Bakers can outsource chocolates from specialists, such as Norman Love.

You already have customers craving your cakes and cookies, pining for your pies and drooling over your Danish. But a growing number of operators around the country are giving an extra boost to their bottom line by adding non-baked products, such as candies, chocolates, candy-coated popcorns and other gifts, to complement their retail mix.

Chocolates and other candies seem to be the most popular add-ons, whether purchased in bulk from outside suppliers or made in house. Upscale Frederick's Pastries, with stores in Amherst and Bedford, N.H., for example, offers hand-made confections from local and international artisan chocolatiers. The bakery sells the chocolates by the piece from an 8-ft.-long display case and packages them under the Frederick's name in various size boxes for gift giving as well as in small grab-and-go bags.

Although the chocolates have become “a solid part of our business,” according to proprietor Susan Lozier Robert, even more popular are the bakery's exclusive, house-made diamond-shaped clusters of pecans, butter, clover honey, brown sugar and heavy cream. Frederick's offers its signature Pecan Diamonds in four gift box sizes and includes the candies on its pastry trays.

Or, with the right equipment and training, they can make their own.

Jenna Turner says that in addition to European-style bakery products, her Susina Bakery & Café in Los Angeles is known for the extensive selection of globally sourced gourmet chocolate bars displayed in baskets in front of the pastry case. Inside the case are elegant, yet easy-to-make, chocolate-dipped fruits. On shelves and countertops throughout the bakery are colorful bags of assorted hard and chocolate candies that Turner buys in bulk and re-packages in ribbon-tied cello bags bearing the Susina logo.

Home-oriented retail items, such as cake plates, pedestals and servers; salt and pepper shakers; loose-leaf imported teas and brewing pots and other accessories, add to the ambience of the bakery, while offering customers a one-stop-gift-shopping option. “A customer looking for a housewarming gift, for example, can buy a cake and give it on a beautiful cake plate,” she notes.

“Although the candies and gift items don't account for a huge percentage of our total sales-maybe 5 percent to 10 percent-they're a nice convenience that our customers really appreciate,” she adds.

For Chicago's Sarah Levy, the chocolates came before the pastries. In fact, they even came before her retail store, which she opened in 2005 after running a wholesale candy business out of her mother's kitchen. Now, the main kitchen at her Sarah's Pastries and Candies flagship store in the Lincoln Park neighborhood produces pastries and chocolates, including royaltines (feuilletine wafer pieces and caramelized almonds), molasses caramel, almond chocolate toffee and dried cherry rocky road, for her three shops and area wholesale accounts.

Customers can watch the candies being made, and frequent sampling also increases customer awareness of the products. Total sales are split evenly between pastries and chocolates.

“By selling both, we avoid putting all of our eggs in one basket,” Levy says. “The combination allows us to balance our sales year-round.”

In her retail stores, Levy has two showcases, one for the chocolate candies, with morning pastries displayed on the top; the other case is filled with cakes. One type of product often fuels sales of the others, she points out.

“When customers come for the chocolates, they'll often buy pastries and vice versa,” Levy says.

The bakery sells its chocolates by the piece or by the pound. Levy also packages them in 3 1/2-oz. bags to encourage impulse sales. For her gift baskets, she prefers to package the candy in clear-lidded boxes for maximum visual impact.

Levy also offers customized chocolates, using transfer sheets to print a company logo onto each piece. Companies frequently give the candies as corporate gifts and at seminars and holiday parties.

Candies and more

Frederick’s Pastries’ creative merchandising encourages customers to buy both baked products and gift add-ons.

At his two eponymous pastry shops (the second location opened in January) in Muncie, Ind., Michael Concannon prominently features various flavors of house-made chocolates, hard candies and popcorn under the Concannon's name and bags of coffee beans under his Main Street Coffee brand. He introduced these product lines in 2005 to add diversity to his menu with items that were less perishable than pastries.

Now, between the two stores, candy and popcorn account for $1 million in sales, about 20 percent of total sales. Concannon's makes about 80 percent of its own candies. Only sugar-free items are purchased from a small outside producer.

Both the candies and popcorn are produced in a 5,000-sq.-ft., climate-controlled facility in downtown Muncie. Until recently, the bakery out-sourced its old-fashioned hard candies. But the addition of a copper kettle and marble slab now make it possible to produce these in-house as well. Requiring only about 40 cents worth of sugar, corn syrup and water to produce, a 6-oz. bag of hard candies sells for $7.99.