While watching colorful wax candles drip onto her son’s freshly iced 12th birthday cake, a lightbulb went off in Loree Sandler’s head: “Well, here’s the last product that hasn’t been tweaked.”
Now birthday-goers can have their cake and eat the candles too, with Sandler’s unique idea for chocolate candles, or as she calls them, accessories to the cake.
Over a decade after the inspirational birthday party, Sandler, her husband Bob Michelson and their chocolate birthday candle business, Let Them Eat Candles, will be featured on ABC’s entrepreneurial reality television show “Shark Tank” on Friday.
Crafted from premium milk and dark chocolate, the candles come in a variety of colorful patterns and shapes, some featuring balloons, numbers and celebratory sayings.
“This whole business was something that I started in my head in my 40s,” Sandler, 59, said. “To get to the point where ‘Shark Tank’ thought my business was worthy is just incredible.”
Trained as an architect, Sandler, who lives in Highland Park and is a longtime North Shore resident, stayed home to raise her three sons. As they grew older, she wanted to return to the workforce.
With her idea for chocolate candles, she enrolled in 2011 at the French Pastry School and the Chicago Chocolate Academy. With no experience in the food industry, let alone temperate chocolate-making, Sandler said there was a “steep learning curve.”
Her business started local, handmaking each candle and selling boxes of three at local bakeries. After a few years, a friend introduced her to The Grommet, an online seller of trending and one-of-a-kind items.
The chocolate birthday candles launched on Grommet in February of 2016 and just over a month later, all 1,200 prepared boxes were sold out.
“It was a personal and professional high,” Sandler said. “It indicated that this thing had legs.”
After the online success, Sandler upped her business game, investing in new packaging partners and chocolate molds to work with robotic equipment. Some of her biggest customers today include Publix, a supermarket chain, Nothing Bundt Cakes and some local Mariano’s stores.
When Sandler first started the business, she crafted the candles out of kitchen space she rented from local bakeries. Now, the chocolate candles are made by a manufacturer in Ohio.
When people learned about her edible candle business, she said they would often say she should be on “Shark Tank.”
“Every time I thought, ‘Oh they’d eat me alive,’” Sandler said. “It was sort of a distant fantasy that I never imagined actually happening.”
In August of 2022, Sandler found a number of emails from agents with the reality TV show in her spam folder inviting her to apply for the show. Unfortunately, by the time Sandler responded casting for the 14th season had already closed.
Five months later in January, Sandler and Michelson applied for a spot to pitch their business on season 15 of “Shark Tank.” The process of applying, which included the making of a video, was “exciting” and “arduous,” Sandler said.
In June of 2023, the Highland Park couple were filmed making their pitch to the five industry “sharks.” Walking into the tank, Sandler said, “The sharks felt familiar” because the couple watched countless episodes ahead of time to prepare, thanks to the advice from some show producers.
Due to nondisclosure agreements, Sandler could not share the outcome of her time with the sharks and whether she and her husband received an investment.
To prepare for Friday’s airing of their appearance on the show, Sandler and Michelson have been stocking inventory with their various vendors and bulking up their website in hopes the show draws in more customers.
The couple is also planning a watch party with family, friends and many of the vendors who helped them get to this career point: manufacturers, graphic designers and business mentors.
“I’m just so excited to be able to publicly thank people that have really helped us get here and just celebrate,” Sandler said.
The entire experience feels validating for Sandler and her business dream.
“There were so many challenges along the way,” she said. “But I just kept putting one foot in front of the other without really a plan B — just kept going.”
Sandler said starting a business can be lonely, but local professional entrepreneur groups helped bring her the support and mentorship she needed.
“A lot of friends have said to me, long before the ‘Shark Tank’ thing, how inspirational I’ve been, because people are scared to pivot or start something new,” Sandler said. “It just feels really validating.”
