Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 9/9/2016 (1473 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fans of the Strangeloves’ 1965 garage rock classic I Want Candy — covered in 1982 by British new wave darlings Bow Wow Wow and in 2007 by ex-Spice Girl Melanie C — will happily tell you that the "candy" in the song’s lyrics is a euphemism for, well, nookie.

That might explain why a woman recently entered Teeyah’s, a three-month-old specialty candy store at 166 Hargrave St., to ask owner Tia Medeiros if she was peddling something besides Milk Duds and bonbons.

"She said after seeing my sign, she thought maybe this was a sex shop," Medeiros said with a laugh, as she rang in a sale for a fellow in his 20s who, because he couldn’t decide between a Baby Ruth bar, a Cadbury Caramello and a Nestle Toffee Crisp, ended up walking out the door with all three. (Excellent decision!)

Medeiros, a married mother of two, is an executive project manager for Wakefield Foods Inc., a position that requires her to distribute ice cream products to grocery stores throughout Winnipeg. In February 2016, she was at home watching TV when she had a sudden craving for an Abba-Zaba, a taffy bar with a peanut butter centre she tried for the first time a few years ago, after purchasing one at a candy store on Corydon Avenue.

She hopped in her car and made the 20-kilometre trip from Transcona to Corydon, only to discover Sugar Mountain, her destination-point, had ceased to exist. Medeiros knew the store’s owners had opened an alternate location at The Forks, so she turned her vehicle around and headed downtown. Fifteen minutes later, she was thwarted again when she learned the converted railcar that houses that particular outlet is closed from Oct. 1 until the end of May.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The candy shop includes a selection of British crisps.

"As soon as I got back home, I went online to see if there was anywhere in Winnipeg I could buy an Abba-Zaba, but nothing came up," she said.

"What I did end up finding, mind you, were a bunch of wholesalers that sold the bars by the caseload. It’s not like I needed an Abba-Zaba that badly — I mean, a box of 24 cost $30, plus shipping — but because my curiosity had gotten the better of me by then, I began wondering how many I’d have to buy to get around paying shipping fees."

By the end of the evening, not only had Medeiros placed an order for $500 worth of Abba-Zabas, she had also "opened" an on-line store on Shopify, an e-commerce site based in Ottawa, reasoning that she might be able to recoup a portion of her investment by reselling whatever bars she and her family members didn’t eat.

(Teeyah’s, the tag she chose for her biz, is a play on Tia, her given name. Growing up, she and her brother Joey had a "secret language" that involved spelling certain words phonetically. Teeyah is a "silent tribute" to him, she explained.)

Medeiros filled her first order a few days later for a customer who lived in Ottawa. As the number of requests grew — and as regulars began asking if she carried this, that or another thing — she started importing a wider variety of confections to keep up with people’s demands.

"I started with one fold-out table in my basement where I kept all my stuff. That quickly turned into two tables and by the time I was ready to add a fourth, my husband said enough was enough. So I went on Kijiji, spotted this place for rent and opened on June 1."

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Moon Pies!

Medeiros carries hundreds of different types of candy, all of which are imported from south of the border or the United Kingdom. As one customer perused a wall stocked with, among other delights, Charleston Chews, Fruit Stripe Gum and — we’re not too sure about this one — draft beer-flavoured Jelly Bellys, another quizzed Medeiros, asking her to clarify the difference between conventional potato chips (if you’re interested, she has Honey Mustard Pringles) and crisps, which hail from Britain.

"There are different types (of crisps)," she explained, "but the ones made by Brannigans are quite a bit thicker than the kind of chips we’re used to. I have one customer who used to live in London who bought a boxful, saying he was so happy he didn’t have to ask his mom and dad for care packages anymore."

Because of Medeiros’s primary career, she doesn’t get to spend as much time at her store as she might like. That’s OK, she maintained, because one of her two employees is a person very much after her own heart.

"I was a teen mom. I had my son Nicholas when I was 16 and my daughter Katrina when I was 18. It’s something I’m very proud of now, but something that I never used to be proud of, before," said Medeiros, who graduated from Red River College’s Marketing Management program by taking the course online.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ...And Big Hunk bars.

"I now volunteer with Big Brothers and Big Sisters and my mentee, Brianna, is a teen mom, just like I was. I’ve kind of taken her under my wing, I guess, because she works here at the store and soon she’s going to do her schooling online, the same way I did. Hopefully she’ll be as successful at it as I was."

As for what the future has in store for Teeyah’s, Medeiros politely corrects a scribe after he asks her if she intends to open more candy stores, in the months and years ahead.

"It’s not a matter of if – it’s when," she says, smiling. "My ultimate goal is 10 (stores) and though major centres would be nice, I’m thinking I’d rather go into smaller cities, such as Regina, instead of places like Toronto or Montreal. It’s easier to ‘own’ a small city, I think, and build a name for myself, that way."

For a complete list of products Teeyah’s carries, go to www.teeyahs.com.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca