The Best of the Best
Each week we will seek out the best of the best in every imaginable business and explore the secret to their success. Prepare to gain insights and perspectives that will help you propel your business and personal growth forward. Hear how these leaders started, the stumbling blocks they overcame, and what’s next in their journey.
The Best of the Best
A Taste of Ambition and Almonds at Sweet Ashley's with Rob Lawson
Who knew a mishap in the kitchen could lead to a chocolatey revolution? Rob Lawson, co-founder of Sweet Ashley's Chocolatier, joins us to recount the luscious tale of transforming an accident into the legend that is Schuylkill Mud—a toffee, peanut butter, pretzel, and potato chip sensation. With nearly two decades of crafting confections, Rob and his wife Connie have not just made chocolates; they've woven their family's heart and soul into a business that celebrates their daughter's namesake. This episode is a testament to the endurance of a dream sparked in Connie's Girl Scout days and nurtured through every obstacle, including the stormy seas of a pandemic. Rob gives us an inside look at their triumphs, the creativity that fuels their shop, and the importance of balancing business with family values, like closing doors on a bustling day to attend their child's graduation.
Step behind the counter of local charm where the aroma of cocoa mingles with the laughter of customers, and every almond is a spicy surprise waiting to tickle your palate. This episode is a cozy chat about the importance of an in-store experience that internet shopping can't replicate and the thoughtful attention that goes into every personalized package of chocolates—perfect for all gift-giving occasions. We even uncover a health secret: dark chocolate might just be your next cough suppressant! So, if your sweet tooth is calling, or you're moved by stories of small businesses with big hearts, you'll want to savor every moment of our conversation with Rob Lawson and perhaps get inspired to place an order for their all-time favorite, chocolate-covered strawberries—just be sure to call ahead!
Here we are, another episode on the best of the best. Therese, who do you have here with you today?
Speaker 2:I have a sweet visitor today. See what I did there.
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 2:I have Rob Lawson from Sweet Ashley's Chocolatier and he is the best chocolatier out there. So, him and his wife, amazing. So, rob, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 1:So I'm Rob Lawson, my wife and I own sweet ashley's chocolate in roars ford, limerick, whatever you want to call it um right on the border. Right on the border um, we opened up in november of 2005, so we're coming up on our 20th anniversary unbelievable um, and the business sweet ash's is named after our daughter, who is now 25.
Speaker 1:Time flies. We actually named the business after her when she was eight months old, so technically we've been in business 24 years but had the store now for almost 20. We started out on Main Street in Roersford. It's been 20 years of ups and downs and all arounds, and the market and COVID so many things that I thought we would never see and or experience.
Speaker 2:I think it's interesting. We met over 20 years ago and became friends from Rivercrest right and then, of course, then the chamber and all the networking groups and all these things that we did and we just love what they do and they've so many new products. But I was going to say one thing before we got started. I thought it was interesting when you just said it's named after your daughter.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And that was 20 years ago, and we named a racehorse after our daughter.
Speaker 1:That's correct. 20 years ago. We're both coming up on our anniversary at the same time, so see folks there's something about naming your child, right. Absolutely, and the things we do for our kids you know.
Speaker 2:I thought that was pretty funny. Um, but why don't you tell them about this one? My daughter's favorite chocolate is Schuylkill mud. The Schuylkill mud We've got to talk about Schuylkill mud, because we're talking about the best of the best, and this is by far.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So Schuylkill mud is an interesting thing. Um, it's really taken off. It's become over the years, our most popular piece. Um, for forever pretzels were our most popular. I'm going to say in the last two years probably, the mud has now surpassed pretzels. It's the best mistake that we ever made.
Speaker 2:I love it Tell us about this mistake.
Speaker 1:So we used to make a product it was a pretzel that had toffee bits on top. But the problem with toffee is if it's exposed to air it starts to get soft. Now I recently learned that I guess some people like soft toffee. That's not our jam. We like it crunchy. So in an effort to fix that problem, my wife had the idea of dipping the pretzels, putting the toffee on, letting it set up and then re-dipping to cover the toffee. It created two problems A, the pretzel piece was entirely too large.
Speaker 1:Okay, Yep yep, it was a meal at that point, not a snack, but in the meantime a lot of bits of toffee dropped off into the kettle. Oh, okay, so here she did a run. Now we're looking at a kettle that had at the time, I mean, it wasn't a ton, but it was like 10 pounds of chocolate in it with all this toffee mixed in. Well, we didn't want to throw it away, sure, so we just started adding things.
Speaker 2:And tell us what's in there.
Speaker 1:So the Schuylkill Mud? It's a combination of toffee, peanut butter, pretzel and potato chip. Oh God that sounds so good. Salty, sweet and crunchy. You know it covers all the food groups.
Speaker 2:Yes, it does.
Speaker 1:It does and it's just taken off. I'm going to say it was probably maybe 10 years ago that we actually trademarked the name, Because in the chocolate world there's not much you can call your own.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Everybody makes buttercreams. Everybody makes caramels, salted caramels we're the only ones that make skugelmutt, skugelmutt.
Speaker 2:I love it and it's so relatable.
Speaker 1:Right Right now, we're actually in the process of trying to come up with some equipment to help us make more of it faster. Currently, to date, my wife Connie she is the only one that makes the mud and she hand dollops all of it.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh and we're talking thousands upon thousands of pounds well, I think we should take a moment to talk about connie right, because she is amazing. She's an amazing businesswoman too, um, but very creative she is.
Speaker 1:She's definitely the creative force behind it. Um, we wouldn't have any of this without her, because my career was in the golf industry. So far from chocolate. Yes, now I make a lot of chocolate.
Speaker 2:This was her passion.
Speaker 1:This was her passion. As the story goes, she just naturally knew how to make chocolate, and it all started when she was in Girl Scouts. I think and don't hold me to it, I think she was nine years old or something like that on a Girl Scout trip, and that's when it started. And that's when it all started.
Speaker 1:So, it's been a long journey, you know, and then the business kind of evolved from there Well, flash forward, we got married, had Ashley. Where well, flash forward, we got married, had Ashley and my wife always made chocolate for the holidays for our family as gifts, you know, gift baskets. We were poor, yeah, been there.
Speaker 2:done that A very young couple with a child.
Speaker 1:You know we didn't have a whole lot of money for gifts so we figured we'd make everybody their gifts. She was in the restaurant industry at the time and she got out of the restaurant industry, ended up in pharma and we had money.
Speaker 2:Really cool.
Speaker 1:So we bought everybody gifts.
Speaker 2:And they were like we want our chocolate.
Speaker 1:Everybody was so mad. I have an uncle who's an imposing figure and Christmas was at his house and he actually banished us pretty much to the living room where nobody was, because we didn't have his chocolate. So you know, not long after that, my wife was struggling with some of the corporate things going on, got passed up on a couple of promotions and wasn't satisfied. We'll say so. We just said all right, you know what, and at the time I think we were in our early 30s we said if we don't do this now, we may never do it. Obviously, people like it. There's a demand. We got banished at Christmas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good measure.
Speaker 1:So we started looking for a store, we saw a spot on Main Street that looked perfect. As fate would have it. Our original location on Main Street was actually a candy store in the 50s.
Speaker 2:Oh really, yes, I did not know that it was called Miller's Candies.
Speaker 1:Okay. So it kind of went full circle. We walked in the building. There's scalloped shelves and very much the feel that we were looking for, and when talking to the landlord, whose family had owned the building since the 60s, he informed us that it was a candy store. So we're like, all right, this is meant to be.
Speaker 2:It's like meant to be.
Speaker 1:This is perfect. You know, as time went on, we grew, space was getting to be an issue. Parking was a challenge.
Speaker 2:Even space for production.
Speaker 1:Space for production. Wow, that still hasn't moved.
Speaker 2:Okay, still there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not on main street. Production is actually on lewis road. Okay, um but um, we decided it's time to to move up I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:It's a success story um well, we're still still growing, still growing I love it is your daughter involved in the business at all.
Speaker 1:So, ashley doesn't have a ton of interest um in the business. I can say that one thing I would probably change we had to do it all over again. I don't know that I would open a store, um with my daughter's name on it within the school district. Yes, that she goes to school, yeah, no, kids can be um, and I think it was a little bit of a turn off. Now, as she's gotten older, um, you know, she graduates college, um, finally okay, nice in may may 10th, I think.
Speaker 1:Um, she's starting to come back. Yeah, like she'll help us out behind the scenes. Okay, um, social media stuff, which is something that she's going to school for. And you know, more paperwork, computer type stuff.
Speaker 2:She's getting a little bit of the bug.
Speaker 1:She's getting a little bit of bug of it. And she also, you know, as our kids mature, she's becoming fully aware that she's been able to do the things that she's able to do because of our business. So you know it helps. It's coming back.
Speaker 2:I like it yay right, such a good thing. I saw you brought some chocolates with you. I did. We were at an event this, uh, the last few weeks, and it was for pope john paul high school. It was called savor the flavor, and you're there every year. You're a great supporter of local businesses, I must say, but we ever need something for a charity event. You're always there, you know, helping out with a basket or whatever the case may be very generous. Um, one of our agents was there, netty, and she tried the chocolate that you had there to sample and you had a bunch of different ones, but the one in particular were chocolate-covered almonds with cayenne.
Speaker 1:With cayenne.
Speaker 2:Oh my God. So a little bit of heat to them. They are so good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, a little bit of heat to them. I actually bought some, and I'll tell you.
Speaker 2:you told me when you eat one, just wait until it's done, and then, when it was finished, you get this little pop of heat.
Speaker 1:You get the heat Now heat's a relative thing, yeah. So what you and I might think is not too hot, somebody else might. Somebody else runs for the milk, you know, after they eat it. That's why I always have people sample this piece in our store To make sure. Well, I'm a big believer. I don't want to sell something that somebody is not going to.
Speaker 2:That's what makes you super successful? I mean really, because how many people you know? In this day and age, it's got to be about the consumer.
Speaker 1:Absolutely there's, so many choices, right.
Speaker 2:People can order online, they can do all kinds of things, but you don't get the service, you don't get the attention to detail, you don't get the care that you just talked about. When you order something online and it's so nice to walk into the store and just see what's there and I mean Easter at your store is like Christmas to me Love it.
Speaker 1:Oh, you want me to try one of these little suckers? I'd like to try a piece. That's the cayenne almond. You can?
Speaker 2:hear me chew them. Sorry, out there I'm chewing.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh, my goodness so good, and then he'll hit you in a second.
Speaker 2:It's not there, yet it's coming right.
Speaker 1:Um so good case in point, though. Yeah, customer service is a huge thing for us. Um, you know, with my background in the golf industry, that was all about customer service. Yes, um being at private clubs and whatnot, and that carries over my wife in the restaurant industry. Same thing, customer service and our business let's face it hinges on people coming back.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right. You know it's not a one-time deal and telling other people.
Speaker 1:And I'm not trying to pull anything away from real estate because I know you try to get repeat business too, but people aren't buying homes every week.
Speaker 2:I wish It'd be great. It'd be great right.
Speaker 1:In our case, we need those people to come back on the regular. We do have our once a year customers, which is fine. That's all good.
Speaker 2:But there's so many occasions where people could use chocolate instead of flowers that die and any of those types of things, so it's a great housewarming gift. There's just so many awesome ways that you can use it and you have a lot of really awesome ways of packaging things so you can customize. Maybe talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:So, yes, we do all of our packaging as well. We do work with box companies that will hot stamp the boxes with logos. We also have a product that a lot of people don't even realize we have it because maybe I don't do a good enough job of promoting it Well you're going to do it right now, but we actually create our own box tops in-house in full color.
Speaker 1:Oh, we are. As far as I know, we are the only company in the country that's subscribed to this product. Okay, we were at a candy show a number of years ago and the gentleman was there as a vendor and he had this product.
Speaker 2:Essentially, it's almost like think of it like a vehicle wrap, okay, where it's photo paper that's adhesive on the back end of it, but it's die cut to fit our box tops so I can take any image, pretty much any image, and put it on a box top so all my agents that are listening right now, oh, absolutely great, great housewarming present, as you said, chocolate's the easiest gift out there it is, and, and most people like I mean if you don't like chocolate. I think you might be weird but that's okay.
Speaker 1:95% of Americans like chocolate.
Speaker 2:I must say I had that almond and you're right, I ate it. And then, about maybe 30 seconds later, I started to feel the heat in the back of my mouth and I was like oh, this is really good. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 1:Right, a little fun fact, since we're talking about how stuff dissolves and everything else Dark chocolate is a tremendous cough suppressant.
Speaker 2:You're kidding.
Speaker 1:No, we actually just learned it a couple years ago from the news.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:I'd rather eat that than cough syrup Right, tastes a little bit better. And now I know with Connie whenever she struggles with allergies and stuff and whenever she has a little bit of a cough dark chocolate.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you told me that that's an awesome tip, right? Yes, that's a great tip. So tell everyone where you're located so that they know where your storefront is, where they can come get some chocolate.
Speaker 1:So we are at 70 Buckwalter Road. It's the Limerick Square Shopping Center. So we are at 70 Buckwalter Road. It's the Limerick Square Shopping Center. We just actually had a new Chipotle added to our shopping center, so Chipotle is right next door to us. Nice, we're the first store when you come in the shopping center to kind of face Texas Roadhouse.
Speaker 2:It's a really great shopping center.
Speaker 1:The shopping center has really come around. It's a really great shopping center. The shopping center has really come around. When we first opened there I'm not going to say it was a dead shopping center- but it was struggling a little bit. The anchor wasn't there and now we have the Urban Air in there and I think there's only one or two vacancies. That's amazing. When we moved in, I think there was nine.
Speaker 2:So it's right off the exit of 422 at Royer Sports so it's so easy to get to. You can pop in there. They always have a great inventory and ready to go. You can also order ahead of time. So if you know what you want, I would suggest doing that, because then when you get there it's all ready.
Speaker 1:Yes, especially at the holidays. I highly encourage people to do online ordering for in-store pickup, mainly for items that are very specific for the holidays. Easter is probably the best example. We'll say peanut butter eggs Yep. Even though I make thousands of peanut butter eggs, we do run out, yep, and we hit a point in time where we stop making them.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You run out of time Because I don't want to have too many left over. Unfortunately, even though I might have made a peanut butter egg the day before Easter and it's good for six months the day after Easter nobody wants it, right, right? So we've learned over the years to you know what our numbers should be and produce accordingly. However, retail's a fickle thing. You never know when people are coming in what they're going to buy, because people are fickle. People are fickle, right. So this year everybody might have bought. This happens a lot between the vanilla cream eggs and the coconut eggs. One year coconut outsells vanilla, the next year vanilla outsells coconut. From a manufacturing standpoint, it's a nightmare.
Speaker 2:I don't discriminate against any of those three. I like all of them.
Speaker 1:The peanut butter, the coconut and the cream, they're all great and that's how it should be. That's right, that's how it should be.
Speaker 2:I agree with you Mother's Day is coming.
Speaker 1:Mother's Day is coming, and actually I'll use this as an opportunity to blast it out there as well. Bad news is, we are going to be closed the day before Mother's Day. What yeah?
Speaker 2:that Saturday before Mother's.
Speaker 1:Day, and it's only because of Ashley's graduation. Okay, she's graduating college, we're not going to miss it, so you have to get your stuff early. We're encouraging everybody to come in by Friday.
Speaker 2:You have the chocolate-covered strawberries, right? Do you do those?
Speaker 1:Strawberries we do on an order basis. We do make them all year long, but because the shelf life is only about a day and a half, we just strictly do them by order. So as long as we know, by the day before.
Speaker 2:Okay, they're so good, you have to try them Right.
Speaker 1:So if you like, chocolate cup of strawberries.
Speaker 2:They're a great gift for mom.
Speaker 1:They're a great gift for any holiday, but make sure order those ahead of time because they do have a smaller, short life. It's extremely short so, but yeah, no, so we're going to be closed that day. However, leading up to it will be open and fully stocked and and ready to go. It's um, you know, I've had my staff. I have a couple staff members that were willing to work that day and the way my wife and I operate it potentially can be a very, very busy day, which we're disappointed not to have that. But, once again, our kid only graduated college once.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And they offered to work that day and we kind of decided, we made the decision not to.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Just because we don't want to set our staff up for potential failure.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. They're our family, even though they're not blood Right. Right. They've been with us quite some time and we value them.
Speaker 2:Well, that's something that sets you apart as well the caring level that you both have for the business, for your craft, but for the people that come into your shop and the ones that work for you, I think that is something super special. So how can everybody get in touch with you? Do you have a website?
Speaker 1:So the website's wwwsweetashleyscom, or you can always give us a call 610-948-1085.
Speaker 2:Rob, thank you so much. The best of the best.
Speaker 1:I'm going to eat some more of this chocolate. Yeah, we have to have some almonds. Thank you.