A hailstorm is credited with sparking Herbert Wagner's most popular business idea.
When a storm damaged the crop at his longtime orchard, Jim's Apple Farm, near the southern Minnesota town of Jordan, Wagner — better known as Hippy — knew he needed something else to set his business apart. And a lot of yellow paint.
In the 10 years since Wagner opened Minnesota's Largest Candy Store, the family's iconic big yellow barn on Hwy. 169 has become a popular destination for visitors across the country. Inside, past shelves stacked with thousands of soda flavors and hundreds of saltwater taffies, visitors would find Hippy baking pies as polka music played overhead.
The family business lost its idea man, chief pie baker and patriarch when Wagner died Nov. 21 at the age of 91.
"He wasn't doing it for the money," said son Robert Wagner of Belle Plaine. "This was the game; it was the fun."
The serial entrepreneur got the business bug while helping run his family's restaurant as a kid, then selling homemade fudge. After World War II — where he served in the U.S. Merchant Marine, including at the Battle of the Bulge — he and his family opened Wagner's Supper Club, then an apple orchard in the 1950s. The orchard did well, also selling pumpkins and squash out of their yellow barn.
"Business was just in his blood," Robert Wagner said.
After a hailstorm hit, Hippy knew he had to rely on more than apples, so he and his son tried out a mini grocery store. Then a convenience store. Then knickknacks and stuffed animals. Each one flopped. Until they set up tables of candy.