LEWISTON —  Downtown Lewiston once again has a candy shop.

A homemade sign in a tiny Park Street storefront marks the spot where home chocolatier Stephanie Bernatchez, 47, sells her own versions of drizzled popcorn, brittles, nut barks and Needhams.

“It’s been my dream,” she said, sitting in the shop Wednesday. “But I don’t know if it would have happened without my daughter.”

For at least a decade, Bernatchez has sold her creations at craft fairs and through an online mail-order business, Maine Gourmet Chocolates and Specialty Popcorns.

This year, sales tripled. Daughter Corrie insisted it was time to take the leap.

Just before Thanksgiving, they discovered the shop at 5 Park St. beside Androscoggin Bank.

“My daughter pushed me right off the bridge,” Bernatchez said.

Together, they painted the walls. Corrie affixed the sign. The doors opened on Saturday.

“We were really busy,” Bernatchez said gratefully.

Making candy has been a love all of her life, she said.

As a girl in the small Down East town of Steuben, Bernatchez learned to cook from her mother, who would make chocolate balls and Needham-style candies at home. When Bernatchez married and moved to Auburn, she continued to work with chocolate.

“I started to buy a mold here and there,” she said. Her husband made more.

For the past 20 years, she had a day care in her home and sold chocolates on the side.

On her website, popular products included chocolate Maine lobsters and clams, made from molds her husband created. Around Maine, her drizzled popcorn, nut bars and flavored Needhams have proved good sellers. The popcorn often includes molded chocolates, such as helmets for football fans. The Needhams, the chocolate-covered coconut bars coveted by old-time Mainers, come in several flavors. Her raspberry Needhams are her No. 1 product.

Her Needhams lack one traditional ingredient: mashed potatoes.

“Mashed potatoes and chocolate?” she said. “I think that’s disgusting.”

Her early success has made for a hectic schedule.

Until Christmas, she plans to be open every day. She has enlisted family and friends to help her keep up with packaging. And since she makes all of her own products, the cooking is happening at night and in the morning in a dedicated kitchen in her New Auburn home, she said. 

“I’m up until midnight or 1 a.m.” she said. “Then, I’m up at 6.”

The business has benefits, though. She has enjoyed watching people as they try her samples or return to buy a second bag of her sea-salt nut bark.

And being the lone candy shop in the downtown has created a market grateful to have her, since Mary’s Candy Shop closed on nearby Main Street in 2008.

“If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times,” Bernatchez said. “‘I miss Mary’s.'”

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