Chocolate Shop Is Opening On Main
The crew at the new Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory location on Main Street including (from left) Gail Miller, Frances Martin and Alice Williams have been busy preparing for Thursday’s opening.
Chocolate Shop Is Opening On Main
By David Howell
Editor
WATER VALLEY – After months of preparation, Gail Miller will open the state’s fifth Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory location on Main Street Thursday. Customers can look forward to a wide range of tasty treats that the company is famous for. The local selection includes 16 varieties of caramel apples, assorted chocolates and other confections, frozen cheesecake and frozen bananas on a stick along with delicious chocolate dipped strawberries. The goodies also include Blue Bell dipped ice cream, milk shakes and floats, with Brown’s Diary milk used for the shakes
Miller currently owns and operates a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory location on West Jackson Avenue in Oxford and her new Water Valley location will be a satellite location, opening Thursday, Friday and Saturday, from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. and on Sundays from 12:30 to 3 p.m. Frances Martin and Alice Williams will operate the new location.
Miller opened her Oxford store in 2011, initially partnering with Water Vallian Irv Odom. As a career nurse, Miller met Irb Odom after working alongside her husband, Dr. Paul Odom, at the Mississippi Veteran’s Home in Oxford where he serves as the medical director.
“In 2010 I presented the business plan to Dr. Odom and he decided we were going to take a road trip to Vicksburg to visit a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory location,” Miller recalled.
The trip was a success and in 2011 the ladies launched the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory store in Oxford. Ironically that trip to Vicksburg also led to Miller’s son, Dr. G.R. Orndorff, meeting Dr. Odom, an encounter that ultimately led to Orndorff, a chiropractor, coming to work for Yalobusha Health Services.
Last October, Miller said Irv Odom was ready to retire and she bought her out of the business.
“I decided that I needed to branch out,” Miller explained, adding that the expansion will help grow her business and she is looking forward to serving Water Valley after she moved to the community.
“I built a house in front of my son’s house,” Miller explained.
The new Main Street location will join more than 300 Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory retail locations around the world. Miller explained fresh treats will be trucked in from the actual chocolate factory in Durango, Colo., where the original store opened in 1981. The factory typically produces approximately 300 chocolate candies and other confectionery products, using proprietary recipes developed primarily by its master candy maker.
