Berkley man's grandmother's recipe is a hit with Chunk Nibbles sweet and salty snacks

FOX 2 - It all started with his grandma Cuddy's famous recipe.

"Pretzels, peanuts, walnuts, Chex all bound with a light coating but an addicting combination of something salty and sweet," said Brad Cocklin.

A sweet treat is loved by all especially around the holidays passed down from generation to generation. And now Brad Cocklin of Berkley has turned his family tradition into Chunk Nibbles - a booming local business.

"My feeble attempts to live up to my grandma's hype, her flavor is obviously my favorite, but if I am going to live up to anyone's shadow it may as well be hers," said Cocklin. 

A few years back Brad and his wife, who worked for a financial group in Chicago, decided to cash in their 401K, move home and create this family business.
  
It brings him joy to see his grandma's recipe now sitting on store shelves.

"Having something she made her whole life and having her face on the back of the bag a very rewarding feeling," he said.  

Chunk Nibbles comes in different flavors like sweet and salty, smores and peanut butter and chocolate, and come in different sized packages for events or those for serious snackers.

Cocklin admits it's hard to compete with big brand marketing budgets, but he appreciates his customers who can't get enough of chunk nibbles and continue to support his small business.
 
"We have a lot of support from the community letting them online sales gone very well," he said. "People's buying habits have definitely changed, people are looking for more staples, not a lot of snacks - but the inverse of that is a lot of people working from home snacking more than ever."

And each time you buy a bag of the gourmet snack - Chunk Nibbles donates five percent of the profit to Blue Star Service Dogs, which rescues dogs from shelters and trains them to be emotional therapy service dogs for military vets who suffer from a brain injury or PTSD.

"Our customer service is always in the forefront of our brand, we want people when they think of Chunk Nibbles to think of family because that's who they are supposed to be sharing with," he said.