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Sundaes Best Owner Katie Camarro featured in
Where Women Cook

Katie Camarro, owner of Sundaes Best, has been featured in the nationally distributed magazine Where Women Cook. The ten page article tells Katie’s story of how she started her business, her passion for what she does and the enjoyment she gets from cooking for family and friends. It also includes her recipe for ice cream pound cake using Sundaes Best Hot Fudge Sauce.

A synopsis of the publication appears online.

Every day is sundae
When you're eating Sundaes Best hot fudge sauce

by JANET REYNOLDS, life@home
First published in The Times Union of Albany, New York
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The tale begins with Jeff Shinaman's mother, Marilyn, who for years made a legendary hot fudge sauce for gifts and other occasions.

Katie Camarro, Shinaman's life and business partner at Sundaes Best, remembers the first time she met Shinaman's family - and Marilyn's hot fudge sauce. She had a spoonful of the sauce before bed. "The rest of the night I was thinking I have to go down and eat more," she says.

A self-employed marketing consultant, Camarro decided she wanted to make a gift for friends and clients when the holidays rolled around. "I believe in handmade gifts," she says. "I think gifts from the heart are best." She called Marilyn, who suggested the fudge sauce. Camarro made up 25 gift baskets - and got 15 calls back from people suggesting that she make this sauce commercially. That was eight years ago. "I started with a small batch and I've been selling out ever since," Camarro says.

That kind of story is featured on every label of Sundaes Best Hot Fudge Sauce. Howard's Hazelnut, for instance, is in honor of their mechanic, Howard, who keeps the '56 International Harvester Travelall pictured in their logo and used for local deliveries, running. Olivia's Orange is named after their niece, who loves oranges. Jean's Java is named for Katie's sister, who is obsessed with coffee in any form. "She's so hopped up we often wonder if caffeine runs through her veins," the label states, noting Jean generally starts and ends her day with a cup of joe. Russell's Landing Raspberry is named after the spot near Skaneateles Lake where Jeff's family picked wild raspberries every summer when he was a kid. Marilyn's Mint is named after Mom Shinaman, whose original hot fudge recipe started Sundaes Best, while Patty's Peanut Butter is named after Katie's mom, who used to eat nine peanut butter cups in one sitting. (She was also known to scoop a spoon in peanut butter, followed by the fudge sauce, to create her own peanut butter hot fudge sundae, but that's another story.)

For the first four years, Camarro traveled weekly to Fairfax, Vermont - 151 miles each way - to create the sauce in a cooperative commercial kitchen where she rented space. She also maintained her marketing business at the same time. Four years ago, sales were good enough for Camarro to drop her marketing business and rent commercial space closer to home. "Now I only drive four miles," she says. "It's the most fun I've ever had."

Sundaes Best started with one jar, one flavor. Now the company has seven flavors, two sizes and gift packages, as well as special promotional items such as wedding favors. "I was resistant to changing flavors but it helped us," Camarro says. "Expanding the line gave us more shelf space in the stores," adds Shinaman.

Fans can look for new flavors - and stories - later this year. Shinaman's Cinnamon is in the works. "All the men will be on that label," Camarro says. The holidays will feature Chazzy's Cherry, named for a nephew who loves cherries. Addy Campbell's Caramel will be in honor of a niece who hates all fruit, "if we can get the caramel to cooperate with the chocolate," Camarro says.

But regardless of how many flavors they add, one ingredient will remain the same: chocolate. "We do one product and we do it really well," Camarro says, noting they use real sugar rather than corn syrup.

Sundaes Best is carried in 400 stores nationally. The sauce has been featured on the Food Network a couple of times, once on Roker on the Road and once on Bobby Flay Throwdown. The sauce was also featured in Rachael Ray's magazine, Every Day with Rachael Ray. "It got us a lot of wholesale and retail customers," Camarro says of this national exposure, noting that 30 percent of their customers is repeat business.

Shinaman says they're always on the search for new retail outlets. In each shipment, they include a sheet asking the customer if he knows of a local store that might feature Sundaes Best. The customer wins because he won't have to pay for shipping in the future, while Sundaes Best wins because the company gets another retail outlet.

Camarro and Shinaman remain very connected to their local community as well. Their company provides donations for local charities as well as opportunities for local groups to sell the sauce as a fundraiser. "It's another great grass-roots marketing tool," Camarro says. "It's a nice way to stay connected to the community."

Camarro also spends a number of weekends doing the craft show circuit. "Spending afternoons in high school gyms from October through the holidays has been helpful to us," she says.

That's in between making sauce, of course. While she has some help, Sundaes Best is still very much a hands-on business. I've seen every jar that's been made the last eight years," she says, adding they still label by hand.

They do have hopes for expansion, though. This year will be the year of taking the Web site to the next level. "We get good wholesale inquiries from the Web," says Shinaman. They're also kicking around a brownie recipe. "I will not be baking however," Camarro says. And they're working on a sauce for Cascata Winery in Watkins Glen that uses their wine. "It's trial and error," Camarro says of their creation process. "It's very very fun."

The duo uses family members as testers, and they sample at craft fairs. "There are very few people who say no when you ask if they want to sample chocolate," Camarro says. "Many of our customers eat the hot fudge cold, believe it or not. It never touches ice cream."

Rachel Ray

The Post Star of Glens Falls, New York

A hot fudge empire topped off by profits
Husband, wife team finds big retail sweet tooth for their product

By CHRISTEN GOWAN, Staff writer
Albany Times Union
First published in print: Wednesday, January 21, 2009

WILTON - Just eight years after cooking her first batch of hot fudge, Katie Camarro is finding sweet success with new flavors and an ever-growing number of stores carrying her concoctions.

And she's presiding over an empire built on the sticky confection that is now sold at 400 locations around the nation.

"There's no recession in chocolate, I hope," she said.

Camarro, along with her husband and co-owner, Jeff Shinaman, recently expanded their business, Sundae's Best Hot Fudge, purchasing another kettle to cook hot fudge and adding two new flavors, Jean's Java and Patti's Peanut Butter.

"I still think of us as being a small, tiny entity because there's always so much to do," Camarro, of Greenfield Center, said of her growing business.

She and Shinaman plan to add caramel and cherry flavors to their menu of fudges.

Sundae's Best, which was first sold at Schuyler Pond Home and Garden store on Route 29 outside Schuylerville, is now sold in over 400 stores nationwide. Restaurants, including Longfellow's and Olde Bryan Inn in Saratoga Springs, feature the hot fudge sauce on their dessert menus.

The company's newest customer is Terrain at Home, a retailer owned by Urban Outfitters. By the end of the month, the home-and-style store expects to stock Sundae's Best at its flagship store in suburban Philadelphia.

The sauce is cooked in a commercial kitchen space on Northern Pines Road, where Camarro and several part-time employees make sauces two or three times per week.

They make about 1,000 jars at a time and turned out about 40,000 jars last year.

Camarro says the new 30-gallon kettle will allow greater experimentation with flavors, including development of a wine-flavored hot fudge for a vineyard in the Finger Lakes region.

Camarro, drawing on her background in marketing, works on new ways to get people to try Sundae's Best. She and her husband spend some weekends at craft and trade shows, offering samples to retail and wholesale customers. "It's a grass roots approach to marketing," she said.

Camarro said that diversifying between retail and wholesale business has helped her to feel less of a crunch in the current economic downturn.

Sundae's Best posted its best sales year in 2008, she said.

She says it's been rewarding to see the small enterprise grow into a nationwide product. "I really don't take a lot of time to go 'gee, wow.'" Camarro said. "It's really more universal than I ever thought it would be."