Tara Bosch is the 22 year old founder of Smart Sweets- a company that focuses on providing healthy alternatives to candy as you know it. A year after launching, her company had already sold over one million dollar’s worth in product.
Tara got her inspiration from her grandmother and the desire to make her younger self proud. When Tara was younger, she had an unhealthy relationship with food. She had a turning point when she had a conversation with her grandmother who told her that she regretted eating so much excess sugar over her lifetime as it was having negative impacts on her quality of life. The combination of her grandmother’s advice and her past experience with food gave her the passion to finding healthier alternatives to sugar-filled candy.
Tara started creating candy recipes in her kitchen from scratch and even dropped out of college within two months. After months of trial and error, she finally came up with a recipe using no sugar, sugar alcohols, or artificial sweeteners. In an interview with Forbes she said, “I had no idea what I was doing, but I had the conviction in my heart that I would find a recipe and a way to innovate the first candy that kicks sugar, naturally.”
She got her first retailer by picking up the phone, calling them, and showing up in the store. She describes this experience saying, “I’ll never forget showing up to the first retailer who said ‘yes’ to taking a meeting, my voice shaky and my stomach feeling like it was churning a million miles a minute.” After showing much persistence, she was able to grow the number of retailers at a fast pace.
Her goal is to see more people choose sugar free options in order to have a higher quality of life, while still enjoying the candy they love. Tara didn’t have every single step planned out, but she did have passion and a vision. She pursued this passion with 100% effort and got the results she dreamed of.
