Joseph Shalhoub & Son, Inc.

WHEN I ARRIVE at Joseph Shalhoub & Son, Inc., the maker of Joray fruit rolls in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, I wonder if I'm at the right place. I can't see inside the doors, which are dark tinted glass. After I knock, a sporty-looking guy with close-cropped hair in a t-shirt and jeans answers almost immediately.

"When we had a sign," Ray Shalhoub, who works in real estate on the weekends, later explains, "we had people coming in and wanting one piece, a box, and it got to be too much hassle."

Ray, 50, runs the fruit-roll business with his younger brother Joe and their mother, Madeline, in her seventies, who still comes in daily to take care of paperwork. Their late father Louis, who started the business, also came to work every day before he passed away a year ago.

Once inside, there is still little indication that this is a full-blown manufacturer of fruit rolls. Through a small window in Ray's wood paneled front office, I see scrolls of plastic wrappers printed in different colors (purple for grape, red for strawberry, yellow for pineapple), giving me an inkling that there is an operation lurking behind the various closed doors.

By the time I visited Joray, I was acquainted with this air of secrecy. After courting the owners for an interview for months, the final conditions were such: I could conduct the interview on premises, but only after the workday was through. There would be no tour of the factory, and photo opportunities would be limited. Because I am a child of the 80s, fruit rolls carried sufficient allure for me to cut my losses and agree to these terms.

"My father would be rolling over in his grave if he knew I was doing this," says Ray, with an uncomfortable laugh. It turns out that no reporter has been here since the late-70s. The story behind this, according to Ray, is intertwined with the story of how fruit rolls came to be a popular kid's snack.

Youngsters in the eighties may remember the era as the time when fruit rolls and other lunchroom snacks, like Fruit Wrinkles and Fruits Gems, came of age. However, the origins of the fruit roll as we know it go back to the 50s, when Joseph Shalhoub & Son, Inc. introduced the sweet to this country with the Joray brand (named after sons Joe and Ray). The fruit roll is actually derivative of the Lebanese confection, armadeen, a thick paste made from dried apricots. To this day, dried apricots are the dominant ingredient in all of Joray's fruit rolls, and apricot is Joray's most popular flavor. Unlike today's fruit roll, the Joray product wasn't originated with children in mind, and Joray still claims that it does not cater to children's tastes. Case in point, one of Joray's original flavors and, in Ray's opinion, one of the all-time best, was prune.

The Shalhoubs are a family of bakers and confectioners whose lineage in the trade stretches back at least 100 years. When Ray Shalhoub's great grandfather left Lebanon, he opened a pastry and sweet shop in New York City. There, Louis worked from when he was 12 years old, eventually dropping out of high school to help his father make labor-intensive sweets and pastry full-time.

"We found one of his old formula books; he hadn't seen them in more than 40 years," recalls Ray. "He'd write down sugar and syrup and this ingredient and that ingredient and we would say how much? And he would say a Canetti can, and we'd say what's a Canetti can? I'd ask him, how do you know when a candy is done? He'd say you have to pick it up and see."

At the age of 19, Joseph Shalhoub was drafted to fight in Korea. When he returned (with two Bronze Stars), he decided to start a wholesale business specializing in fruit rolls. "Dad finally got fed up with the retail end of it," says Ray. "He was the first one here to make a fruit roll."

In his office, Ray shows me the fateful article from the 70s that pictures his father, Louis, with one of the fruit roll-making machines. The article describes in detail the process of fruit-roll manufacturing. About a year later, a private label that Shalhoub was producing fruit rolls for decided to make their own. That company was bought by Knox gelatin, which was purchased by Lipton. That product became the Sunkist fruit roll, the first major snack food of that kind, followed by General Mills' Fruit Roll-Ups, to hit the market.

Louis Shalhoub blamed this turn of events on the story in the trade publication, and never gave another interview.

"We lost almost all of our supermarket accounts nearly overnight," says Ray. In an effort to remain competitive, the Shalhoubs, observant Catholics, decided to go into the kosher market, where they've "been very successful."

The Shalhoubs since rebounded, and remain leaders in their market. Just this year, Joray's first new flavor in years, sour apple, won the Best New Confection of the Year award at Kosherfest, an annual kosher foods trade show. "Right now we're planning Passover," says Ray. "We have to bring in special syrup, tapioca, potato powder, all kinds of things." Over the years, Joray has also produced private labels for international brands. For much of the 80s, they created Fruity Flips, the British answer to Fruit Roll-Ups. Joray also produced a line of South American fruit rolls in flavors like guava, papaya and mango.

Because they use so many of them, Joray is also a nexus for the import of dried apricots from Turkey, China, Mexico and the Middle East. Their use of dried fruit, which they pit and mash themselves, means a grainier fruit roll than the processed junk-food brands and a flavor that is more tart and natural. When compared to the fruit leathers on the healthier end of the spectrum, the Joray fruit rolls, which count sugar, corn syrup and artificial colors among their ingredients, are more of a conventional treat. Plus, the Joray fruit roll, a poster board-thin disk mounted on cellophane, passes the most important fruit-roll tests: It produces that satisfying "rrrip" when pulled off, it's glossy enough on one side to create a glare and it's pliant enough to wrap around your thumb, should you so desire.

"We have different people who come in over the years and try to compete with us," says Ray. "At one point someone tried to hire one of our workers to learn what we were doing, but it can't be reproduced on a mass scale. There's an art to candy-making." o