We recently connected with Hannah Gray and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Hannah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

When I was six months postpartum with my second child, I can vividly remember standing in my kitchen one afternoon. My husband had just gotten home from work, I was holding the baby, and my three year old was running around in circles. I told my husband I was going to start a candy business. The thought had come into my head that morning and it was like a light switch moment. There was no going back and I was going to be on this path.

I have been in the candy industry for over a decade, doing product innovation work for large consumer packaged goods companies (candy in the grocery store / convince stores) but decided to become a stay at home mom after I had my first child. I had missed the candy industry since the day I left it and felt like there was a void – both in my life and in the services I wanted to offer. Deciding to build my own business filled both of those.

Currently my business focuses on three main things: consulting for companies in the candy industry, my online platform One Sweet Mama, and my brand of candy that is sold in Greenville, South Carolina. My online platform shows home chefs how to make real candy at home as easily as making cookies. It also provides content creation services for other brands social media – such as food photography and short form videos.

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?

I have been in the candy industry for over a decade, doing product innovation work for large consumer packaged goods companies (candy in the grocery store / convince stores). My official title would be “confectionery scientist” but it’s basically like being Willy Wonka and making candy dreams come alive.

Currently my business focuses on three main things:
-consulting for companies in the candy industry
-my online platform One Sweet Mama
-my brand of candy that is sold in Greenville, South Carolina.

My online platform shows home chefs how to make real candy at home as easily as making cookies. It also provides content creation services for other brands social media – such as food photography and short form videos. You can find recipes and how to videos on my website and learn more about the behind the scenes of my work through my social media.

The brand of candy that I produce hits the sweet spot for adults who remember all of their favorites growing up, but are looking for something slightly more elevated. It’s all traditional flavors – no crazy pepper jelly or vegetable fillings, but rather taking favorite things and making them grow up a little bit. The Twix candy bar has a much larger piece of caramel than it’s namesake, with a butter based shortbread that you can actually taste. There’s an Oreo candy bar that will make you forget about the package of cookies in your pantry, peanut butter cups so big you can share them (but you won’t), and even custom candy bars you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

Two of my custom candy bars are my top sellers.
1. Richer than Bezos: a layered candy bar with a crispy brownie bottom, peanut butter cream filling, and dark chocolate ganache top layer. It’s cut into bars and dipped in milk chocolate. You can also find it inside a local ice cream at Clare’s Creamery – it sells out in record time though so you have to get to it early!
2. Peanut Butter Dream: a layered candy bar with a salted peanut caramel bottom, peanut butter nougat top, and dipped in milk or dark chocolate.

I love being able to create custom candy bars because it makes people realize candy can really be made in any flavors – there are more items out there than Snickers and Milky Way!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Oh boy, this could be really long! Social media is TOUGH but I didn’t have the budget to outsource it and had to learn everything myself. I started with investing in an online class that taught me how to take amazing food photos. I had to give my brand an authentic voice that people could really resonate with. Consistently posting and leaning into what people liked (looking at the back end metrics of posts) helped me grow.

I also reached out to a lot of local businesses asking to do collaborations. I specifically looked for businesses that had the same target audience as my business but had a different area of business – not candy or home bakers. I wanted their business to provide a product or service to my audience that they would see as valuable / something they wanted. In the collaboration I would make a custom confectionery item inspired by their business and do a giveaway with them. The giveaway would be for the candy and something from their business (typically a gift card). This giveaway post was then posted on my social media and their social media, which gave my account a lot of visibility to a local audience that would most likely be interested in my account as well. I provided all of the food photography / media and logistics of the giveaway for free. There was no cost to the business participating other than what they wanted to giveaway.

It was extremely fun and rewarding in multiple ways. It grew my business and I got to connect with local business owners.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

This is new to me but yes! I just had a section built out on my website for e-commerce and I also use Shopify that is integrated into Instagram.

I do not sell physical products. I sell digital downloads of recipes. I love it because once the download is made and posted, it truly is passive income.

The con so far is that these platforms take a pretty large percentage off the top and there is a monthly service fee to use them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.onesweetmama.com
• Instagram: onesweeetmama
• Facebook: onesweeetmama

Image Credits
all pictures of food taken by me (Hannah / One Sweet Mama) headshot only – Jack Roberts Photography