Origin Story of Sugar Love
Much like your other favorite super heroes, Sugar Love also has an origin story or two!
Where did the name come from? A best friend that moved away.
As I was playing with recipes to begin launching my potential dream business, my best friend moved to Las Vegas from Reno to be nearer to her family. As a way to test different versions of our decadent caramels, I began sending her about a pound or so of caramel whenever I made a new recipe. It was also a great way to maybe bribe her to move back to Reno.
After a couple of care packages stuffed with homemade caramels, she finally called and said that I had to stop sending her so many goodies as she had just had her second child and wanted to lose weight! I was not helping!
I replied, "I'm just sending you some sugar love!"
And we both knew that that was the name for the company! I wanted our company to represent giving love through our goodies, so what better name could there be?
P.S. She still lives in Vegas the jerk... ;)
So how did Sugar Love start? With an image that went viral.
I (Krysta Bea here) was playing around with chocolates in my home kitchen, still dreaming of possibly opening my own store. I had taken some images and shared on Instagram and Facebook, but nothing too noteworthy. Then one evening, on Reddit a person had posted an image of their chocolate saying it never got any love. The Reddit community did a very quick search of their posting history and they posted their images a lot and they always did ok. So in response, I posted a picture of my chocolates which I thought were prettier anyway and said something along the line that I had actually never gotten love for my chocolates from Reddit. Easily true since I had never posted an image of my creations there! Here's the archived post: https://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/2xmqb2/ive_never_posted_with_my_chocolates_before_but_i/
Then I went about my evening by going to a local open mic and performing some standup (NB: I'm very middling at it but it's a fun hobby!). When I got off stage, I checked my reddit feed only to see my chocolates on the front page! The image was seen by more than 1.5 million people and the requests for orders came flooding in - it was astonishing! And all before I could legally sell to the public - let alone meet the demand!
2015 felt like the year that all my chocolate store dreams fell into place! I finally figured out a name, Reddit was my early proof that people might like my creations, I found our first, funky, awesome space in the Basement and won a $20,000 loan from the City of Reno. Little did I know that every year wouldn't be as easy peasy, but it's been worth it the whole ride.
What made the change in product happen? Pandemic necessities!
Well 2020 was quite the challenge for every small business owner (unless you made hand sanitizer!!) and so after closing the storefront and laying off the employees, I had to figure out how to pay the bills. I began popping up at local farmers markets. But the problem was, I couldn't bring chocolates since July in Reno is quite warm. I started to focus more on the brittle and was surprised at how quickly they took off! Now our brittles are nationwide in small shops and boutiques.
They say that necessity is the mother of all inventions, and I can't disagree! I've not experienced this level of growth and excitement since that first image shared in 2015. It's looking like a sweet future for Sugar Love!
So now you know our origin story and I hope you enjoy all the goodies you get from us through the years, from limited edition flavors and collections to our tried and true best sellers. Here's to many more years of Sugar Love!
xo Krysta Bea