Duties include: “Leading candy board meetings, being a taste-testing boss…and all things fun.”
But Hegazy also sees the allure. “Imagine your best memories of candy, and live them every day at work,” he said.
Candy Funhouse, based outside of Toronto, heads a quartet of 20 and 30 siblings who grew up in the area and whose parents owned donut shops and a local restaurant.
“It was founded by my brother Mo, the owner of the candy, in 2018 and my mother was the number 2 employee,” Hegazy said, adding that he later joined the company and her younger sister and brother.
The family had hoped to differentiate their company from other highly successful online competitors such as Mars, Hershey’s and Amazon with an “odd” mix of products, no minimum orders – “we’ll sell one lollipop” – and a big push on social media.
Hegazy said sales in 2021, which were greatly boosted by the pandemic, were “just under $15 million. I’m not kidding.”
The family holds a 90% ownership stake.
The company said the CEO position for Kandy is open to applicants under five years old – although parental permission will likely be required. Many parents have photographed their child filling out the application and have posted it online.
Hegazy said the company has 340,000 followers on Instagram and three million on Tik Tok, including Kardashian, though he declined to identify any of them.
Hegazy also pointed out that reports on social media claiming that the candy manager will be required to eat 3,500 candy bars per month are incorrect. (This number represents the various items that the company stocks.) “That number will be 117 per day,” Hegazy said. “This is too much”.