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 (68 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 chain of ice cream parlors and confectioners in New England, United States. It was founded, as Trahan's Candies, in 1956 by Paul and Mary Trahan. Their original location was inside Ben Franklin's Store in Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Two years later, the Trahans opened their own retail location in the town. They expanded into the Massachusetts towns of Falmouth and Hyannis, operating during the summer months. They then opened two locations in Florida — in Palm Beach and West Palm Beach — which stayed open during the winter. Each location made its own candy and chocolates.

Other expansion locations opened and closed. One, on Main Street in Bar Harbor, Maine, opened in 1980 and is still in operation. After the sale of the Oak Bluffs store on Martha's Vineyard in 2004, it became the company's headquarters.

In 1983, the stores introduced ice cream to their products. The Bar Harbor location began with sixteen flavors, adding more as demand dictated. Today, that location has 64 hard-serve ice cream (including a lobster flavor, introduced in 1988) and twelve gelatos. The Bar Harbor location, at least, also offers vegan ice cream. The lobster flavor was created as a joke after a challenge from a customer, but it remained on the menu. It is made by folding chopped, cooked and buttered lobster meat into vanilla ice cream.

After 32 years in operation, the business was sold to the Trahans' nephews Ben and William Coggins, who renamed it Ben and Bill's Chocolate Emporium.

A location was opened in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1991, followed three years later by the Oak Bluffs store. The Northampton store closed in 2017.

With an estimated 90% of its business sourced from out-of-state visitors, the Bar Harbor location launched a GoFundMe campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic, having seen their 2020 sales drop to 43% of that of the previous year.

Current locations

• Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts
• Bar Harbor, Maine

Gallery

• 

  Inside the Bar Harbor location, 2015

• 

  The right-hand side of the store