About a year ago, Dawn and Karl Weber decided to take a big chance. They closed their coffee and nut shops at three area shopping malls and started wholesaling their Kailey’s Nuts to grocery stores instead. The response has been resounding – here’s why:
1. Kailey’s Nuts contain no preservatives and come in nine wild flavors. These roasted pecans (other nuts are available with custom orders) are dredged through a wide spectrum of tasty ingredients to become little nuggets of maple rum (a sugary bite); frosted strawberry; frosted blackberry (a fruity splash that’s made with a little chai and is a softer and chewier nut thanks to a higher citric-acid content, explained Dawn); peach cobbler; apple pie (a Wonka-like confection that manages to taste like an entire pie in a single nut); cinnamon glazed; pumpkin spiced; frosted orange; and gingerbread glazed (smoky, crunchy, complex and addictive).
2. They make a nifty secret ingredient for cooking. Dawn recommended various flavors for salads, ice-cream sundaes, baking cookies and topping a sweet-potato casserole (the pumpkin spiced nuts, of course).
3. They are a local success story. Operating from their St. Peters storefront/kitchen, the Webers have managed to land Kailey’s Nuts at Schnucks, Dierbergs, the airport and a few specialty shops, as well as gift shops at Disneyworld, the Waldorf-Astoria in NYC, and the Beverly Hilton. Their flavored nuts are for sale at some Missouri wineries, too. “I’ve been told the blackberry frosted pecans pair great with wine,” Dawn noted.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2010.