Jul 27, 2023 7 min read

Christopher Adkins said a new business coming to Washington will be known as Destination Candy, but it will be more than just a candy store.

“Destination Candy from the outside looking in is a candy shop/indoor farmers market/gift shop,” Adkins said. 

Whatever description is used, Destination Candy is coming to the city very soon. A soft opening is planned at 148 North Main St. on Aug. 13 with the ribbon cutting set for the next day.

Adkins, of Washington, is opening the store with Phil Agostinelli, of Houston.

Adkins has lived in Los Angeles for 10 years, but he will be in town for the store’s opening and picked that particular weekend for a very special reason.  

“We coincided our opening with what is my third favorite holiday of the year after Christmas and Thanksgiving,” he said. “It’s my family reunion. It happens the second Saturday in August every year. We’re going to open the day after.”

The duo brings a great deal of business acumen to the store, as well as a burning passion to give back to the community.

Adkins, the 2001 graduate of Washington High School, has a background in finance and accounting. He now lives in Los Angeles and is the general manager of concessions at LAX Airport.

He is the son of Linda Adkins, owner of LA Sweets.

His work for a company called spurred the idea for a candy store. He now

“They’re a mall developer at heart, but there’s a small arm that manages concession contracts,” Adkins said. “I was in that second bucket. I spent 13 years of my career in accounting, finance and operations concessions programs, culminating in myself being the general manager of concessions at LAX Airport.”

Agostinelli, a….1982 graduate of…….will be the chief operations officer of the business or as Adkins describes him as “the boots on the ground of the operation.

“Every time we had ideas that we would build off, we just aligned perfectly,” Agostinelli said. “

Agostinelli has owned or managed a number of restaurants and other businesses. Another feature he brings to Destination Candy is that he is a member of the board of the Pardon Project of Washington County.   

“His vision with Destination Candy matches up totally with my vision on helping second-chance and developing the community with vendors. We talked about we building a community around this candy store. We would get local vendors involved that liked our backstory and had the purpose like we did. We wold tie them all together and build a family type of situation.

   

businesses

Adkins time in California helped him come up with his plan for all of the facets of Destination Candy. 

Working at the airport, he sees people purchase Sees Candy, a California favorite, that they could be taking to any corner of the globe.   

“Just knowing the global reach of a local product just because it was given that platform really got my juices flowing,” he said. 

With that in mind, there will be candy from many Asian and European countries available at Destination Candy.  

Adkins also loves the fact that Los Angeles farmers market run every single day. He wanted that concept to be part of his business 

“It’s just a great experience for maybe two hours a week,” Adkins said of local farmers markets. “It’s true friends getting together. My thought was how could we continue this in the cold months.”

Introduced to Shana Brown.”I’ll never forget this 

My question to her was how may I serve you, how may I serve the city of Washington, the county of Washington. It is very evident to me that those guys look over the fence to their neighbors in Canonsburg and are very competitive.

We saw Grandpa Joes candy shop in Canonsburg come on line and absolutely crush it. The challenge to me was can you compete with Grandpa Joes in downtown Washington

That’s really the piece I needed  to make it a reality.

Candy from Mexico, from China, from Japan, Korea 

A lot of asian countries and European countries Swiss chocolate.

Other things from around the world that in washington we typically don’t have access to.  

“I’ve been blessed to have friends that have lived around the world and been around the world 

Important to give back to community.

I had a personal experience that left me feeling powerless. It was an avenue for me to do something about it in the future.

A very close relative made a bad decision and was in legal trouble.

We were separated for reasons beyond our control.

I didn’t think he was someone whose future was taken away from him the way it was. That haunted him never able to reach his true potential.

I saw this as a way to do something about that by way of a profitable business.

Originally the name was going to be Sugar Monster. I wanted to take society’s monsters and turn them into the warm snuggly people that you would by candy from. 

Mascot looks like Sully from Monsters Inc. That burly looking monster with the huge heart was kind of where I wanted to go with a mascot and how we wanted to present our brand. 

Farmer’s partnered with a few vendors Maestro’s hot sauce, Rossells Maple Syrup.

“We’re trying to get on board with a couple others that are already doing business at the Washington Farmers Market. That’s actually how I came up with my first round of calls for vendors, just shamelessly stealing the vendors who were already at the farmers market, as well as perusing through the winners of all the food and beverage categories at the fair.   

My mother opened LA Sweets a little over a decade ago when the Steelers were doing really well She put these jersey sugar cookies on facebook and it literally exploded every night and everybody wanted one.

gift shop stuff lines up probably the biggest gift item that we’re going to have biggest line of business other than typical foot traffic are different corporations or different sponsors partnerships interested in our  candy basket business or our gift basket business.

We’ve already got people lined up for the monet our doors open who want these gift baskets we’re creating based on the gifts we have locally.We really dress the basket up with whatever products make sense whatever the theme is. 

Former Washington resident 

Mr personal crusade help people get their lives on track. The reason Phil and I clicked .

At our core, we firmly believe in what I’m calling a disadvantaged hiring program. 

Father is a marine

People dealing with addiction, veterans reentering the workforce, people reentering society from incarceration and special needs are four buckets we want to focus on for hiring.

In a perfect world we not have people for longer than 18 months, 2 or 3 years until they get to the direction they want to go in. My ultimate goal is for them to leave and pursue other opportunities that are more in line with what their dreams are.

6 before opening day.

Haven’t sleep for the past two weeks probably not going to sleep for the next three weeks. A thousand things to do before we open.  

   

Phil volunteers at the Harmony Life Center. 

Good samaritan who has a history of running restaurants and operational experience.

Shana

Chris was one of the first people I talked to whenever I started in my position. He is such an amazing community asset. He’s hometown. His mom is still here with LA sweets. Chris was just amazing to talk to. It’s so inspirational because he really has a heart for our downtown and he really has a heart for the community.

We kicked around some ideas and he came up with this thing for candy and it’s really grown from there.

Phil agostinelli amazing community partners that we have and just an asset to the community It was just a natural introduction after their first meeting, it was like stars aligned and they have just taken this to a whole different level.  

We can’t be happier for them. It’s going to be fantastic.