Morkes Chocolates: A Third-Generation Candy Maker Works to Stay Competitive
Palatine, IL – Rhonda Dehn always had a head for figures. Thus, when asked to work Saturdays at the family’s retail candy shop in Palatine, Ill., there were no issues when it came to computing sales taxes on purchases or giving out change.
“We didn’t have any computers back then [1967], so I had to figure out the sales tax in my head,” says the owner of Morkes Chocolates. Instead, what Dehn received — as a sixth grader — was an introduction to the family business.
It was her grandfather, Bill Morkes, a former Nabisco cookie salesman, who founded the business. It was 1920 when he decided to strike out on his own, opening a confectionery shop on the Southwest Side of Chicago. Decades of success turned into a dilemma as urban upheavals in the 1960s transformed a once thriving commercial center into a war zone.
