The crocuses are up and the robins are back, but for many Philadelphians, it won’t be spring without Zitner’s candy.
Zitner’s Fine Confections, the century-old Philadelphia chocolatier known for its cream-filled Butter Krak eggs and other Easter specialties, is skipping this Easter season after shutting down its aging factory in North Philadelphia.
Customers have been asking about the disappearance on social media, while major retail outlets — including Acme, Giant, ShopRite, Wawa, Walmart, CVS, Wegmans, Weis, and Boscov’s — have had to fill their candy shelves with other brands.
The interruption is temporary. Zitner’s chief executive Evan Prochniak said he had closed a deal on Friday to acquire Kargher Chocolate, a small family-owned manufacturer in Hatfield, Montgomery County. The Hatfield plant will become Zitner’s new manufacturing base, while continuing to produce Kargher’s chocolate chips and nonpareils. Kargher president Douglas Kargher declined to comment and referred questions to Prochniak.
Zitner’s candy will not return in time for Easter 2026, however. Prochniak said workers are scheduled to begin moving equipment into the new factory on Monday, but the timeline is too tight for this season, which will culminate April 5. A typical Easter production cycle takes about four months, he said.
To bridge the gap, Zitner’s is planning a “Christmas/Easter in July” release on its Facebook and Instagram accounts and hopes to broaden its offerings beyond the core seasonal line. Prochniak said he wants to revive old handwritten recipes from the company archive and is considering a Philadelphia retail store as well as a possible outlet at Philadelphia International Airport.
For now, though, the focus is on restarting production. Zitner’s last made candy in North Philadelphia in summer 2024, relying on an outside manufacturer for Easter 2025. That arrangement, Prochniak said, was never intended to last.
“These are very old-school recipes, and we wanted to maintain control,” he said. “I also wanted to grow the company, and I’ve always had the vision of bringing back some of those other recipes that I have. So it was always the intent to manufacture ourselves somewhere.”
The plant in Hatfield has 11 employees, and Prochniak said he expects that number to double this year under Zitner’s.
Zitner’s history
Zitner’s traces its roots to 1922, when Russian immigrants Samuel Zitner and his wife, Annie, began making chocolate candies in a garage setup at their home at Kensington Avenue and Hart Lane in Kensington — the same year the El began chugging overhead.
One Inquirer article from 1927 described a theft from the shop by two 15-year-olds, who were identified as “candy yeggmen.”
Like many neighborhood candy companies, Zitner’s grew into a factory business, operating over the years at sites that included Tulip and Dauphin Streets in Kensington and American Street and Germantown Avenue in Northern Liberties, according to Inquirer archives.
In 1936, Leon Sherman, a nephew, took over and ran the business for decades with his brother Arthur. The Shermans helped standardize the recipes and production methods that defined the brand, according to the trade publication Snack & Bakery.
Zitner’s built its reputation on chocolate-coated confections including coconut cream — long spelled “cocoanut” — as well as peanut butter, marshmallow, butter cream, and hard pretzels. Its bestselling product is the dark chocolate-covered Butter Krak egg, which Annie Zitner taught Leon Sherman to make from buttercream, long-shredded coconut, and toasted coconut.
By the mid-1960s, the company had moved into its longtime plant near 17th and Clearfield Streets in North Philadelphia. Ownership changed several times after the Shermans’ era. In 1990, businessman Sidney Rosenblatt bought Zitner’s and ran it for about two decades, preserving the traditional line. In 2010, Rosenblatt sold the company to Prochniak and partners.
At the time, Prochniak was practicing law with no plans to become a candymaker. His group initially planned to sell the candy business and redevelop the property. But a soft real-estate market changed that calculation, and they were persuaded to keep the business going.
“Then I got to see firsthand how popular the candy was,” said Prochniak, who grew up in Southwest Philadelphia and remembers Zitner’s eggs in his Easter basket. “The demand was there for more of it, but they had very limited capacity at that time.”
Zitner’s later ran into financial strain and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018 while seeking to restructure several million dollars in debt and continue operating; the bankrutpcy was voluntarily dismissed.
The building, which had been sold, had deteriorated badly in recent years, Prochniak said. After a salvage yard moved in next door, he said, Zitner’s lost its shipping and receiving area and had to load trucks on 17th Street.
“The main issue was safety,” Prochniak said. “That was dangerous.”
The new factory “allow us to preserve everything that makes Zitner special while giving us the space and technology needed to expand,” Prochniak said. “The Hatfield facility represents the next era for Zitner.”