When Amy Atkinson Voltz, president of Judson-Atkinson Candies, Inc., realized her confectionery company needed to halt manufacturing -- at least temporarily -- she felt the ripple effects almost immediately.

“It’s hard when you have to call all your employees in,” she says. “We’ve got people here that worked for the company before we ever bought it. We bought it in 1983, there were people that had worked here for 50 years and I had to tell them that we’re not going to make candy now. That’s really hard.”

Atkinson Voltz says the difficult decision was based on increased raw material costs, which had led to a situation where their profit was almost non-existent.

The tipping point was that the company was expecting a need to increase its prices for consumers at Easter to keep up, but realized they’d likely end up losing all their customers in the process.

Now, the company is looking to refocus its efforts, par down it’s product line and hopefully restart production by January.

“It would be nice if we could do it sooner, we just need to sell off our existing inventory and get out of that,” Atkinson Voltz explains. “We’re going to look at cherry picking the items that are better for us to make, better profit wise, so that we don’t get into this situation again.”

Based in San Antonio, Texas, Judson Candies was purchased by the Atkinson family in July 1983 – forming Judson-Atkinson Candies, Inc. – though the company’s history dates back more than 100 years.

Founded in 1899, they manufacture a wide variety of bulk panned and starch-moulded non-chocolate candy, including soft-and-chewy fruit-flavored sours, chewy pralines, salt water taffy, fruit drops, and jelly beans.

For more information on Judson-Atkinson Candies, visit http://judsonatkinsoncandies.com/.