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Famous factory has re-hired only 125 of its 450 workers it employed before Superstorm Sandy wrought $50 million in damages to Rockaway's largest employer.
BY LISA L. COLANGELO / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2013, 5:16 PM
Life is beginning to regain some of its sweetness for the folks at Madelaine Chocolate Company, but it still isn’t a bowl of cherry cordials.
One year after Hurricane Sandy turned the candy wonderland into a muck-filled mess, the 200,000-square-foot factory on Beach Channel Drive is again turning out its famous foil-wrapped chocolate balls, cigars and coins.
“I’m so happy,” said Katie Dunninge, 62, who has been working in the factory’s store with her sister-in-law, Annie Dunninge, since the late 1970s. “These are my friends,” she added. “We are family here.”
The factory celebrated its official reopening on Tuesday, but the recovery is far from finished. Rockaway’s largest employer has only been able to re-hire 125 of its 450 workers while it struggles to rebound from the storm that cost it roughly $50 million in damages and lost sales.
“While we’re not back to where we were before, we hope to be there soon,” said Jorge Farber, Madelaine’s co-owner.
“We will not rest until all of our employees are back working, helping us to produce products that our customers have grown to love, just as much as we do,” he said.
Farber described in vivid detail the heartbreaking scene they encountered the first days after the storm.
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| One year after Hurricane Sandy turned the candy wonderland into a muck-filled mess, the 200,000-square-foot factory on Beach Channel Drive is again turning out its famous foil-wrapped chocolate balls, cigars and coins. |
The storm surge pushed four feet of water into the factory, damaging every piece of equipment and destroying more than $8 million in inventory that was stockpiled for the upcoming holiday season.
It took 170 dumpsters to contain more than 5,000 cubic yards of ruined chocolates and packaging materials, said Farber, noting that nearly 250,000 pounds of unusable liquid chocolate wound up at a pig farm.
“(This) should make the Christmas hams extra sweet this year,” he said.
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