... a candy-making magician, whose confections would grant magical powers to anyone who ate them...
Dani and her husband Matt are the founders of Brass Dragon Bistro. CEO Dani reached out to us in 2024, working closely with our Sales Manager Brian Houle to help bring their unique candy creations to the market. We spoke with them about their inspirations, starting a business, as well as some tips for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Q: What inspired you to create your small business, Brass Dragon Bistro?
Matt and I are both huge fans of tabletop RPGs, and have spent countless hours playing Dungeons & Dragons. In 2023, we were designing characters for an upcoming campaign, and Matt landed on the concept for a candy-making magician, whose confections would grant magical powers to anyone who ate them. We could've stopped there and had a great time, but we have a tendency to go a bit overboard, so Matt and I spent the next couple of months learning how to make a ton of different kinds of candy before the campaign.
Our first three products - Cosmic Caramels, Gelatinous Cubes, and WANDS - were all developed during that frantic, sugar-fueled period of research, experimentation, and chaotic creativity! When we finally got to the game, our candy was well-received (as we hoped), but much to our surprise, our fellow players started asking where they could get more. We hadn't considered actually making more after the campaign, but we figured we'd give it a shot.
But, we decided, if we were going to do this, we were going to do it in a way that felt right to us. We committed to using biodegradable packaging materials and gloves, direct-trade specialty ingredients, and natural ingredients wherever possible. When we designed our packaging, we designed rules for using the candies as magic items in our games!
This is an absolute passion project for us, and we wear our inspiration with pride. Fast-forward a year, and we're learning the ropes of working in a commercial kitchen, refining recipes for shelf-stability & temperature tolerance, and making an unreasonable amount of spreadsheets. Seriously, like, dozens of spreadsheets.It's been a ton of work, and we're still figuring out the business side of things, but we're really proud of what we've accomplished so far and really excited for what we'll do next!
Q: Any tips for aspiring entrepreneurs?
It's easy to get lost in the weeds with trying to meet demand, improve scale, and do all of the stuff that running a business requires. And all of that is important! But the thing that's kept us coming back to the kitchen isn't numbers, logistics, or the work itself - it's the excitement we get in seeing our work come to life.
As far as we're concerned, Brass Dragon Bistro is as much an art project as it is a candy company. We're using it as a chance to express ourselves and inspire others to do the same. It's about what running the company inspires us to do - devote real time to making satisfying designs, perfect recipes we already love, and share candy with our friends. So, our advice is to find the thing that makes you excited to run the business, and place that as the top priority over maximizing profit or engagement.
In terms of actually getting started and surviving the first couple of years, we couldn't have gotten where we did without the help of our local SBDC (Small Business Development Center). We highly recommend seeking out your local SBCD and getting connected with an advisor. Our advisor is fantastic (thank you, Liza!) and was already familiar with the local health/food ordinances, which is of course really important for any business selling packaged food!
our advice is to find the thing that makes you excited to run the business, and place that as the top priority
Q: Your filled gummy products are unique! How did you come up with the idea?
Our Gelatinous Cubes were inspired by the monster of the same name in Dungeons and Dragons. In the game, they're these 10-foot tall transparent cubes of acidic gelatinous goop that hunt adventurers in dark and ominously-clean corridors. Our candies are much smaller, much tastier, and far less dangerous.
Q: What challenges have you faced in starting your business and how did you overcome them?
Our biggest challenge was taking the recipes we made at home and updating them for the commercial world. At home, it was fine if our candies crystalized after a month, or took an extra hour of work per batch, or couldn't handle the cold. For the business, we had to fix all of that - plus scale up to handle the demand we were seeing!
Honestly, Bold Maker was a huge help in solving that problem for us. Since we don't have a factory line, their standard cube molds (along with some custom ones for the skulls inside the gelatinous cubes!) were the perfect solution for making a lot of uniformly-shaped candy in not a lot of time.
Being able to make larger, more consistent batches quickly let us do rapid research and experimentation, which meant a development process that would've taken at least a year at home turned into a month-long project.
Q: Where is the business now, and where do you plan on taking it?
We're still in our first year of business, and just getting our feet under us. The plan is to spread the word and start making videos of our process to post online, but we're also planning to make in-person appearances at gaming conventions around the US next year!
Hopefully, we'll be able to keep this going for a long time - we've got tons of ideas for new candies to make, and we're excited to share them with everyone!
Q: Any tips for aspiring confectioners?
- Be precise and take notes. Use a scale instead of going by volume, use a digital thermometer, and keep your process consistent. Candy-making is a science before it's an art, and being able to repeat your results lets you be more creative in the long run.
- Look for ingredients that are similar, and try substituting them. If you're using butter, try swapping some out for chocolate. Sugar can be swapped out for honey. Cream can be swapped out for basically any concentrated drink - hot chocolate, coffee, whatever you like. Online candy recipes tend to be pretty rigid, but it's really rewarding to try out simple substitutions like that. They'll usually turn out better than you expect!
- Ditch the corn syrup, substitute it for corn syrup solids (3g corn syrup solids is roughly equivalent to 4g corn syrup). It's so much easier to portion out, your candy will stay at the right texture for longer, and you can just store way more of it in the same space.
- Have fun!
