Enterprise: Sweet Tooth Marshmallows
What this young gun is up to: The producer of ‘soft-as-a-cloud’ marshmallows has tripled productivity in two years and garnered a series of awards.
The inspiration behind Patrick Dale founding his business came in November 2021. Patrick, aged just 10 at the time, was in a supermarket with his mother and asked her, “Why are there no chocolate marshmallows, and why do pink and white marshmallows lack flavour?” Mum Cara’s response was, “Good question, I don’t know, why don’t you look into it?”
Trawling local supermarkets and stores and unable to find flavoured marshmallows, Patrick and Cara started testing their own recipes. “We found that to achieve soft-as-a-cloud marshmallows there is a secret temperature we needed to reach, and that humidity and air temperature impact on the time it takes the marshmallows to rest,” Patrick explains.
“Patrick is working to get his products into local cafes by the middle of the year.”
In January 2022, having received what Patrick describes as “amazing” feedback from friends and family to whom he gave samples, he felt confident enough to start selling his marshmallows at local markets on the mid-north coast of NSW around his hometown of Laurieton. “I worked with my older sister on the logo and name of my business, with the goal of expanding in due course into other confectionery items, with Sweet Tooth being the core brand name,” Patrick explains.
He has since expanded his range to include hot chocolate bombs, rocky road, marshmallow pops and marshmallow hearts, among other treats. The enterprise is a family affair, with Partick at the helm – his mum works with him in the kitchen, his dad packages his marshmallows, and his sister helps with marketing and signage.
Having started out with just four flavours of marshmallows on his market stall, Sweet Tooth now offers 18 and that number continues to grow as customers give their feedback and request particular flavours. “Older customers enjoy foods they recall from when they were kids, as was the case with our lemon- and lime- flavoured products, whose launch coincided with the business’ second birthday last year, alongside mango and passionfruit marshmallows, which flew off the market stalls.”
The popularity of these marshmallows has meant a tripling of both volume of marshmallows produced and profitability, and the bright green marquee he sells from is now seen at markets up and down the mid-north coast. Patrick has taken on a non-family member to help at the markets and has purchased a cutting device from Italy that will enable him to cut a whole tray of marshmallows in under a minute.
Looking to continue his expansion, Patrick is working to get his products into local cafes by the middle of the year and his business plan culminates in his marshmallows being on the shelves of supermarket chains within five years.
Patrick’s progress has earned him wide-scale recognition. In September 2023, he was one of five young Australian entrepreneurs to be given the opportunity to showcase their business to the world in Melbourne at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress; two months later, he was named the 2023 National Tweenprenuer of the Year at the Teens in Business Awards, having been a runner-up in the same awards the previous year, with the judges noting a “significant growth in [Patrick] as a person and business owner”. He also won a gold medal for his chocolate marshmallows and silver medals for both his coffee lamingtons and his vanilla bean-flavoured ones at the Royal Sydney Fine Food Show Awards.
“Being recognised at these awards has led to me being invited as one of two producers to showcase my products at the Sydney Royal Easter Show,” Patrick enthuses. “Presenting there will help take my business to the next level and offer further exposure to new opportunities.”
This article first appeared in issue 44 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine
