Leif Anderson, third-generation owner of esteemed Richmond candy shop, dies at 71

Leif Anderson, who took over Anderson’s Candy Shop in Richmond in the early 1980s and oversaw its continuation of handmaking chocolate treats and a surge of the store’s national renown, died late last month. He was 71.

The longtime business owner took pride in Anderson’s Candy Shop, now a 102-year-old family business, playing parts in the traditions and memories of milestones of families across the country who bought its esteemed homemade candies to celebrate holidays, birthdays, family reunions, anniversaries and achievements of all kind, his daughters and wife said.

Many customers are buy from the store annually and consistently seek the same treats around Christmas, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day and other holidays and special gatherings.

Anderson’s dedication to not letting his customers down was exemplified by an episode in which her father drove two hours on a Christmas Eve to hand-deliver a candy bar that had been mistakenly left out of a family’s order, his daughter Katie Anderson-Tedder said Saturday.

He was compelled to do it in part because the forgotten treat was the favorite of a grandmother within the customer’s family who had recently died before the holiday, and the buyers were looking forward to savoring it to help cherish her memory.

“He recognized that them ordering candy from us was about more than just eating chocolate,” Anderson-Tedder said. “To be something that a family consciously chooses, that is special, that they will make a pilgrimage to each summer, or will choose as their reunion spot, or that our caramel bar can make you feel connected to your father who gave it to you when you were little, that is powerful. It’s a huge responsibility to be in charge of for other people.”

She and Leif Anderson’s wife, Tracy Anderson, said they intend to continue running the candy shop as a family enterprise. Leif and Tracy Anderson’s sons, Ethan, Zachary and Aaron, also are employees.

“We’ve really prided ourselves on maintaining the quality you could have years ago and still being here,” Tracy Anderson said.

For years, Leif Anderson ran the store with his brother, Lars, who had a bar named after him that was the subject of a 1994 Los Angeles Times feature that helped promote the shop’s popularity across the country and led to a flood of Mother’s Day orders that year from states as far away as California.

Their father, Raynold Anderson, was the second-generation owner after his father, Arthur Anderson, started the candy business in 1919 on Armitage Avenue in Chicago before moving it to Richmond, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Before marrying Tracy Anderson in 1998, Leif Anderson had a previous marriage with Ruth Danner, the mother of Anderson-Tedder and Susanne Anderson.

“To sum up a man of such dimension and magnanimity in the space of a few inches is daunting. Words seem ill-equipped – although Leif never had a shortage of them himself. He was a storyteller, a lover of words and ideas with an unquenching thirst for knowledge, and a heart that knew no bounds,” Susanne Anderson wrote of her father.

Leif Anderson was preceded in death by his parents, Violet and Raynold Anderson. He is survived by his wife, Tracy; brother, Lars; two daughters, Katie Anderson-Tedder and Susanne Anderson; three sons, Ethan, Zachary and Aaron; and two grandchildren, Georgia, 2, and Arthur, 1.

He died of complications stemming from a two-month battle with a rare blood disease.

A visitation will take place from 9 to 11:30 a.m. July 24 at Trinity Church in Genoa City, Wisconsin.