Walk me through how you and your husband settled on cotton candy as your medium. What makes cotton candy so special?
I always wanted to create a product that attracts people all around and that symbolizes fun and joy, and connection. Around eight years ago, I stumbled on cotton candy. I was a volunteer at a nonprofit in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. No one wanted to use this cotton candy machine for this event, because it was too intimidating.
I started using it, and it was so much fun. I did some extensive research later on and found out that cotton candy is becoming, like, a very popular staple. There’s so many people all over the world that have cotton candy businesses that vary in different ways. We did our own research, because I wanted to know how we could do it here in the Triangle.
It was lots of trial and error. It’s true what they say: Especially when you’re in business, time really does teach you so much, because how we operate now is completely different than how we were operating in the beginning. We have so much knowledge now—not only about operating a business sustainably, but also we know a lot about sugar. And that’s really cool.
So what makes a good cotton candy flavor?
We always treat it like a problem that we need to solve, especially when it comes to our candy flavors. We have had over 40 flavors over a span of three years. But we don’t want to overwhelm our consumers with all those flavors; that makes it seem manufactured, and it loses the quality and the specialness of each flavor.
Each flavor is very important to us and extremely intentional. We don’t have an original kind of candy flavor, like blue raspberry or cherry—the original kind of candy that you would see at carnivals and fairs.
We try to make it like food science—almost like pairing it with food and drinks. We have our staple flavors that we’ve had since the beginning and that we have throughout the year: mango and salted caramel and lavender, which I love so much. We switch it up every season, and we match our flavors with the weather, or how people are feeling.
We are going to be switching our menu this week for the first time this year. We have a lot of fall/winter flavors. We are going to have a pumpkin spice. I don’t want to say it all, but we have lots of Christmas and holiday flavors that we’re gonna be launching.
Do you happen to have a personal favorite flavor?
When you’re in the candy business, you don’t really eat your product. I already consumed so much cotton candy in the beginning that I actually don’t consume it at all anymore. But we recently came out with a candy corn flavor for Halloween, and it was like a one-time thing. We were giving away free candy for Halloween, and I wanted it to be unique and special. We had this candy corn flavor with hints of warm vanilla in it, and it was so good. It didn’t taste like actual candy corn, you know, but that was a favorite.
When we started Wonderpuff, we didn’t have a lot of money. We just completed our Kickstarter this week, and we will be getting $20,000 going straight to Wonderpuff. We are both so excited, because for the first time in our business, we can operate it the way we want to. We are opening our storefront soon, and I want it to be like a Willy Wonka factory with lots of pink and glitter and loud music. I can’t wait for the community to see what we’re going to be building soon.
Find more information at https://wonderpuff.square.site.
This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Morin’s name. We regret the error.
Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.
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