Velatis Caramels has closed its store at 8408 Georgia Ave. in downtown Silver Spring and plans to reopen later in Bethesda.
Owner Amy Servais posted the closure announcement to the shop’s Facebook page on Thursday, thanking customers for “16 wonderful years.”
An opening date for the new Shoppes of Bethesda location, located at 4928 Hampden Lane and previously occupied by Underwraps, has not yet been announced.
Velatis Caramels has deep roots in the region, having relocated from Richmond, Va., to Washington, D.C., in 1866 after the original location burned down at the end of the Civil War. Many of the store’s displays, including old ads and various candy box designs, showcase the company’s history.
“The company first started in Richmond,” owner Amy Servais told the Source in 2017. “And at the end of the Civil War, when Richmond burned, their shop burned, too. They had other things in it besides the caramel, the candy that we know today at Velatis.”
The Washington location closed in the 1970s due to the construction of the Metro. Woodward & Lothrop Co. purchased the trademark and secret recipes and sold candies in the company’s stores during the holiday season.
JCPenney acquired the company’s assets when Woodie’s, as it was known locally, went out of business. Later, JCPenney started selling off many of those assets, including Velatis; Servais, a sixth-generation Washingtonian, convinced her family to invest in what she called “the first candy I ever had” in 1996.
Servais, whose background was in women’s fashion and retail, began working with the recipes, learning, as she said, by trial and error over six months.
“Once I got it down, then I said, ‘Well okay, let me find the right equipment,'” Servais said in 2017. “It took about a year to get the recipes and equipment down.”
She put an ad in The Washington Post around Christmas 1997, selling by mail order from Tampa, where she lived. She later relocated to Virginia, just outside of Richmond, and continued selling by mail order and supplying a growing internet-based clientele. While she sought a permanent location, she also sold the products at the Bethesda Women’s Market and the Alexandria Farmer’s Market.
Servais opened the store at 8408 Georgia Ave. in downtown Silver Spring in 2008 and later expanded to locations inside The Pentagon and at the Mark Center in Alexandria.
The MoCo Show reported the closure and relocation of the downtown Silver Spring store, which was first announced last June, on Thursday evening.