Frango candies originated with the Frederick and Nelso department store in Seattle, but are widely associated (at least with mid-westerners) with Marshall Field and Company, which acquired rights to Frango candy production when it bought Frederick and Nelso in 1929. Field and Co. set up Frango production on the thirteenth floor of its State and Washington Street location, where the candies were handmade until 1999. Frango production continued in Seattle as well.

In 1999, Dayton Hudson Corporation (later Target), Field and Co.'s parent company as of 1990, closed Frango production at the State Street store and moved it to a candy company in Pennsylvania. Chicago's civic and business leaders were upset—Frango candies had been a Chicago staple for decades and 157 Chicagoans were left without jobs. On an economic level, the loss of Frango production was part of a larger and worrying decline in the number of candy companies in Chicago, which had been a major center for candy-making throughout much of the twentieth century.

Today, visitors to Macy's can watch employees hand make Frango candies at a viewing kitchen on the seventh floor of the State Street location, but the production is mostly for show. The kitchen's main purpose is to try and lure back thousands of Chicagoans who resented the Frango move to Pennsylvania in 1999 and the transition of Field and Co. into a Macy's in 2006. Macy's continues to sell Frango products, but they're still largely made and distributed in Pennsylvania.

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