The lobby of the Grand Hotel Golf Resort and Spa in Point Clear has a distinctive scent, thanks to a variety of bath and spa products created just for the beloved 176-year-old hotel on Mobile Bay. Now guests can take that smell home with them by purchasing a hand-poured candle sold exclusively at the Grand’s Oak & Azalea gift shop.

The Grand Hotel Lobby candles have done well since John Monet of Monet Candle Co. in Foley recreated the fresh scent using white tea, fig tree and other essential oils. The gift shop originally offered Monet’s 10 best-selling fragrances, but soon Danny Pringle, Oak & Azalea’s resort merchandise manager, asked him to reproduce the lobby’s signature scent.

“It was definitely an honor” to create a signature scent for the Grand Hotel, says Monet, who started making soy candles a few years ago out of his own frustration with the ones that were on the market.

“I’m just a big candle junkie,” he says – and a romantic at heart who likes to relax in a candlelit bathtub. But he noticed that some of his favorite brands were losing their scents and leaving an outline of black soot behind. With a young son and a toy Pomeranian at home, Monet decided he could create a healthier alternative.

“I locked myself in my apartment for a year, grew a long beard and figured it out,” he says.

Every time Monet opened his door, his neighbors would get a whiff of the scents he was creating like a mad scientist, as he tried to perfect a “divine candle.” It took “tens of hundreds of dollars and hours,” he says, to learn to pinpoint a fragrance – it must be “rounded, true to scent, subtle yet noticeable but not overpowering,” and be made from all-organic essential oils.

Monet started out selling candles to those curious neighbors. “Every time I opened the door, they were spending money,” he says.

Monet realized he was on to something and started providing the candles to gift shops and boutiques. “Once my candles got in 40 or 50 stores,” he says, “they started taking over my bedroom and my son’s bedroom.”

John Monet and his son John celebrated the opening of Monet Candle Co.’s first retail location in 2019. (Courtesy of John Monet)

Now more than 300 stores nationwide carry Monet Candle Co. products. In addition to candles, Monet makes wax melts, bath bombs, soaps, lotions and sprays.

A native of Virginia, Monet moved to Mobile 25 years ago. He and his son, John Jr., now 9, recently moved to Baldwin County, where he opened a retail space at Tanger Outlet Center in Foley in November 2022. Monet is known for providing cheerful service and remembering customers and their fragrance preferences.

As shoppers enter the store, he hands out small jars of coffee grounds to refresh their olfactory sense. Otherwise, they would be overwhelmed by the selection. Scents include La Vie en Rose, Fleur de Gardenia, Bumblebee’s Journey and many more.

“They’re all my babies,” he says of the variety of fragranced candles lining the walls of the shop. But when pressed, Monet admits that his favorite scent is the bestselling Oh, Oh Tobacco, which he describes as a combination of “pipe tobacco and caramel.”

“It makes me want to grab a book, and I hate to read,” he says. “It smells like a rich person’s study.”

Throughout the shop, Monet – who says he can trace his bloodline to French impressionist Claude Monet – offers nods to French culture, from the Eiffel Tower in his logo to the French soundtrack to his own jaunty cap. He thinks of his creations as “aromatic poetry.”

Monet is “a one-man band” in the shop, doing everything from making the products by hand, to ringing up sales, to packing and shipping. And while he works long hours, the reward is that “I get to do what I love,” he says.

His precocious and exceedingly polite young son helps him and provided the inspiration for Monet Candle Co. “I’ve always designed products to help me relax as a single father,” he says. “That’s what built this company.”

At the Grand Hotel’s gift shop, the candles continue to be popular. “We’re very selective with our relationships with artisans in the area,” says Danny Pringle. Not only has he been impressed with the quality of the lobby signature scent candle, he says he also appreciates “the heart and soul (Monet) puts into it.”

This story was previously published by This is Alabama. Want to read more good news about Alabama? Sign up for the This is Alabama newsletter here.