On the first Tuesday of every month, we’ll announce a new Female Founder, including a video interview of them sharing their business story. Want to be featured as a Female Founder? Contact Memberships for more details. The Female Founders Program would not be possible without our Title Sponsor, Scotiabank.
To learn a little more about the Scotiabank Women Initiative, and why they’ve chosen to sponsor this program, see the video below.
The next Female Founder we’re featuring is Sandy Nickel, Founder of SnickelFritz Kitchens.
SNickelFritz Kitchens crafts locally-sourced food products inspired by the rich flavours and time-honoured traditions of Waterloo County. Their offerings include all-natural butter tarts, Butter Tart Mustard, Butter Tart BBQ Sauce, Oktoberfest Mustard, Millie’s Zucchini Relish, Millie’s Chili Sauce (coming soon!) Butter Tart Granola, and more. They take immense pride in their deep-rooted commitment to the local community, sourcing ingredients from small businesses whenever possible to support and celebrate the region’s culinary heritage.
To learn more about Sandys’ journey as a Female Founder, watch the interview below (or read the written format).
Tell us about your business.
Snickelfritz Kitchen is a locally obsessed food company. We offer butter tarts that are made in the traditions of Waterloo County using all natural and all local ingredients.
We offer condiments that honor the flavors and traditions from around our area.
How did you come up with your business idea?
Snickelfritz Kitchens was born during the pandemic. I was a project consultant and business was slow, it went right down during the pandemic and so I started baking. And at the Christmas time during the first year of the pandemic, we ended up being so busy and we were baking out of the kitchen, and I remember just having, we did 150 butter tarts that day. And so, it obviously took off and then that’s kind of the first part of my business.
The second part of the business is my condiments, and that idea was born in one of our local breweries in town. I partnered with Counterpoint Brewing to do some promotion for Farwell for Hire, who I love. And we made Snickelfritz butter tart beer. And I was sitting there and had a pretzel, and it was a naked pretzel. And I’m like, dude, you need something to go with this pretzel. So mustard, pretzels.
It was perfect. And I thought, well, we have honey mustard, and you have maple mustard. So, what could possibly go wrong with butter tart mustard? And so, butter tart mustard was born.
How did you come up with the name of your business?
The name of my business, Snickelfritz. When I was a child, I had a great uncle, my Uncle Herb, who used to call me the Snickelfritz. And one day I asked him, Uncle Herb, what does that mean? And he said, you little troublemaker.
And I’m like, I don’t understand how that happened. But when email was born, I was always, my name’s Sandy Nickel. I was always Snickle at whatever company. And so, then when I had to name my company, I went Snickelfritz Kitchens. How can you go wrong with that?
What were you doing before you started your business?
So, before I was doing this, I mentioned that I was a project consultant. I had a consultant firm. I did project consulting for small businesses around the area in technology, largely servers, networking, application implementation, and some moves. And I did that for a long time. I spent five years at IBM, several years at the City of Kitchener.
And I was just, I went into the consulting side. And then again, when the pandemic hit and the baking started to take off, I did half project consulting and half baking until the time came where I didn’t have time to do the project consulting anymore.
What have been some of the highlights of your entrepreneurial journey?
The highlights have been amazing for me, subtle, but amazing. So, I remember when I rented my first kitchen at the Waterloo Legion. Again, the pandemic, everything was closed. And so, I called them and asked them, and they had a spare kitchen.
And the president, Bob Berg, was such a sweetheart and he and I met. And so, I ended up being able to use the kitchen. And I was in there for a couple of years. And then I grew out of that. They were going in a different direction. And I was fortunate enough, I had built a good relationship with Angie out at Cloverleaf Farms in New Hamburg.
And as it so happened, that kitchen, they have a big kitchen in their store that became available. So, I was able to rent that. And so that was another highlight.
And then Farwell for Hire. I was his first butter tart person at Farwell for Hire. And working with him is amazing. And he kind of was the, he kind of got me over the hump, if you will, of kind of going out and becoming a commercial baker. And then I think in the condiments, getting into the condiments space. And I have friends who introduced me to the great people at Central Meat Market, Central Fresh Meat Market. And getting into Central, that first location was just such a highlight for me. And then growing that, I had to have somebody else starting to produce my products, my pantry shelf products. Not my butter tarts, we still make those.
But the pantry shelf products. So, I have somebody doing that. And we do thousands of jars at a time. So, what they can do in two hours would have taken me six months. And so, learning about the co-packers and all of that and getting in there has been such a journey. And there’s just been so many highlights in there.
What have been some of the challenges that you have faced?
Of course there’s been some challenges over the years. I think food costs have to be the biggest challenge of them all. And there’s two sides to the food cost coin.
One is the cost of food that I need to buy for making my products. It’s high and it’s going up. The other side of that coin is people being able to afford the products that I’m making. I’m aware that we have a crisis in our food industry and people can’t afford groceries. And so, I have products that cost a little bit more. They’re made with local ingredients.
And it’s hard to think that they can be purchased by so many people. And so, I’m trying to be conscious and yet being able to make margins that I can continue my business and grow is a huge challenge. And that’s one of the things that keeps me up at night is how to be able to do that.
Another challenge that I’ve been having is just a little bit of a health issue that’s slowed me down. And it’s not allowing me to move forward as quickly as I’d really like to. So that’s an issue.
Also, learning everything new. I’ve never been in the food industry before. And so now I’m learning about how you find a co-packer, making sure that you have all of the right certifications in place. Marketing. How do you market this out? Printing. Westmount Signs is amazing, and I’m so glad I found them because they have been great for guiding me through all of my printing requirements.
And I actually met Westmount Signs through the Chamber of Commerce. So, there’s our little local network coming into play.
Being able to do everything from accounting to marketing and keeping the energy levels up and having time to make the products and having time to go out and keep the relationships going with the vendors. All are huge challenges. They’re good problems to have, and I’m glad I have them, but they can keep you going.
Knowing what you know now, is there anything you’d do differently?
If I were to look back over the years, I think the one thing that I would do differently or one of the things I would do differently is to have the confidence that I can do this, that I can move forward, that I don’t need somebody else’s approval and that my ideas are great. And to know that I am in a good position to grow, and I can do this. So going from paying one amount of rent to another amount of rent, I wouldn’t have done that if my hand wouldn’t have been forced.
But then when it happened, it’s like, oh, suddenly now my sales can grow because I can do more. And so also now looking forward, it’s like I know that I can afford to hire somebody to come in and work with me on the baking side so I can focus on the production of my sauces and marketing those out to a wider territory.
What’s your personal favourite menu item?
So, when I think about what my personal favourite is, I have two sides on that one because I love the baking and the fresh butter tarts are really good. The new flavour that I came up with over Christmas was raspberry coconut and they are so good. So, I think that’s going to be my personal favourite on the baking side. However, I love my sauces, and my sauces are my long game.
And so I like them all. My first one, the baby, was the butter tart mustard that I made to go specifically with pretzels, but it goes with so many different things. And that’s very versatile.
Like you can use it as a glaze, you can use it as a lot of different things. So, I really love that one. Then there’s the Oktoberfest mustard.
And then when Snyder’s discontinued their Oktoberfest mustard, somebody told me and they said, can you make the Oktoberfest mustard? And I just thought, you know, in this town we have to have it. And so, I did it and it worked out. It’s very good and it’s become a local favourite.
But then there’s the zucchini relish. Willie’s discontinued the zucchini relish, another favourite in our community. And I’ve been making preserves for so long.
I grew up making preserves in my mom’s kitchen, standing on a little stool, cutting up the vegetables, canning. And so that is so near and dear to my heart when it comes to what did I do? It’s like bringing back those feelings and the smells that I remember as a child. So that’s my long answer.
And I’m not sure which one I’m going to go with.
What methods have you used to grow your business?
The methods that I’ve used to grow my business vary quite a bit. Word of mouth has been fantastic. Our community is so good for recommending products and on social media. The social media has been kind to me, which is lovely. I have grown it from a marketing perspective largely through festivals, markets, that sort of thing, so pop-ups.
And I try to get into different areas so that I can reach different people. That worked for me. Again, a nice local co-packer just here in Puslinch that I can work with, focusing on kind of that local flair.
So being able to upscale has really helped me be able to go out and sell my products for resellers, our local community resellers.
How do you define success?
Success to me is very, I guess you might call it modest. I want to have a nice little business that I’m proud of, something that means something to me. I’m not focused on making a lot of money. I’m focused on being part of the community. And I’m focused on having something that I can do to continue to feel meaningful as I get older.
And so that’s my goal, is to just build this nice, humble little business.
What are some of the core values that you have integrated into your business?
Some of the core values that mean a lot to me that I’ve integrated into my business is relationship building. So, I love having good relationships and working with people in a positive way. So, respect for other people is huge for me. Respect for our environment, very important to me as well. And our local community. I love Waterloo County and areas around, but our little community here in southwest Ontario. And we have such a strong community here, right here in Waterloo Region. The Chamber of Commerce is great to pull people together.
And the relationships that I’ve been able to build with the people who resell my product, with my suppliers, we mean something to each other. We help each other out wherever we can. It’s a great place where I can try new things and get feedback.
And just our community alone, not even people that I have a relationship with, just our community alone. I mean, you go to our local restaurant, and you give a shout out on social media or word of mouth. We provide word of mouth referrals all around this area and it’s fantastic.
I’ve been able to get some great local mentors. Ora from OraLaws has been great, as has Chef D and other people around the area. So, we’re very fortunate to have such a strong community that’s so supportive of each other.
What have been some of the benefits of establishing your business in Waterloo Region?
Having a business in Waterloo Region, the benefits of that are great, especially in the food industry. We have this vital business area, industry area in Kitchener and Waterloo, but then on the outskirts, we have the farmers. We have such a rich farming community that we get local vegetables, local meats.
We have such a wealth of that sort of thing in this area. And to be able to incorporate that and use my foods with those products is just such a benefit. We’re so blessed. And then to have that right juxtaposed beside the high-tech community. And the high-tech community is also, again, one of those businesses or industries that’s very supportive of the area. The tourism board is great for bringing people in and focusing on that.
We’ve gone from a manufacturing community into high-tech and we keep our farming community around. And that’s something that’s very important, is to be able to keep our farming community secure and to allow us to make sure that we have food. We have food shortages in the area.
We have farms here that we can all work together and make sure that we keep our food, and we keep our farmers healthy, and we keep everybody in the area healthy and prosperous.
What inspires you?
Again, our local foods. What inspires me? Our local traditions and our local flavors in Waterloo County.
Again, I grew up in my mom’s kitchen. We did our gardening. We made preserves. We put our vegetables down every year. And then making the food to go with that. So, anything, anything I see that’s food related, I love to try new food. And I also love to find those cookbooks and find those ideas from way back and bring them up into my network of food. And those things inspire me. Our other local business owners, our small entrepreneurs around, inspire me because we are all in the same gate.
We’re all working with our own visions and we’re respectful of each other. And when I look and I see, especially another female founder who is just working it and killing it, that is so inspiring. And it just makes me want to keep going. And it kind of gives me that extra little spring in my step to keep going.
What advice would you give to other aspiring business owners?
The advice that I would give to other aspiring business owners is do it. Just do it. Go in baby steps. Walk in baby steps. Don’t try and get too big too fast. Make sure you’ve got a good footing but do it. Don’t be too afraid. Fear is good, but don’t be afraid of failure.
Failure is good because every time you fail, you learn. I have learned so many lessons over the past years and every one of them builds a character. It gives you something to go on, but a failure is also a gain.
So sometimes when you fail, it’s like, holy, that is going to work. Just believe in yourself and just do it. Another little piece of advice is everybody that you meet is important.
Everybody has something to offer or something that you can offer them. And what you can offer somebody else is just as important as what they can offer you. So, everybody is just as important.
Where do you want to be in the next 5 years?
In the next five years, I have trouble with the five-year plan because things change all the time. But what I can tell you my goal is in the five years is to have this nice little company that’s running that I’m not killing myself physically over all the time. That I’m still able to be in it and be able to market it and be able to go out and talk to people in the community about not just my product, but the things that I believe in as well and help other small businesses.
I would love to be able to help a young entrepreneur, a young woman who’s coming up to be able to help them get on their feet and give to them what I’ve gotten back. So those are my goals. I would love to be able to do some speaking in the community about the importance of local. I would love to be able to do some speaking about our community. So those sorts of things. Those are kind of… There’s where I’d kind of be in my five-year goal.
What can we expect in the meantime?
What you can expect in the meantime is that in the next year, I’ll have two, potentially three new products out on the market. I’m very excited about those and two of them I really want to have out before barbecue season. I’m also seeking to hire somebody, to have somebody on staff.
I’d like to find somebody with an entrepreneurial spirit who can come in and bake and honor the flavors and traditions of our area. Maybe grow that product line that I can be there and work with them and just watch that part of the business grows. One of the things I’d like to do from a marketing standpoint is bring about a Love Local campaign.
So, starting out, I have a little bit of swag. I have the “Love Local mug”, and I have this “Love Local bag”. It’s a great bag and the map on that is my favorite.
It is a heritage map of Waterloo County, so way before it became Waterloo Region, that it has the spots, the different towns listed on there. What I would love to see are these bags around town with marks on them like, I bought from this store here and I bought from this store here. So maybe with a marker, people could customize it so it’s like, here’s where I shop.
Here are the local companies I support. So that’s one of the marketing campaigns that I’m going to be bringing out in 2025. It’s just a germ of an idea right now, but I think it’s going to be fantastic.
So, watch for more of that and let’s see where 2025 takes us.
Where can we find out more about you?
My home base is at Cloverleaf Farms out on Bleams Road in New Hamburg. You can find me and my products in there during the day, but you can also find me at www.snickelfritzkitchens.ca. Google Snickelfritzkitchens and I’ll come up and on Instagram and Facebook @Snickelfritzkitchens.
