"The most important thing that came out of that day was that nobody got hurt," said Kevin Coen, president of Fannie May Brands. "We're so glad to be back in Maple Heights, and we're here to stay."
MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio -- The Fannie May and Harry London Chocolates warehouse and distribution center -- destroyed in a devastating Thanksgiving Day fire in 2014 -- is once again taking orders for Easter bunnies and chocolate eggs.
Sixteen months after a fire raged through the 330,000-square-foot building fully stocked with holiday chocolate orders, Fannie May employees on Wednesday welcomed Maple Heights firefighters, police officers, Maple Heights Mayor Annette Blackwell, and others to tour the newly built and freshly painted building.
It was a homecoming for the 48 employees who had spent more than a year working out of the company's North Canton chocolate factory and other facilities, scrambling to replace what the fire had consumed. The total loss of equipment, inventory and merchandise was in the tens of millions of dollars.
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Kevin Coen, president of Fannie May Brands, thanked the firefighters and police officers who left their families to respond to the Fannie May warehouse fire on Thanksgiving Day 2014. "We're here celebrating a great milestone at Fannie May," said Kevin Coen, president of Fannie May Brands, which includes Fannie May Confections, Harry London and Fannie Farmer.
He said the company was especially grateful that the fire had started on Thanksgiving morning, when so few people were in the building.
"The most important thing that came out of that day was that nobody got hurt. We're part of a big company with incredible brands, but more importantly, incredible people."
"So here we are saying a big 'Thank you' to the community," he said. "We're so glad to be back in Maple Heights, and we're here to stay."
"That day, when the fire broke out, everybody quickly jumped in and said, 'What can I do? How can I help?'" Coen said. Both James McCann, the founder, chairman and CEO of 1-800-Flowers, and his brother, company President Chris McCann, "got on a plane and came here to be with us. It was a really incredible effort by the entire enterprise."
1-800-Flowers.com Inc., the floral and gift retailer, owns the Fannie May chocolate factory in North Canton, Harry London Gourmet Chocolates, and Cheryl's Cookies in Westerville, as well as Harry & David, best known for its fruit and gift baskets.
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This "Fannie May Strong" banner was rescued from the 2014 fire and now hangs in the new warehouse as a reminder of how the employees pulled together after the disaster. "'Fannie May Strong,' that isn't just a logo, and it didn't come out of the fire," Coen said. "But there's no better example of how that played out than when everybody came together and asked, 'What do I gotta do? How do I gotta do it?'
"The police and firefighters, every one of the people that showed up that day, you left your family and you walked into a walked into a building where you had no idea what was going to happen," he said.
Coen said the employees had adopted "Fannie May Strong: One Team, One Goal" as their motto about six months before the fire. The smokey, soot-covered banner with that slogan was one of the few things they salvaged from the old warehouse, and one of the first things they put up in the new building.
"All of that product was sitting in the warehouse"
The Maple Heights facility stores ingredients, packaging materials and finished chocolates for the Fannie May chocolate factory and headquarters in North Canton, Ohio.
It also houses the e-commerce end of www.fanniemay.com, shipping chocolates directly to consumers and supplying all 85 Fannie May retail stores, as well as the florists who bundle the chocolates with their flowers. Fannie May also sells chocolates wholesale to Macy's, Bloomingdales, Costco Wholesale Clubs, and QVC.
The only thing that isn't stored there is Fannie May's chocolate-covered strawberries; the fragile berries are shipped directly out of the North Canton factory.
Shortly before the fire, Fannie May had just set a new record for one-day food orders as QVC's Today's Special Value, selling more than 100,000 holiday-themed Harry London Nutcracker chocolate gift sets priced at about $60. "All of that product was sitting in the warehouse the day of the fire," ready to ship out in early December, Coen said.
"Whatever happened, happened very fast"
Coen was at a football game with his daughter in Boston that Thanksgiving when he got a call about a problem at the warehouse. At first, it sounded like an alarm had simply gone off. But when the caller saw firefighters swarming the site on the local TV news, Coen knew it was bad.
Dan Sypen, captain of the Maple Heights Fire Department, said an alarm sounded at around 8 o'clock in the freezer section of the building, a former Tops Market warehouse. But by the time his trucks turned onto Rockside Road, smoke was pouring from the building.
"Whatever happened, happened very fast," he said. "The cause is still under investigation." Because so many people were off for the holiday, more than a half-dozen other fire departments, from Broadview Heights to Solon, pitched in to help.
Coen said: "What we do know is that there was an explosion in the freezer, and then everything went out." What wasn't scorched was ruined by smoke and water.
By noon, while the fire was still raging, Coen convened a conference call with the heads of other 1-800-Flower companies to figure out what to do. He converted a meeting room in North Canton into their "war room," and from there figured out how to keep employees working and customers from bolting.
They pulled chocolate from their retail stores to ship to waiting customers, called suppliers to order ingredients for more chocolate, and searched for empty buildings where they could set up temporary storage.
They called all the QVC customers who had ordered their chocolates and offered to ship them something from another 1-800-Flowers vendor: Cheryl's Cookies or Harry & David, perhaps. Some customers were OK with the change; others insisted on Fannie May chocolates.
"We were probably able to fill about 60 percent of our orders for that month," but the QVC orders were a total loss, Coen said.
Reaching out to customers, however, helped generate goodwill. This past year, Fannie May set another record for QVC, selling more than 120,000 orders of its holiday chocolates, including many previous customers.
Of all the chocolate stored in the 300,000-square-foot Maple Heights warehouse, the most popular items are Fannie May's Pixies, Mint Meltaways and Trinidads, said Ron Orcutt, Fannie May's director of warehouse and distribution center. Among Ohioans, however, the best-seller is Harry London's chocolate-covered peanut-butter Buckeyes.
"People in this area know Harry London more than they know Fannie May," he said.