The Warfels Story
Elaine Warfel Stauffer, owner of Warfels Chocolates is a second-generation candy maker and
a third-generation farmer's market vendor. At the age of seven, Elaine began working alongside
her mother making and selling their homemade fudge, cookies, and cakes at the Central
Market in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Some 20 years later, while living on a ranch in rural Kansas, Elaine started a bakery and chocolate
shoppe on Main Street in a the small town of Alma. During this time her chocolate pecan toffee
was featured at Bloomingdales stores nationwide, giving Warfels Chocolates some much
welcomed exposure. Sales doubled at the little shoppe in Alma, and a thriving mail-order
business was born.
Then, in 1993, Elaine and her family moved from Kansas to the Shenandoah Valley. Almost immediately, she scoped out the Dayton Farmer's Market as the location she wanted for her new business. Mother's Day Weekend 1994 marked the opening of Warfels Chocolates in Dayton.
To this day, fresh, quality chocolates and other sweets are offered in abundance. Caramel turtles, chocolate crème truffles, and the famous chocolate pecan toffee remain the three big sellers, but dozens of other homemade candies are made regularly including chocolate-dipped pretzels, chili chocolate, Earl Grey/lavender bars, Shenandoah Midnight bars, nut clusters, barks, and brittles, creamy fudges, salty logs. Warfels candies are all made the old-fashioned way: in small batches in Elaine's health-inspected special "chocolate room" in her home.
