End of the line for Sophie Mae Candy

Business

End of the line for Sophie Mae Candy

Willie Collier swept floors, packed peanut brittle and managed workers at the Sophie Mae Candy factory on North Avenue during his 40-year confectionery career. Amid the flattened brittle boxes and exposed wiring, Collier again picked up a broom, maybe for the last time. Atlanta's Sophie Mae is history.

The Sophie Mae Candy factory on North Avenue is closed for good.

Willie Collier swept floors, packed peanut brittle and managed workers at the candy factory during his 40-year confectionery career.

The Chicago-area company that owns the factory stilled the conveyor belts in April, trucked the candy-making machinery north and left Collier behind to bury a 90-year-old Atlanta institution.

"It's like your wife getting up and leaving you one day — and you thought you were happily married," said Collier, the warehouse manager.

John Beauchamp Coppedge, a country boy from Williamson, Ga., moved north to Atlanta at the end of the 19th century, married a woman named Sophie Mae and started making candy. The Sophie Mae Candy Co. opened a factory on Ivy Street downtown in 1918.

In the late 1930s, Coppedge obtained a load of cheap peanuts and hired some men to blend it with a sugar-corn syrup mix and — voila! — peanut brittle. The nutty concoction became Sophie Mae's top product.

At its peak, Sophie Mae churned out 3,000 cases of peanut brittle in an eight-hour shift, Collier said. Passers-by, including hungry children, would stand outside the plate-glass windows ogling the production within.

"My daddy taught me if you do a job well and take care of the job, the job will take care of you, so I can't complain. It was a good job," Collier said. "But tell folks that a 60-year-old needs a job and to give me a call."

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The Sophie Mae Candy factory on North Avenue is closed for good.

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