The customer must never find a candy tray half empty at a Wockenfuss store. Stack the candy in tiers, with stripes in the same direction.

Wrap boxes tightly. Sharp, not rounded corners. Only thin ribbons for small boxes. A proper bow stands up off the box.

The lessons of Marian Wockenfuss echo for generations of her candy store employees across Baltimore. The Wockenfuss family matriarch died peacefully in her sleep Friday at home in the Kingsville community of Baltimore County, her son, Paul Wockenfuss, said. She was 98.

With her attention to detail and exacting standards, Marian Wockenfuss grew the family candy business with her late husband, Herman Lee, from their rowhouse in Northeast Baltimore to seven locations and 120 employees. Marian Wockenfuss ran the storefronts with an artist’s touch, balancing layers of almond bark in perfect proportion and assembling quilted trays of alternating milk and dark chocolates.

There’s a magic to a candy store, with all the shiny wrapping, bright colors and sense of abundance. Herman made the candy; Marian made the wonder.

“Everything about the company is so her,” said Janice Wockenfuss-Motter, her granddaughter and chief financial officer of Wockenfuss Candies. “She was very protective of the Wockenfuss name, and she really wanted it to present well to every customer, that this was a quality product and that we cared about what we were selling.”

Dave Ernest started working for her at the Wockenfuss store in Northeast Baltimore when he was in high school and quickly learned things were done Marian’s way.

“The bows had to be perfect,” he said. “Every piece of candy had to be straight; it couldn’t be tipping on its side. It was her store, and she let that be known.”

Once he gained her trust, Ernest said, he felt like a member of her family. He passed his job to his sister. His cousin worked there, too.

“She even said I could call her Grandmom,” he said.

The daughter of Jacob and Julia Buettner, Marian Wockenfuss grew up in Baltimore and her parents ran the old Bitner’s nightclub on Fayette Street and Montford Avenue in the 1930s and 1940s. She married Herman Lee Wockenfuss after World War II. His father, a German immigrant, had started the company in 1915 and sold candy in Baltimore’s public markets.

Herman and Marian took over the company, and in the 1950s they opened a storefront from their house on Belair Road. Paul was born in the house.

“I can remember sitting on the cellar steps, watching my father. My father made hard candies and candy canes, at that point, without the equipment. The candy canes were made by pulling the batch on a hook,” he said.

The family moved to Towson but kept the store nearby on Belair Road. Herman still made the candy, and Marian managed the store. She traveled to candy shows and conventions. As the family business grew, she ran the stores but always managed to be home in time to prepare the pork chops or fried chicken for her husband and three children. There was always room at the dinner table for a friend, Paul said.

She was like the Energizer Bunny, “the rabbit that just goes and goes and goes,” he said.

Michele Myers was 16 when she began an after-school job working for Marian in 1984. Myers kept working at Wockenfuss until 2010 and still returns part time on the holidays. The two women became dear friends.

“She [Marian] never asked you to do anything that she hasn’t already done, wasn’t willing to do or was [not] already in the process of doing. That could be anything, like wiping floors,” Myers said.

Myers learned Marian’s way of rotating the candy to keep the displays fresh. She learned, if a box rattles when shaken, it’s packed too loosely. Some tasks, however, required Marian’s touch alone.

“The bark chocolate, almond bark or cashew bark, she took pride in how many layers and how they were displayed,” Myers said. “You had to stack them up, and if you couldn’t stack them up, it was like a domino effect and the whole tray, the layers, would come falling down.

“More than one time I would hear her say to people, ‘No, I’ll fill the barks.”

Herman Wockenfuss died in 2014. Marian still went to run the stores, until she needed a cane or a walker, Paul Wockenfuss said.

The couple had been active in the Lutheran church and helped open Concordia Preparatory School in Towson in the 1960s. Marian Wockenfuss attended St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Kingsville, and in retirement she became a devoted fan of the Orioles. She left the phone ringing during games.

She always hated peanut butter, even candy with peanut butter, and favored the Wockenfuss’ honeycomb sponge.

She’s survived by Paul and his wife, Lynn; daughter Carole Hemphill and her husband, Larry; daughter Joan Scherch and her husband, Ron; and nine grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren.

A visitation will be held Monday from 5-8 p.m. at the E.F. Lassahn Funeral Home, 11750 Belair Road in Kingsville. Funeral services will be 11 a.m. Tuesday at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, 12022 Jerusalem Road in Kingsville.