Articles
8 February 2012

Over the Top

by Sarah Ryther Francom

08 February 2012—

It started with chocolate: a rich, creamy fudge sauce that ladies in 1932 Yonkers would buy by the pot-full. It has grown into an established Utah-based business that has found a niche market in all-natural dessert sauces.

            Sondra Latham, president of Tom’s Gourmet Foods, founded the company in 2002, 70 years after her father first developed the fudge sauce to attract customers in Yonkers. “He and his brother had opened a pharmacy there called the Broad Oak Pharmacy and, as all good pharmacies did in New York at that time, they had a soda fountain, and they created this really wonderful dessert sauce,” she says. “My dad came up with a recipe of their own that they could use exclusively there at the pharmacy. It was very well received. Women would come in and get pots of it for their bridge club, stuff like that. It became a family recipe.”
Six years ago, Latham decided to see if that family recipe could be bottled for success. At first, she sold the fudge sauce at the Park City Farmer’s Market. She found customers, but “We had many people come up and say, ‘Can’t you make a caramel?’” she says. “So we went to work and created a caramel sauce that has become very, very popular.” And while at the farmer’s market, Latham’s booth was across from Thompson’s Pecan Farm. She asked him if she could use some of his pecans to demonstrate her caramel sauce. “As soon as I tasted it, I thought, ‘Wow. We have got to try putting these together.’”
A little trial and error revealed that the combination tasted best if the two products are cooked together so the oils in the nuts mix with the caramel. “That gives it almost a pecan pie flavor,” she says.
She also experimented with other sauces and now sells seven: the original fudge sauce, dark fudge, caramel, caramel pecan, fudge pecan, fudge almond and very berry – a combination of strawberry, raspberry, Marionberry and blueberry.
The sauces are all natural. “We use Guittard chocolate – it’s the same chocolate See’s Candy uses,” Latham says. They start with what’s called the chocolate liquor, which is just the little chocolate discs and don’t use cocoa in the products at all. “It’s real chocolate, fresh cream, real butter, pure vanilla. There’s no additives, no preservatives, emulsifiers, artificial colorings or artificial flavorings,” she says. “It’s an all-natural product, and it is the quality that you would expect of something that was created 70 years ago.”
While the farmer’s market allowed her to test public reaction to her product, her involvement with Utah’s Own brought the Tom’s Gourmet sauces into more than 40 Associated Foods grocery stores, including Macey’s, Dan’s and Harmon’s, she says, and the Utah’s Own-sponsored radio advertising raised brand awareness as well.
“Utah’s Own really has been extremely beneficial in my case. It was through Utah’s Own and participating in their program that initially I got into these grocery stores. I’ve experienced some really nice growth this year. That tells me that the audience is growing for this type of product here in Utah. I’m very excited to say it’s succeeding in Utah, because Utah is not the easiest state to succeed in. We have big families here and that food money has to stretch pretty far.”
Competing with mass-produced dessert sauces is difficult, she acknowledges. “As far as price, I’m absolutely not competitive. The only way I truly am competing is on quality and on the fact that it is a natural product without additives. It’s truly a high-end gourmet product. We’ve found a niche there in the grocery store where there wasn’t a lot of choice for an all-natural, high-end, gourmet product.”
In 2008, Latham will continue to pour it on for Tom’s Gourmet. She hopes that her attendance at a food show in San Diego in January will help her expand into the West Coast market, and she also is working on a double dark fudge sauce that she plans to release this year, as well as a couple of lower-sugar products.
“My customers love to share it as gifts, and they tell their friends about it and that, bottom line, is really where the success comes from,” she says.


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