A ‘Sweet Turn’ To Business At UW Foster School Of Business

MBA student Michael Adams at UW Foster School of Business has managed to turn a family recipe for home-made caramels into a business venture in collaboration with his colleague Junior Marcus Bircher.

Adams’ mother used to make the golden brown caramels as a special treat during the holidays. The secret recipe has been with the Adams family for generations and during a winter break, he learnt how to make the caramels himself.

Adams told The Daily of the UW that he sent the caramels to the owner of a company he had worked with in summer. The owner later told him that the caramels proved so popular that workers kept coming back to his office to take them.

The favourable response as well as knowledge derived at an entrepreneur class inspired Adams and Bircher to develop the idea and create a company to make and market the caramels.

“In a normal class, you do mini projects, but in this class, it’s for real,” said John Hansen, lecturer of the entrepreneurship class. Students are really learning about the issues of manufacturing, packaging, pricing, and customer satisfaction, he added.

Adams and Bircher also presented the idea, after months of deliberations and fine-tuning to investors at the Arthur W. Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship. The Center is part of the Foster School of Business and funds opportunities for students to receive entrepreneurial and marketing experiences.

The company is being run on non-profit lines, with all profits going to the Center. The company has been named Softgold Caramels, drawing from the caramel’s golden colour and its softness.

Unlike the grocery store brands, these caramels contain less preservatives and have a shelf like of three weeks. They are also non-sticky and made with high-quality ingredients, like Himalayan salt and pure vanilla extract.

The caramels production take place on weekends, early in the morning at the commercial kitchen of a student housing center. The cooking takes about 90 minutes and involves a process of melting down the secret ingredients and stirred at a specific temperature. Once ready, the mixture is poured into baking dishes to set.

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The following day, they spend an additional five hours carefully cutting the caramel into squares. Each piece is individually wrapped by hand and packaged to be delivered to the University Book Store and Chandler’s Bay Market & Deli in Kent.

The caramels have proved to be a hit. At present, they are cooking and packaging about 300 caramels a week to meet the demand from local retailers and customers. “I think we need to find a way to make the process more efficient so that we can scale-up and meet the demands of our customer base,” Bircher said.

The company is an all-around student effort. Its logo was created in collaboration with UW School of Design student Natalie Huang, who said that she created a simple and classic logo design. Since the caramels were

home made and a luxury, she says she used a colour palette that is gold like the caramel itself and typography that delivers an elegant feeling.

Adams proposes to eventually expand the company beyond local retailers and customers into the broader market. (Image Courtesy : commons.wikimedia.org)