From a young age, Zac's sweet shop founder Zac Coughlin had one passion for art, food and business. “I always say, I didn't go to the mall not for toys or clothes, I went straight to the food court and I was going to study the food business,” he says. “I would go to places like The dairy queen and Mrs. Fields, and I would not only eat the food, but also observe how they were marketed, how they branded the products, how they were sold.”
Coughlin couldn't help but notice that many items sold in specialty candy stores weren't exactly affordable: $5 for a single chocolate strawberry? So he asked his mother if he could make his own, convinced he could whip up delicious treats for everyone to enjoy — and potentially sell them for less than the usual price. She accepted, and at just 13 years old, Coughlin opened his own business.
It started with a 12-ounce chocolate melting pot, he recalls; he dipped strawberries and cookies for his friends and his dad would help him make deliveries. In the seventh grade, during his first year at a new school, Coughlin's peers caught wind of his dessert talent—and wanted to try his creations for themselves. “People would text me to pre-order (treats) and I'd bring these boxes of treats down the hall,” he says. “I started with four or five orders, then there were 20 and then 40”.
“Being adopted has really given me this unwavering need for self-sufficiency to really prove my worth and my worth.”
Now, Zac's Sweet Shop ships its “fun, accessible and delicious” sweets nationwide and aims to reach seven-figure revenue in the next 12 months (400% growth); it also boasts corporate clients like GoogleDisney, Meta, Hulu, American Express, Lionsgate, Netflix and more. According to Coughlin, the treats are “an interpretation of the nostalgic classics we grew up with” and include hits like mini pretzel bars covered in caramel, milk chocolate and salt flakes, or the s'mores crust with cinnamon graham cracker, vanilla marshmallow and color dark. chocolate rain.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Zac's Sweet Shop
But Zac's sweet success began with that early interest in entrepreneurship, one Coughlin says the adoption helped fuel. “Being adopted has given me this unwavering self-sufficiency requirement to prove my value and worth not only to the people around me, my family, friends and colleagues, but also to myself,” he explains. “That was something that was innate in me from a very, very young age, but I didn't really realize it until much later in life.”
Connected: What is the biggest lesson to learn as a young entrepreneur?
Although Coughlin's high school eventually banned him from selling candy to his fellow students, Coughlin continued to grow his business among family and friends, catering events such as birthdays, communions and graduations. But when he left his hometown of Pittsburgh for Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California, business took a back seat—because he didn't know anyone in his new town, he no longer had a customer base.
However, when some of his classmates learned about his sweet story and wanted to know more, talking about business helped Coughlin realize how much he was missing. It was time to revisit his lifelong dream of “building the next iconic American chocolate shop”—to become the model he always wanted to see. “Growing up, I never saw anyone who looked like me on TV,” Coughlin says. “I grew up watching shows like Cupcake Wars AND cake chef, and I never saw myself. So I naturally wanted to be that person.”
“I had to learn a lot about how to scale from cooking a few cakes to hundreds and thousands at a time.”
Coughlin “went to the drawing board” and looked at what it would take to open a chocolate shop in Los Angeles. But he realized that the high cost would be prohibitive and focused on one directly to the consumer Model (DTC) instead, acknowledging that some of his favorite bakeries, such as Milk Bar and Baked By Melissa, were successfully shipped nationwide. Additionally, passing DTC would allow his friends and family in Pittsburgh to start ordering from him again.
After a year and a half of research and preparation (“I spent every day that I wasn't in the classroom learning every aspect (of the business)”), Coughlin raised about $27,000 through a small Kickstarter campaign in February 2019. It was enough to set up a commercial kitchen and obtain the necessary initial licenses and packaging.
“I (was) also learning how scale product“, Coughlin recalls, “which I didn't actually learn until two weeks before I launched, to be honest, because (there are) so many things that are so complicated with chocolate, with tempering and moisture and then transport. and perishable. So I had to learn a lot about how to scale from cooking a few cakes to hundreds and thousands at a time.”
Zac's Sweet Shop opened for business in October of that year. Between then and March, the company did about $1,000 in monthly sales, with a spike during the holidays. That changed in June 2020 after the store received a call from Beyonce: Coughlin made $20,000 in sales in just two weeks, at which point he really needed to figure out how to scale, he says. Fortunately, the Coughlin community rallied around him; friends helped in the kitchen until 3 a.m. to fulfill all the orders.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Zac's Sweet Shop
“It took a long time for this business to really start making money, but I've always stayed true to who I am and who I wanted to be.”
While it was a very exciting time for Coughlin and his business, it was also a “really tough time,” he says, explaining that “it was one of the first times I realized who I was and the opportunity I had and the impact I could have I did”. After Beyonce At the time, Zac's Sweet Shop experienced a “domino effect,” landing corporate clients and catering movie premieres. In March 2022, Coughlin took up side hustle full-time.
Up until that point, Coughlin's day job used his communications major and the music industry: He was a manager for a girl group. And, as it turns out, there's some crossover between that work and running Zac's Sweet's. “I always say that I MArKet my products like I'm marketing a pop campaign,” Coughlin explains. “Loud, colorful, fun, catchy, heavy on social media.”
Connected: Does social marketing really make dollars and cents?
Now, Coughlin is gearing up for an exciting one brand relaunch that will include growing the team (currently, it's just Coughlin, one other person, and a freelancer) and putting more money into brand packaging – something 100% with boots the business lacked capital for the past, despite Coughlin's artistic bent and creative drive. “An early advisor told me to always address what you need for the business versus what you want,” he says.
And for any budding entrepreneurs who want to follow in his footsteps and see their own sweet success, Coughlin has some hard-earned words of wisdom: “It's a little cliché, but do what you're passionate about and the money will always come“It took a long time for this business to start making money, but I've always stayed true to who I am, who I wanted to be and where I wanted the business to go. It took a while, but I definitely feel like I got there and I'm still working on it.”
This article is part of our continuity The Young Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of being a new business owner.