We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christen Kugener a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Christen, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

The traditional and authentic French caramel recipe was shared with me after a year of training and traveling across France with the renowned French candy-maker M. Palix. The rich, creamy flavors of our award-winning sea salt caramels come from the proprietary recipe that calls for small batches of slow-cooking caramel in the copper kettles that were brought to America from France.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Christen Kugener of Le Caramel owns and operates her factory-boutique with her husband Vincent in the El Cajon suburb of San Diego. Since 2008, they have grown from a one-product business to over twenty caramel products. Le Caramel can be found in places such as the San Diego airport, online at Faire.com and gifted on military bases. The local family-run business has also expanded by purchasing several sister companies—including Pleasant Surprises and Branded Gifts Plus.

Vincent and I both studied business and finance in university. We quickly realized that a career in an office building with long hours and a repetitive workday was not for us. We were newly married and interested in starting a family. When the opportunity to train under M. Palix came about, we thought, “Why not?” We haven’t looked back!

As far as we know, we are the only authentic French caramel makers with a factory in the United States. As a local, community business, we strive to support other Californian vendors. We have developed partnerships with local suppliers to source our caramel ingredients and reach out to community food manufacturers and wineries to create our gorgeous gift boxes.

Our caramels come in many different flavors and seasonal offerings including our award-winning sea salt, chocolate, chocolate mint, coffee, pumpkin and more! They can all be purchased as traditional candies. The more popular flavors are also offered as creams and syrups—ideal for dipping fruit, drizzling over desserts and ice-cream and spreading onto pancakes and waffles.

We recently rebranded our product label, but much of the artwork in our store and on our website are original paintings by French artist Sue Bernabe, my amazing mom! She helped design our popular Destination Collection Gift Boxes. You should check them out on our website. They are so beautiful and unique!

We also provide wholesale opportunities that include product development, private label, co-packing and artisan products.

We are incredibly proud of our family and that includes our full-time, part-time and seasonal employees. We have been so fortunate to grow our brand with some of the first people we hired. Our candy man, Chris and caramel cook, Ana have been with us for many years and they are very much an integral part of our Le Caramel business.

Le Caramel is just one branch of our business though. We also own several other companies that complement the Le Caramel brand. We have a dedicated year-round staff of six onsite employees and another five that work remote. We always hire more for the Christmas season, which for us begins right about now. It is a lot of fun though and every day is different, which is exactly what we wanted when we entered this business.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses

Bringing Pleasant Surprises and Branded Gifts Plus into our family has allowed us to grow our employee family and presence nationwide.

Pleasant Surprises has reinvented the traditional gift basket with reusable containers, trending styles and great-tasting gourmet foods—like our very own French caramels! Gifts stand out with personalized branding, colors and a signature style. They are made-to-order, can include branded merch (from our very own Branded Gifts Plus) and are handcrafted with an individual, personal touch.

Branded Gifts Plus allows us to offer incentives like personalized cutting boards, mugs, clothing, bags, company swag, water bottles, hats—you name it, we can brand it—to any gift order! It really makes a gift stand-out when it is personalized and thoughtful.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We manufacture all of our caramel candies, creams and syrups onsite in our factory boutique located in East County San Diego. If you haven’t visited, you should stop by!

We are always ready to brainstorm and come up with a way to help our customers. Our authentic French caramel flavors and gift boxes are really unlike any other product out there. We’ve designed images for boxes of different cities and states to welcome convention attendees and gift around boardrooms. We’ve worked with companies to incorporate their own images and branding and then fill these gift boxes with branded products and caramels of their choosing.

We offer custom labels that match company logos, brands and photo images. Our candy bags are priced just right for conventions, conferences, realty appreciation, hospitality and celebrations like birthdays, showers and weddings.

One of our most costly (and funniest ongoing lessons) is about our labels. Vincent and I were raised in France. No matter how hard we try, we always seem to order the wrong-sized label whenever we change our packaging. We have ended up with our fair share of over-sized or miniscule labels. You’d think we would have figured it out by now, but c’est la vie!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.le-caramel.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/le_caramel_usa/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeCaramel/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/le_caramel
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF8knZ9_nQBY8fDDcoqSZlw/featured
• Other: https://pleasantsurprises.com https://www.brandedgifts.com

Image Credits
Yrsina Colangelo from YC Photography https://ycphotography.com/