We recently connected with Chris Szydlowski and have shared our conversation below.

Chris, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Spooky’s Swirls was spawned from a love of creative, elevated, artistic baking and our love of all things Horror. Myself and Co-Owner, Lola Forbes worked in the retail baking industry for many years and we saw a large absence of gluten free options available. We saw this as an opportunity to use our extensive baking knowledge to take conventional recipes and convert them into gluten free alternatives. Spooky’s started out as a home based business and due to the demand, we decided to branch out into the mobile food market and we bought a food truck. After a few successful years (and lots of hard work) food trucking we decided we wanted to grow even further. We’d been mulling the idea around of how we wanted to grow next. As fate would have it, the stars aligned and while I was helping friends in my hobby featured at a local Horror convention, we brought up our conundrum.
After the con, we discussed the merging of our bakery business with our hobby of collecting movie props and wardrobe and thought, what a concept! What if we featured our collection in a “museum” type environment and paired our confections along with the items on display? Thus Spooky’s Swirls was truly born.

Chris, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have been baking professionally for a little over 20 years now. I started out wanting to escape my corporate America desk job and follow my passion of utilizing my creative, artistic abilities. I started out washing dishes at a small mom & pop bakery in Texas, desperate to learn. A year later, I moved to New Jersey and worked at various independent bakeries, learning everything I could along the way. A few years later, I had an opportunity to work in New York City with a tremendously talented cake decorator at an upscale grocer. I absorbed everything anybody was willing to teach and eventually, I’d worked myself up into management. In this capacity, I was able to speak directly with customers and hear firsthand about the limited options for people with dietary restrictions. It was heartbreaking to hear that mothers couldn’t find Birthday cakes for their kids because of allergies or intolerance. This began my journey to develop my own niche in the world to be able to help those that couldn’t ordinarily find treats and Birthday cakes.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met my friend and Co-Owner of Spooky’s Swirls, James Azrael through our mutual hobby of collecting screen used movie props and wardrobe. I have been a collector for over 25 years and over time had heard of James and his extensive collection. At one point, I had listed an item for sale on (at the time) a relatively new social media platform in a specific movie prop collectors group. James contacted me, interested in the item and we started talking. I was one of very few women in the hobby so I was very private with my personal life but something was very warm and welcoming about James and we instantly clicked. After talking to him, knowing that we lived thousands of miles apart, I found out that we had lived only a few miles away from each other in our childhood and he even attended a neighboring High School. Fast forward to about 10 years of online friendship, in the meanwhile, James had started his own Not for profit Horror and Sci-Fi Prop Preservation Association (The HSPPA) working to preserve our precious props and wardrobe as historical artifacts, James mentioned wanting to come to Arizona for a local horror convention and wanted to know if I’d be interested in exhibiting with him. We finally met in person in 2018 and the rest is history.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

For Spooky’s Swirls, I have found an increasing social media presence is key to increasing our clientele. We are lucky in that we are followed by not only the gluten free community but also the horror community and prop collecting community. We strive to have delicious gluten free options that are really good, period. Not just good for being gluten free. Most people can’t even tell the difference and many of our customers have spouses or children that don’t require gluten free but they prefer our items to conventional, so I truly feel that sets us apart.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.spookysswirls.com
• Instagram: @spookys_swirls
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/SpookysSwirls

Image Credits
Will forward images asap