It's more popular with the elderly. Often, it's been a tradition in their family to have ribbon candy. When the batch of ribbon candy is finished, Blair and Fabiano clean up the appliances and counter. Fabiano's makes about 80 batches of candy canes a year, near Christmas season. Each batch makes about 250 canes.
Hard candy is made from the leftovers.
Candy canes each have to be packaged in plastic when they cool down, but ribbon candy is bagged at the store. Blair usually works nine to 11 hours a day, but near Christmastime, he works up to 15 hours a day. He tries to get all the canes done a week before Christmas. In the past 76 years, Fabiano's has gotten many special requests for candies, including candy canes. We had to build a special box to transport it.