Ben & Bill's Chocolate Emporium Facts for Kids

Ben & Bill's Chocolate Emporium

The Bar Harbor storefront, 2021
Formerly	Trahan's Candies (1956–1988)
Type	Ice-cream parlor
Founded	1956 (69 years ago) (1956)
Founders	Paul Trahan Mary Trahan
Headquarters	66 Main Street Bar Harbor, Maine
Number of locations	2
Owners	Ben Coggins (since 1988) William Coggins (since 1988)

Ben & Bill's Chocolate Emporium is a super fun place where you can find delicious ice cream and yummy chocolates! It's a chain of sweet shops located in New England, USA. It all started way back in 1956.

How It All Began
Sweet Expansion and New Treats
- The Famous Lobster Ice Cream
A New Name and New Challenges
Current Locations
Images for kids

How It All Began

This sweet company began as Trahan's Candies in 1956. It was founded by a couple named Paul and Mary Trahan. Their very first shop was inside a Ben Franklin's Store in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts.

Just two years later, the Trahans opened their very own candy store in Vineyard Haven. They soon expanded to other towns in Massachusetts, like Falmouth and Hyannis. These shops were open during the summer. They even opened two stores in Florida for the winter months! Each of these locations made its own special candy and chocolates.

Sweet Expansion and New Treats

Over the years, more stores opened and some closed. One special store opened in 1980 on Main Street in Bar Harbor, Maine. This location is still open today! After another store in Oak Bluffs was sold in 2004, the Bar Harbor shop became the main office for the company.

In 1983, something exciting happened: the stores started selling ice cream! The Bar Harbor location began with sixteen different flavors. They added more as people wanted them. Today, that store has 64 kinds of hard-serve ice cream! They even have twelve types of gelato. If you're looking for something different, they also offer vegan ice cream.

The Famous Lobster Ice Cream

One of the most talked-about flavors is lobster ice cream, which was added in 1988. It started as a joke after a customer dared them to make it! But it was so popular that it stayed on the menu. To make it, they mix chopped, cooked, and buttered lobster meat into vanilla ice cream. It's definitely a unique taste!

A New Name and New Challenges

After 32 years, the Trahans sold their business to their nephews, Ben and William Coggins. They decided to rename it Ben & Bill's Chocolate Emporium.

A new store opened in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1991. Then, three years later, the Oak Bluffs store opened. The Northampton store closed in 2017.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses faced challenges. The Bar Harbor store usually gets most of its customers from out-of-state visitors. When sales dropped a lot in 2020, they started an online fundraiser called GoFundMe to help keep the business going.