Looking back on that grand opening, Dice said he is excited to expand St. Laurent to Midland in a year when the company will celebrate its 120th anniversary. He noted that his great-grandparents met for appointments at the Bay City store in 1919.

“Some people in Midland come to Bay City and know about it, but a lot of people don’t. So I think it brings a really great tradition and heritage of a business to that community as well, and I’m pretty equally invested in Bay City and Midland, so it made sense to have a store in each city,” Dice said.

For his part, Dice’s favorite offering at St. Laurent is the Peanut Butter Smoothie Cups.

“It was America’s first peanut butter cup. A lot of people don’t know that,” he said.

The significantly larger Bay City store will continue to produce all of the artisan chocolate, peanut butter and other treats that will be sold at both stores.

“I saw a good opportunity for the two of them to work well together, with St. Laurent becoming a store within the mall and becoming something that would also help fill the mall,” Dice said. “It’s unique. We don’t have anything else like it, certainly not in this part of town.”

The Midland store carries more than 400 products, including almost everything available in Bay City, Dice said. The two stores combined have about 25 employees, half full-time and half part-time. The new store currently has about four employees, but that number will likely double eventually, he said.

“We have some (employees) who can travel between (the stores), who live equidistant from both stores,” Dice noted.

Some current employees represent the third or fourth generation of their family who worked at Frères Saint-Laurent.

Editor Dan Chalk writes about business, education, sports, the military and interesting people and events in the Midland area. Email him at [email protected].