A sweet business resurrected during the pandemic has proven successful for a Makawao woman who got inspiration for her caramel apples from a trip to Disneyland.

More than a decade ago, Angela Bascon visited the “Happiest Place on Earth” and marveled at the baked goodies and sweets, including caramel apples.

“It was just amazing, all the rows of caramel apples, all the different desserts, all the chocolate-covered things. Everything just looked so pretty and looked like you needed to eat everything,” she said.

Bascon was originally born on the Mainland but grew up on Maui and realized caramel apples were the norm on the continent.

“The only time we would see caramel apples (on Maui) would be at the fair or at Safeway,” she said with a chuckle.

“I said, I could totally do that. I just wanted to try,” said Bascon, who went on to create the gourmet-style confections with her own caramel recipe.

In 2008 Bascon was making her caramel apples for co-workers, and people would buy them from her. The hobby grew but was difficult to sustain as a business as she had another job, so she put it aside.

Then the pandemic hit. She got laid off in September 2020, and in 2021, she was looking for something to do. Her children suggested she make her apples.

She still had a large customer base who wanted the apples, and with children going back to school full time and no need for homeschooling, she jumped in.

In about 30 days she set up her company, “The Good Apple,” with the support of her husband, Jason, who is also her biggest taste tester, promoter and fan. Every month there are five flavors that she puts out, usually themed for the holidays that month.

“I didn’t realize I would be working full time in business,” she said. “But It’s fun. I enjoy it. It’s really busy.”

Bascon has been even more busy in recent days as she and her family, including her children who help her run the business, have been churning out “hundreds” of the hand-crafted apples of multiple flavors as she will take her goodies in person to the Made in Maui County Festival for the first time.

Last year she did the online portion of the festival, which was hampered by a computer glitch. Sales were not good, but it was a chance to make her company known, she said.

This year Bascon will bring along eight of her most popular and local flavors, including the original apple pie, which she started in 2008, along with cookie butter, strawberry shortcake, li hing mui and chocolate mochi crunch. The apples sell for $14 each.

Her homemade assorted caramel boxes will also be sold for $12.

The 9th annual Hawaiian Airlines Made in Maui County Festival, the first large-scale in-person festival of its kind at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center since the pandemic, begins on Friday from 1:30 to 6 p.m. with the buyers’ preview and exclusive shopping day. Admission is $50 plus applicable fees.

Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. is the big festival day. Tickets are $7 plus applicable fees and are for sale online and at the door. The first 2,000 attendees in the door receive a free festival tote bag. For both days, admission for children ages 12 and below is free. For tickets, see MauiArts.org.

More than 140 vendors from Maui County will be offering a variety of food, art, crafts, jewelry, fashion, furniture, gifts and collectibles.

Last year, the festival went online in November, but ran into technical difficulties after the website crashed during key shopping hours. A hybrid event with online and in-person sales was then held at the War Memorial Gym Complex overflow field in December.

Another new entry to the in-person festival this year is FAM Hawaii, a clothing company owned by Daython Galicinao and wife Zhorein that features the FAM logo, “Family is All that Matters,” with a variety of other logos, including sports teams and sayings.

Daython Galicinao said he is dropping six to seven new items at the festival and will have shirts, flasks, wooden signs, hats and other items. The new products will premiere at the festival first and later at the store at Queen Ka’ahumanu Center, which opened just over a year ago.

“We are super excited for this, and you know it’s amazing how we look on Facebook and Made in Maui is (saying) ‘featuring the iconic FAM’. Just to read that alone is so overwhelming, to feel the love and the respect. Because where we came from to where it is now,” Galicinao said Wednesday afternoon.

“We’re excited. We always wanted to do it,” he said of the festival.

Just like Bascon, a trip to the Mainland inspired Galicinao’s business.

In 2015, he and a friend were going on a trip to Las Vegas and they wanted to wear something “cool.”

“We came up with this concept of FAM: Family is All that Matters,” Galicinao said, adding he wanted something that was not gimmicky but meaningful.

So, he and a friend came up with a shirt with a boy standing on roots to emphasize “to stay rooted to your family and stay true to who you are.”

“When we were in Vegas on the crap tables, a lot of people, were like . . . ‘Where can we get the shirt?’ I was like ‘oh you cannot. We just made um for this trip.'”

A man offered Galicinao $100 for the shirt “off your back right now,” so he went upstairs, grabbed another shirt and the man bought it.

Galicinao doesn’t know the man’s name, but wishes he did.

“It was the first customer for FAM,” he said.

From there, the business started with shirts and then hats.

He also made shirts to benefit a friend with cancer that incorporated pink and white lettering, with the word “believe” along with his friend’s favorite, a dragonfly.

To this day, that is still one of his fastest-selling shirts.

“We donated the money to her,” Galicinao said.

The day his friend came to get the $1,500 in sales from shirts, she told him that she was in remission.

“When we did that, it reminded me of why,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking of making FAM a T-shirt brand, I just wanted to wear something cool that nobody had, but the strength and power of it, was such a huge impact that it made within the community.”

He never wanted to be exclusive and have people waiting in lines for his products, instead wanting the whole “family” to be able to wear the clothing.

“This is a chance that we will be able to help people out,” he said.

He also has done a lot more over the years for others, including raising about $5,000 for Kahului School after suspicious fires damaged classrooms years ago. Galicinao made shirts to fundraise.

Bascon, too, has a heart for the island and said even as costs have doubled and tripled — including for the Fuji apples that she ships from Washington state and now cost double what they did last year — her caramel apples have remained at $14 since they started.

“But we are trying to keep it relative because as inflation rises, the costs of goods rise for us, but of course for everyone else,” Bascon said. “So we don’t want it to get to where it is unbearable to purchase as gifts, but we are just trying to hang in there.”

Bascon, who is based in Makawao and has a commercial kitchen in Paia, does not have a storefront but does direct ordering.

It’s no secret that her apples can be found at The Cookie Lady in Makawao, The Maui Candy Co. at Maui Mall and at the Maui Sweet Shoppe in Kihei.

Bascon is humbled by local companies calling her asking for orders of her apples.

“What a privilege it is even to be recognized, because, these people have made it. So for them to look at me, I’m just some lady making apples,” she said with a laugh. “I want to give something good, (an) experience to people of Maui. All of our family are here. I think that keeping things local is really important too because to have everyone thrive here, it’s important to keep our families here. That’s part of it I enjoy. My customers are like my family.”

For more information on this year’s festival, including a full list of vendors, visit www.madeinmauicountyfestival.com.

Parking and shuttle service will be from Queen Ka’ahumanu Center near the Macy’s women’s department, War Memorial Gym and War Memorial Stadium. Shoppers should look for a flag for a shuttle location at the stadium. Shuttles will arrive every 15 to 20 minutes.

The event is presented by the Maui Chamber of Commerce and supported by Maui County’s Office of Economic Development.

* Melissa Tanji can be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.