Shane aims to serve, delight and transport customers in America’s Oldest Continuously Operating Confectionery Shop, by interpreting the historic candy and chocolate-making traditions of Philadelphia.
Shane Confectionery is seated in what was once the confectionery mecca of America. In the 18th and 19th century, Philadelphia hosted the most active port in the country. Cocoa, fruits, and spices were shipped up the Delaware River to sustain a flourishing confectionery scene. Sugarcane would be refined along the river and sold in shops along Market Street. Philadelphia soon became synonymous with this art form, so much so that candy makers in other cities would tote their goods as "Philadelphian" to imply quality. From Goldenberg and Wilbur to Hershey and Whitman, prominent names in American chocolate and candy all trace their first shops to the City of Brotherly Love.
With every action that we take we feel this hum of history and all of our confections start with a spark of inspiration. We strive to keep tradition alive with our buttercreams, made with the Shane family’s 100 year old recipe on the same 100 year old machine that has been used for decades. We delight in flavors like horehound or violet, resurrected from recipes on yellowing brittle pages that dot our shelves. We take pride in using seasonal or local ingredients.
Every year our confectioners set upon making a hard candy army of animals, machines, and Old St. Nick - a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas gift known as Clear Toy Candy. Molten sugar is carefully poured into Victorian moulds. When cooled, they are chiseled out, cleaned with a gentle hand, and packaged up, destined for stockings and banquet tables.
Every week our chocolate maker selects a crop of responsibly sourced cocoa beans shipped from South America to turn into our very own chocolate. The beans are sorted with sharp eyes and quick fingers, crushed, roasted, ground and then tempered for bars, melted for hot chocolate, or churned into ice cream.
Every day our confectioners boil sugar in copper kettles to create a host of candies that will be cooled on marble, cut by hand, dropped individually into warm chocolate, nimbly fished out upon fork tines, cooled, and decorated with piped lace, flowers, or gold.
The vast majority of the candy world has become incredibly specialized. Whole factories make one type of confection alone and are geared up for mass production and distribution. Our model of making a wide variety of goods onsite is quite against the grain. Most artisan food makers formulate based upon cost. Our approach is to formulate based on taste, inspired by period confectionery cookbooks. As “Taste Tellers”, we’re storytelling America's history thru the vehicle of our food.
We source our ingredients from local suppliers whenever possible. Going directly to a source ensures that we understand the ingredients we’re purchasing. Although our community of suppliers is largely regional, we also depend on a global supply chain for quality ingredients in order to maintain the integrity and excellence of our products.
Eggs & Dairy
Leiby's cream is gathered from local PA farms, and delivered weekly by Cream'O'Land to make our ice cream.
Shane's Buttercreams and Caramels are made with Kriemhild Dairy. Kriemhild Dairy makes butter from the milk of 300 grass fed cows, that live across 5 farms in upstate New York.
Our Shane Hot Chocolate is made with local regenerative A2 heritage milk from Origin.
When not using our house whipped cream, like at the Shane Chocolate Cafe, we use Natural by Nature whipped cream.
The eggs we use are organic and cage-free from Alderfer Eggs.
Sugars
Organic, fair trade, naturally vegan sugars from Wholesome sugar is used to sweeten Franklin Fountain products, while Itaja Sugar sweetens Shane Chocolate.
Instead of corn syrup we use tapioca syrup, maple syrup, or honey depending on the application. Our maple syrup is from PA and distributed by Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-Op. Our five rooftop beehives are buzzing with activity most of the year, yielding a delicious honey complex honey that we sell seasonally. This urban apiary is managed by Don Shump of Philadelphia Bee Co. For our products that use honey as an ingredient, we use Swarm Bustin' honey.
Fruit
Our Hot Apple Cider come from Three Springs Fruit Farm.
Berks County Frecon Orchard Peaches, and Lancaster County Mast Farms' Strawberries are cooked by Bauman's into purees for Franklin Ice Creams. They also create the fruit butters that go into our Apple Butter and Pumpkin ice creams.
In the Summertime you can enjoy a scoop of our dairy or vegan Blueberry ice cream, made with Blueberry Bill Farms blueberries of Hammonton, NJ!
We also source fruits from the locals that grow them best, Coconut Cream from Indonesia, Alphonso Mango Puree from India, and Paw Paws from Ohio.
Nuts
The Hybrid Hazelnut Consortium at local Rutgers University supplies us with hazelnuts. They are committed to creating a research and breeding program to develop hazelnuts as a widely adapted, high yielding, and low-input sustainable crop.
Our whole nuts are roasted by Wricley Nut in South Philadelphia.
Nut butters are used in everything from Shane Peanut Butter Cups, to Pistachio Ice Cream. We get our nut butters from Nutty Novelties of Telford, PA.
Grain
All of our flour is organic and from Small Valley Flour Mill in Halifax, PA.
When we make special malt or barley confections, we love using grains from Deer Creek Malt, Pennsylvania's first malthouse since prohibition.
Chocolate
Our ever-growing Chocolate Works Department uses ethically sourced cocoa beans from Central & South America, imported by Uncommon Cacao. We sort, roast, and grind the cocoa beans into all Shane Confectionery chocolate products.
& More!
Our Coffee Ice Cream, coffee concentrate, Shane's Coffee Caramels, and our staff's coffee is all made with Herman's Coffee, roasted in South Philadelphia.
Flake Sea Salt, used in our Sea Salt Caramel and Whirley Berley Ice Creams, as well as Shane's caramels, is gathered out of the Atlantic Ocean in Avalon, NJ and marketed under the Salty Acres; the salt is hand harvested and solar evaporated.
Certified naturally grown lavender from Warwick-Furnace Farms in Chester County, PA, flavors our Lavender Soda and Shane Lavender Caramels.
We love using local New Liberty Distilling Kinsey Bourbon Whiskey for both our house coffee extract, and our seasonal Irish Coffee Ice Cream.
We source our large hand twisted pretzels from Shuey’s Pretzel Factory.