Owner of original Good’s Candies responds to controversial job listing
KENNARD, Ind. (WISH) — The owners of the original Good’s Candies in Kennard say their business has been impacted by a controversial social media post made by the owner of Good’s Candy Shop in Anderson.
A pair of distant cousins connect the two stores, but there are differences between the way each operates.
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After a controversial hiring post from the Anderson store, the owners of the original store in Kennard want to make sure people understand the difference.
If you don’t pay attention, you may mistake it for another house on Main Street, but most people in Kennard know there’s a sweet and rich history inside the original Good’s Candies.
“I came to Good’s Candies in 2005 after I met my husband, Kevin, and became interested in his family’s business. He’s the fourth generation of his family to be involved with the original Good’s Candies,” Kathy Vickery said Monday.
Just two years after Kathy Vickery joined her husband and mother-in-law in the business, Kevin’s mother died from breast cancer.
“Kevin and I were not exactly looking to become business store owners when it happened, but we inherited the business and we have been working diligently since 2007, building a name for ourselves, our community and especially our two young daughters — they are 6 and 10,” Kathy Vickery said.
Over the past several days, Kathy Vickery says that legacy has been damaged.
The owners from the two shops are related but have always kept the stores separate.
Randy Good, who owns the shop in Anderson, posted a job listing on Facebook in which he described behaviors he said he’d seen from some of his female employees.
“He talks about people coming in and being ‘pukers’ and people coming in and being ‘splitters.’ All of these things he outlaid as very negative behaviors; he directly correlated to being women and a problem specifically for girls,” Kathy Vickery said.
She said the words were disappointing, considering the original Good’s Candies has a long history of women running the business — most recently herself — and before that her husband’s mother, a single woman who ran the store for decades.
“If there’s any problem going on inside your organization, you should take that situation by the bootstraps and take it as an opportunity to lead your crew,” she said.
In the days following Randy Good’s post, because of confusion between the locations, Vickery says her store’s ratings and reviews took a hit. That’s when she says she knew it was time to fight back.
“I don’t want for our history to get tied up in this Google search that yields sexist, misogynist candy store owner because that’s just not our identity and it never has been,” she said.
The day after News 8 talked to Randy Good, he announced he was selling his Anderson store. Kathy Vickery said he can sell the building and the equipment but does not have any rights to the name. They recently sold their trademark to a company called Good’s Candies LLC. That company was not available for comment on Monday.