We were lucky to catch up with Martha Bourlakas recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Martha thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

I love this question.

Stories have always been important to me, and I have always written to interweave my inner and outer lives. I received my MFA in Creative Nonfiction in 2012, and wrote my thesis, which later became my first book, Love Feast: Together at the Table, on the joys and difficulties of raising a child with ID and autism.

After being the primary caretaker for our daughters, at age 50, I began Storied Goods. I had a couple of side hustles along the way, and now wanted a product-based business that would celebrate and honor the stories we all bring to the literal and figurative tables of our lives. The mission of Storied Goods is to create joy, compassion, and connection through shared beverages, food, and stories.

The name of my company was important to me, because I was not just a business owner who started making Sugar Cubes to sell. I was a woman, at mid-life, with a complicated journey, who wanted to do something new and create a significant business. Our culture/patriarchy teaches us that women are on a downhill trajectory at midlife, instead of celebrating the richness and wisdom we bring to the table. Through joyful moments over shared beverages and food, I want to celebrate all of our stories, and encourage more people, especially women, to do the same.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Storied Goods makes naturally flavor-infused Sugar Cubes for cocktails, coffee, and tea, www.storied-goods.com. Our current flavors are Rose Petal, for Champagne and tea; Orange-Cherry for whiskey, mulled wine, tea; Cinnamon-Vanilla for coffee and coffee cocktails. Our brand new flavor is Lavender Lemon for tea, gin, vodka. SG Cubes are delicious, shelf-stable, require no refrigeration, beautifully packaged in recyclable tin, and contain less than a teaspoon of sugar.

We (obviously) love our Cubes and the touch of sweet they add to beverages, but what we really love are the celebrations around our products, the joy they bring. Our Cubes elevate everyday events, like sharing a cup of coffee. Sometimes we get so lost in the mundane tasks of the day, that we don’t give ourselves permission to stop and celebrate the small wins. Our products help create these celebrations.

I have always had part-time baking businesses along the way–provided baked goods for an inn, produced and sold coffee cakes–so making Cubes, a candy-making process, was natural for me. I began giving these Cubes as gifts, and they really caught on. Right after I started the company, the Rose Petal Sugar Cube won a Best of Virginia, and that first win gave me the energy to grow the company.

Our business is unique, in that we are focused not just on selling products, but on our customers’ joy and celebratory moments. Celebrations are a way to make people feel seen and heard, and we are out here trying to create celebrations everywhere! We want to honor our customers, hear their stories, celebrate with them.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

I began making all of the Sugar Cubes myself–spending a lot of time getting the recipe right, sourcing ingredients, finding the right molds, which are Italian, for the Cubes. I continued to manufacture and ship Cubes throughout the pandemic by myself, because hiring was limited and complicated during that time.

After the pandemic, our sales kept increasing, and I was spending more and more time producing Cubes. My family helped bake, package, and ship, when possible, especially around holidays. Then, with the help of a co-packing consultant, I started tracking my time, and realized that all my daytime hours were spent in production, leaving me little time to focus on other areas of the business like sales and marketing. Not only did I miss the sunlight, but I wanted the business to scale.

With my consultant’s help, we began interviewing co-packers to manufacture the Cubes. The process took several months–lots of trial and error–but we finally found a match, and they began producing and packaging Cubes. We have been working with them for about six months now, and it has changed everything in the business. Their efficient production and packaging has freed me to focus on sales and marketing. This process is allowing us to scale in immeasurable ways. And I really enjoy seeing sunlight now.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

As a way to increase brand awareness and help support our retail partners–and because we like any excuse to have fun with people–we started doing in-store tastings for customers. This has definitely become our most effective strategy for growing our clientele. Our products are very visual and tactile, so it helps customers to be able to see and taste them. People get so excited when they get to taste them and see our packaging.

As soon as we get to hear people’s stories and they get to hear ours, they connect with us, and become loyal customers. This goes back to keeping our company human–people-and-story-focused, instead of just product-focused. People have become committed to our company, as they have seen the way we want to connect and celebrate with them. And that is our favorite story of all!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.storied-goods.com
• Instagram: @storied_goods
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/storiedgoodsllc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martha-bourlakas-1a6a42b2/

Image Credits
All photo creds, @Anna_Kariel