The Inspiration

It started with a trip to Hawaii. Everything we did centered around food: malasadas, plate lunch, manapua, poi. We ate and took turns reading the Tao of Pooh. We knew something was going to have to change. We would have to start from square one.

And then there was danger. Every good story needs danger. Danger on the plane ride back when we hit code four turbulents, which John secretly knew meant there would be damage to the plane. There was that woman crying behind us, and the woman in the next aisle trying to gulp down her Chablis. By the look on her face, she was clearly not amused. She had really hoped to savor it; instead, it was down the hatch. All the way, I’m holding John’s hand, visualizing the plane jetting smoothly through the air pockets. Finally, we were safe.

I had been reading about starting a catering company. I had heard about this woman who had set up a small kitchen in a Home Depot shed and was baking apple pies once an hour and putting them on the ledge for anybody to take. Why did she do this? For art. That was cool. We had already catered our own wedding reception in Fall of 2002 and really impressed ourselves at how we didn’t know what we were doing, but still managed to pull it off. That was a rush.

We had a surplus of apples in the Fall of 2003. I had this idea of a caramel apple tartlet, and had baked a batch of them in muffin tins. John had a pot-luck at his work, and told me I should bake more of the apple tartlets, and pretend I was a dessert catering company. We went to dinner at the Ram sports bar and talked about what we would do. I thought about the woman baking apple pies and what it meant to be a woman and more importantly a girl. I thought about the essence of baking as an indulgence as opposed to cooking as a necessity. For me, baking was just that little extra something that made a meal memorable; to end it on a sweet note (corny as that sounds). I wanted simplicity and it was sitting right there on the table in front of us. A packet of sugar. That was it.

Turns out there were no other bakeries in the US using the name Sugar. There were a few with sugar in their name, but certainly none with just the word sugar. And there were certainly no other bakeries called Sugar in Seattle at the time. I remember that jittery feeling of excitement to want something and simultaneously realize I might be able to have it too. So I cut out some business cards, baked several dozen apple tarts, and sent my husband to his pot luck with my second batch of apple tarts. The response was very positive.