After losing their jobs in 2013, Linda McAdams and her husband James heard it over and over: “Take a leap of faith.”
They looked to the past—or to Linda’s past to be specific—which included a candy-making company with her sister, Karen Daigle.
“I called [Karen] and said, ‘I want to start it over, do it full-time,'” McAdams says. “I asked her, ‘Are you in?’ She was in.”
Toward the end of the year, the sisters’ business, Truly Scrumptious Candies & Confections, was creating quite the following through word-of-mouth and by passing along treats to friends. They made everything from caramel apples to chocolate-covered strawberries, pastries to scones.
However, it was Daigle’s 30-year-old recipe for pretzel crunch that intrigued LSU Food Incubator director Gaye Sandoz. The sisters started working with Sandoz at the incubator last summer. After doing a test batch of the white chocolate, rice crispy-covered pretzels, Sandoz told the sisters she was hooked.
“That was July 3,” McAdams says. “We went back in the kitchen July 10 and made a couple batches. Then, by July 12, we were in our first farmers market. By the 28th, we were in Calvin’s Bocage Market. We had no idea it would happen that fast. It really almost happened overnight.”
Since focusing on the pretzel crunch product at the incubator, the sisters’ snack has landed in nine Associated Grocers-affiliated grocery stores and Drusilla Imports. Now, the team is preparing for an AG food show in late April that could help the pretzel crunch product potentially be in 200 stores.
For McAdams and Daigle, the leap of faith hasn’t given them a paycheck just yet, but they’re still surprised at how quickly the business has taken off.
“We’re still in that that surreal mode where we are thinking, ‘Is this really happening?'” McAdams says.
The pretzel crunch currently comes in three flavors—original white chocolate, tiger (which features drizzled purple and gold sugar) and cranberry almond. One 8-ounce bag retails for about $8. The sisters are currently working on two new flavors—chocolate chip and peanut butter.
For more information on Truly Scrumptious, click here or call 278-1080.
