Fran Bigelow was born and raised in Seattle and trained as an accountant. Bigelow enrolled in professional cooking classes at
California Culinary Academy, where she apprenticed with a Swiss pastry chef. There were two employees at the original shop and the truffles were originally priced at 35 cents each. By 2006, the caramels made up seventy-five percent of the company's sales, and by 2008 the caramels were the bestseller, partly due to publicity from former
President Barack Obama and First Lady
Michelle Obama. By 2007, Fran's had forty employees, and Bigelow's daughter, Andrina, joined the company. In 2008, Fran's opened a location in
Downtown Seattle in the
Four Seasons hotel. The Downtown location would take over as the flagship store. At the time, the company had 67 employees and was making 30,000 pieces of chocolate per day and shipping regularly across the United States and to
Japan. In 2021,
Food & Wine named Fran's one of the top 50 chocolate shops in the United States. In December 2025, Fran's almondmilk chocolate which they introduced into the market with undisclosed allergen contents was recalled following a report of allergic reaction report from a consumer. It contained undisclosed hazelnuts, which can cause serious or life threatening reactions for people with allergies to hazelnuts. ==Book==