Julie Brown is a candy freak—she eats some every day, graduating from childhood Gummi Bears to handmade marshmallow-stuffed caramels from Hammond’s Candies in Denver. Early this year she put that passion to work, combining her love of sweets with some marketing savvy to start up City Caramels, artisanal caramels in flavors she says are inspired by the city’s distinctive neighborhoods.
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The coffee shops of Bucktown sparked a coffee-flavored caramel studded with bits of chocolate-covered espresso beans (though the label refers to the long-gone goatherds that gave the neighborhood its name). Pilsen’s caramel celebrates the neighborhood’s Mexican population and Brown’s own heritage (she’s half Mexican): it’s flavored with Abuelita-brand chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, and ancho chiles and strewn with pepitas. Old Town, the most recent addition, is plain caramel with big chunks of pretzel embedded in it. “I wanted an old favorite, and pretzels have been around forever,” Brown, who’s 34, says. “They were created by Bavarian monks and that ties in with the Bavarian style of the landmark Saint Michael’s Church.” It’s turned out to be her most popular flavor so far.
Before this venture, Brown’s experience in the food industry was limited to the first job she held after graduating from the University of Illinois in 1998. She was a sales rep for Hershey’s, which sent her to Iowa, where her main customer was the Hy-Vee supermarket chain. “It was a unique opportunity, because they placed huge orders directly with Hershey’s, and I got to do tons of displays, promotions, and even product launches, such as for Bites,” she says. “I was there for two and a half years and loved the job—but didn’t like living in Iowa.”
