Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Paula Even Trenda. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Paula thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
Back in late 2004, my sister saw an advertisement for a “Certified Chocolatier” course. Since she knew I loved to cook and bake, she shared this with me. This led to taking the class and enjoying learning about the different taste profiles of chocolate, how to work with chocolate, and create my own flavors and candies. This began a fun little side-gig of candy making for friends and family for the next few years from my home and then from our local private schools kitchen. Fast forward to January 2014 when I was making and selling Christmas Candy at a variety of pop-up markets, craft fairs, and to family and friends. My job that paid the bills wasn’t exciting any longer and I felt called to open my own candy shop. Starting out, turning my dreams into reality seemed daunting. Luckily, our community was home to a Business Incubator that offered free business training and consulting. From their executive director, I was introduced to a local Initiative Foundation that assisted entrepreneurs in our area with funding and free training sessions. In addition, they connected me with the correct contacts at the city and state level for inspections, food building codes, and licensing.
Starting in January of 2014 through our opening at the end of August 2014, it seemed like every hour I wasn’t working at my paying job was spent navigating starting my business. Hours were spent calling and emailing potential suppliers, meeting with inspectors, signing leases and loans, and cleaning, painting, and picking up equipment.
The weeks leading up to our grand opening were a blur of sleepless nights, long hours, and hard work. Navigating retail set-up, kitchen set-up and inspections, plus planning for opening was a lot on your plate. The two-weeks leading to our opening, we spent easily 15 hours a day getting things organized. Luckily, lots of friends and family were willing to volunteer their time to help get Curly Girlz Candy of the ground.
Things were going well some days and felt awful other days. We moved into a new larger location in February 2017. Valentine’s week is not the week to be reopening. Unfortunately, our January opening was pushed back because of contractor issues. This was all happening during our launch of our sugar-free line of gourmet candies. How we came up with creating the sugar-free line is a story in and of it’s self and full of many new and challenging issues!
Paula, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
The original Curly Girl–Paula Even Trenda–loves candy. Always has. Always will. Paula grew up in the kitchen with her grandmothers and mother as her guides. Paula loved the magic of cooking–the process of creating something new out of different ingredients. She loved the learning process of trying new recipes and new techniques.
Paula’s introduction to making chocolate candies was thanks to an elderly neighbor. Every holiday Paula would spend hours at her house helping her to make candies for all her family and friends. Paula loved seeing the joy these treats brought the gift recipients.
As an adult, Paula rediscovered the art of candy making through her extensive business travels. European artisan chocolates were her favorite. Paula enrolled in the online Ecole Chocolate School in British Columbia, Canada while expecting her oldest “curly girl”. Friends and family were always eager to help in sampling Paula’s homework assignments like truffles and caramels.
These homework assignments became highly requested gifts. The gifts became requests for custom orders. The custom orders became boxes and holiday trays of goodies. Inspired by the positive feedback, Paula opened her first retail space in August 2014 after resigning from her job.
Curly Girlz Candy’s specialty of sugar-free chocolates came from customer requests. Paula never cared for the sugar-free candy that her diabetic grandmother kept on hand. Paula set out to create healthier sugar-free confections for those who couldn’t safely eat sugar or who preferred to reduce their sugar intake. There had to be a way to make those European style truffles and caramels something that could be enjoyed by everyone.
Paula created a candy that is kid-approved, doesn’t include Maltitol (and other similar artificial sweeteners), artificial ingredients, and is keto and diabetic friendly.
Curly Girlz Candy launched its sugar-free line with four flavors of soft, creamy caramels. In 2019, Paula chose to specialize in gourmet sugar-free confections. From her crunchy toffee to her soft caramels and unique offerings like hemp brittle, Curly Girlz is your source for small batch candies made by an independent small business. Every one of her gourmet sugar-free confections provides one hundred percent of the indulgence you crave and none of the guilt you dread.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
I started in 2004 with a class to become a certified chocolatier. This turned into a tasty hobby making chocolate and candy gifts for friends and family that blossomed into a small side hustle in 2007. Starting with creating truffles, caramels, and toffees in my home kitchen and selling at local markets to moving into renting kitchen space on weekends from a local school, to opening our first retail store in fall 2014, it’s been a whirlwind. The jump from home kitchen to rental kitchen was a big step brought about by requests from local coffee shops and gift shops to offer our candies for sale to their clients. The jump from rental kitchen to our own kitchen and retail shop happened because of the rental not having air conditioning and spending more time working on orders than I had hours in the day after working 45 hours at a full-time job. Something had to give and I decided the full-time job had to go! Then 2017 brought bigger changes with a new, larger location and the successful launch of our gourmet sugar-free line. There are plenty of days I’d like to close shop and go back to a steady paycheck, but then think about how doing this is a labor of love and I love creating new products with clean ingredients that make people happy.
Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?
We sell primarily through our own site, but do have a few select online partners. We tried Amazon in the past but as a small operation, that was tough to navigate and you almost need a full-time person just to manage your listings, which we couldn’t afford. Add that to the other rules, percentage taken, ad spend needed to get listed at the top and it was less expensive to build our own following.
We are looking into hiring a firm to take over all of our Ecommerce listings, including adding Amazon and similar sites, to continue to help us grow and expand, but that is still in talks and nothing is set up yet.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.curlygirlzcandy.com
- Instagram: curlygirlzmn
- Facebook: facebook.com/curlygirlzcady
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paula-trenda-3a206a165/
Image Credits
Don Hicks Photography