A Pair of Dentists Opened a Candy Shop in Madrona
Mad Candy combines a groovy color scheme with a steady stream of employees recruited from owner Ty Etheridge's dental practice.
Image: Seattle Met Staff
A narrow corner unit in a modern building on Madrona’s main drag now explodes with color—and with sugar.
Jars of classic penny candies are lined up beneath the big front windows at 1130 34th Ave. Behind the counter: jelly beans; sours; gummies you loved in the '90s; gummies you’ve never heard of. Every corner of Mad Candy harbors something intriguing.
Owner Ty Etheridge has a dental practice nearby in Madison Valley. His business partner, Jake Weissman, is an endodontist, and Etheridge's go-to referral for patients' root canals. Etheridge even recruited Mad Candy's employees almost exclusively from the handy pool of teenagers who come to sit in his dental chair. “It’s been hugely helpful—we didn’t have to put it on Craigslist or do any interviewing.”
Dentists opening a candy store sounds like the setup for a great joke. Or a diabolically brilliant business synergy akin to an orthopedist opening a skateboard shop or a cardiologist with a side hustle selling fried pork chops.
The reality, says Etheridge: Both owners live in the neighborhood and wanted to give it something fun, especially for families.
When Etheridge was a kid, his dad was a regional rep for Hershey’s chocolate; he and his sister were the lucky recipients of any unsold wares. Later the family moved to Port Townsend and opened a candy shop called Sir David. Etheridge remembers running to see what new orders arrived in the day's mail so he could taste them. By the time he was a teenager, friends dubbed him the candy man: “At football games I’d bring a five-pound box of gummy bears or Swedish fish.” Maybe the question isn’t how a dentist came to open a candy store, but how a kid who grew up around candy grew up to be a dentist.
Gummies and sours share shelf space with hard-to-find licorice from Denmark.
Image: Seattle Met Staff
Mad Candy stuffs an impressive amount of sweets into a room not much bigger than a suburban parking spot. Genres range from Seattle’s own hyper-artisanal Spinnaker chocolate bars to Mega Slime Lickers (imagine a roll-on deodorant filled with sugary gel…gross in concept, great to kids). A glass case holds locally made truffles; festive dog treats that looks like frosted cookies fill baskets by the register.
A patient told Etheridge about a confection out of Denmark that’s become one of his biggest sellers. Lakrids by Bülow makes black licorice—the traditional way with actual licorice root—then coats each piece in a shell of something sweet, like Belgian chocolate, toffee, caramel, even white chocolate with lemon. Price-wise, each carefully wrought jar is an indulgence. But the contents are pretty dazzling, even if you don’t consider yourself a fan of black licorice.
Etheridge also envisioned Mad Candy as a place where neighborhood teens could gain work experience. “You know, be off your phone, make eye contact.” There are worse ways to enter the workforce than providing customer service to happy kids about to eat candy.
Mad Candy opened this summer with a psychedelic paint job and a “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” design scheme. Etheridge is already branching out into other sugar-lined avenues, like taking custom piñata orders. You can specify the shape you want—unicorn, pumpkin, your favorite TV villain. “You can send us a picture of what you want and she’ll make it,” says Etheridge of his piñata specialist. “That’s how good she is.” Clearly the candy inside would be on point, too.
