Treat Maker Sinks Teeth Into Wholesale Business

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Treat Maker Sinks Teeth Into Wholesale Business
Going Nuts: Pauline Marasek with brittle at Pauline’s Premier Sweets in Burbank.

On a Tuesday afternoon this month, a woman parked in front of Pauline’s Premier Sweets in Burbank and left the store soon after with $800 worth of treats.

While the small retailer is used to churning out big orders for individual customers – the shop sells 2,000 pounds of brittle a month during the holiday season – things are about to get even busier, according to founder Pauline Marasek, who is cranking up the company’s wholesale business after signing an expanded distribution deal with Hudson News parent Hudson Group and Burbank’s Menesweet bakery, which will open this month.

Marasek said the shift to wholesale is actually in line with her original plans, though she wound up taking a different path after buying the Olive Avenue storefront in 2005 to transition her side business selling to friends and family into a full-time job.

“I didn’t really want to open a retail store,” Marasek, 60, said. “I just wanted to open a kitchen to do just wholesale, but it didn’t end up working out that way.”

The confectionery, formerly known as Pauline’s Handmade Brittle, built its reputation on the sugary snack, which comes in a variety of flavors including such offerings as Mocha Choco Latte. Marasek expanded the shop’s offerings in 2013 and changed the company’s name and logo last year to reflect the change.

“People associated it with break-your-teeth peanut brittle,” she said. “A lot of times people refused to try it. I was adding new products to the line and that’s (also) why I didn’t want to keep the name.”

The rebranding helped grab the attention of Hudson, which was looking for an L.A.-area supplier for its local airport stores.

Question of scale

Expanding into wholesale operations can be difficult for restaurants, said Jerry Prendergast, founder of Culver City restaurant consultancy Prendergast & Associates. He explained that while casting a wider distribution network increases revenue, it also leads to tighter margins.

“A 200-square-foot (space) might cost you about $1,200 a month, and now you move into a 1,500-square-foot commercial kitchen that will cost you $6,000 a month – your overhead has gone up five times,” Prendergast said. “My profit is gone because I haven’t increased my production enough to cover the cost of my new kitchen, but I can’t produce more unless I move into a bigger facility.”

Marasek acknowledged that she would have to hire more staff during the holidays, but for her the key to maintaining healthy margins is ensuring that her ingredient costs remain low, which she hopes to ensure by buying in bulk. Case in point: When pecan prices rose to $8 a pound five years ago, Marasek decided to start making peanut brittle because it was cheaper.

First bite

Marasek first started cooking up her mother’s brittle recipe in the 1990s, gifting it to friends and co-workers at Christmas, while working as a bartender and waiting tables. She kicked things up a notch in 2001 after getting a request from a friend at work.

“One of my co-workers said, ‘I don’t want a little nugget. How much would you charge me for 3 pounds?’” Marasek said. “I charged her $10 and she started handing them out and more people started to order (and) before I knew it, within two weeks I had made 75 pounds at home.”

And so the business was born. Before buying the space in Burbank, Marasek rented out the kitchen at the now-defunct North Hollywood restaurant Marcello’s for four years to meet demand.

While she declined to disclose revenue figures, Marasek said big orders are routine. For instance, many customers order 20 pounds of brittle without even calling ahead.

Peanut brittle costs $18 a pound, while flavored pecan brittle runs $17.50 a pound. Customers can also stock up on fudge, caramel pecan popcorn, and hand-dipped pecan brittle pretzels. Marasek launched a line of wine-flavored jams this summer, which she hopes to expand into other retail shops.

Shortly after the company’s rebranding last year, Hudson contacted Marasek to see if she’d be interested in selling her products at its Hollywood Burbank Airport location. Marasek agreed, and its brittle appeared on shelves that July. A year later, Hudson started selling Marasek’s snacks at its store in Los Angeles International Airport’s Terminal 7. In addition to her deal with Menesweet, Marasek’s products can also be found at Joan’s on Third’s locations in Mid-City and Studio City.

Marasek said she plans to continue reaching out to retail shops in hopes of expanding her distribution even further. She’s also considering a move to a new location close to Riverside Drive in Burbank.

“I want to stay in Burbank but go to an area that has a lot of foot traffic like Riverside – where everybody is walking,” she said.

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