One of the benefits of living on a small campus like ours is that you’re never more than ten minutes away from Main Street. A few weeks ago, we started this series to encourage students to take advantage of that fact by exploring the wonderful businesses available to us! This week we’ll hear from Corbin’s Confections.
Many students on campus are navigating meal planning for the first time, and many have dietary restrictions on top of that. Corbin’s Confections offers sweet treats to those facing that struggle! To tell us more, Shana Brown, the owner, spoke to me this week.
Q: How did you get started in this business?
A: My son, Corbin, has severe food allergies (peanuts, tree nuts, and sesame seeds). My mom and I have Celiac Disease. It was always my dream to open a bakery that helped people with food allergies as I had seen my family be left out during holidays, celebrations, and get-togethers. We put our heads together and opened Corbin’s Confections in 2016.
Q: Do you get to interact with students often?
A: While we are within walking distance, we don’t have many Roanoke College students who frequent us. We used to accept the Maroon Card but ended up paying more for the terminal and membership than the amount of students that would visit us monthly.
Q: How does being close to campus affect your business?
A: Being within walking distance of the college campus helps us when there’s a back-to-school night or a parent’s weekend. We have parents around the country contact us to deliver to the college campus during the year, too.
Q: How do you pick and adapt recipes for dietary restrictions?
A: All of our recipes are created by our own trial and error!! We receive inspiration from a customer or we have a craving that we want to satisfy ourselves. Then, we will adapt it to meet our own dietary needs by trying the recipe in several different ways until we get it right. We have thrown out quite a lot of products in the past 8 years before we got a quality product that lived up to our strict standards.
Q: Any other thoughts?
A: We would love to have more interaction with the college! We are happy to be associated with the college and enjoy the business that the college events, students, and staff bring us.
Maggie Raker
Section Editor
