Jeff & Sheila Cotton loving
the great outdoors
exploring the Great Basin in
2010
Our first "line" of Christmas
Gifts 1986
Zeke's Butterscotch and
Grandma's Dog Doos
The Mt. Rose Tavern was the home
of our first candy kitchen right
down the ski slope from our
house at Sky Tavern on the Mt.
Rose Highway in Reno, Nevada
Here's the Worcester clan that
started the whole butterscotch
craze. Front row is Zeke, Old
Wooss and my mother Glenice in
1926. My grandmother was
a great cook but I don't think
I ever saw her smile. Don't
you just love Zeke's
hat?
By 1990 we had a whole "line"
of products and were spending
a ton of money with our
printer and can manufacturer
but obviously not much on
professional photography!
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Chapter
the First
In the Beginning
I’ll start right out by telling
you this is truly a love
story. My husband, Jeff, and
I love good food, colorful
friends, the great outdoors, music
and merrymaking, as well as each
other and for the past twenty-two
years our candy business has
brought all those elements
together.
When we met in Reno, NV in 1981, I
was selling real estate and Jeff
had just come “off the road” from
working as a sound engineer with
rock n’ roll bands such as The
Jefferson Starship and The
Grateful Dead. We fell in
love right away and spent the next
four years exploring the mountains
and deserts whenever we could get
a few days off from my real estate
business and his audio engineering
work. By 1985 we decided it
was time to get married and move
up on the mountain we loved, Mount
Rose. We bought a house at
Sky Tavern (on the Mt. Rose
Highway) that we later found out
had the highest elevation (7680‘)
address in Reno. We
snowshoed a half mile up a steep
hill to get to our house in the
winter and hiked the mountain in
our backyard in the summer.
Those were glorious days,
demanding our energy but giving us
lots of time to dream up crazy
ideas.
Each year at Christmas time I
would cook up my family’s
butterscotch candy recipe and give
it to my friends and
clients. I created the
packaging and labels calling it
Uncle Zeke’s Butterscotch.
Jeff enthusiastically decided to
make his version of his Grandma’s
Kix cereal cookies as well and he
playfully named them Dog Doo
Souveniers. We had a blast
cooking and packaging the goodies
and were told many times over that
we should “go into
business”. By 1988, I
decided it was time to give it a
shot with the butterscotch.
I knew what I wanted the packaging
to look like and also knew that
once people tasted the candy,
they’d have to have it. So I
made up a mockup of the gift can I
thought would sell, filled it with
butterscotch pieces and went to
local specialty food and gift
shops. Every buyer I met
with agreed to start with a one
case order.
I was in business! But wait
a minute, I needed a permitted
commercial kitchen to make the
candy legally. Well we had
gotten to know our new neighbors
down the hill who had purchased
the Mt Rose Tavern, a fine
mountain eatery that was closed
two days a week. They agreed
to rent the kitchen to me two days
a week to cook my candy.
But wait another minute. I
still needed to get my Uncle
Zeke’s permission to use his name
and image.. You see, this was an
old family recipe although it was
was my grandmother, Lena
Worcester, aka Old Wooss, who
found the recipe in a cookbook
published in Chicago in the
1850s. It became a family
recipe when her grown children
each carried on her tradition of
making it on special occassions
and each one tweaked the recipe a
bit to make it their own.
They would then get together for
these special days along with
their families and my cousins and
I would play while the adults
argued about butterscotch.
How silly, I thought, it’s all
good. Can I have another
piece, pleeeeeease?!
So what to name this authentic
family recipe that I wanted to
market commercially? My
uncles and aunt all possessed a
dry New England sense of humor
along with a good dose of self
confidence. Any of them
would be a good “mascot” but Uncle
Zeke won out and agreed to go
along with whatever fame might
come to him.
That first season I cooked,
packaged, sold and delivered
$5,000 worth of candy during the
Christmas season but I was a
partner in a Century 21 Real
Estate office that still demanded
most of my time. Jeff was
busy working his audio engineering
magic at the Reno Peppermill
Casino cabaret on the graveyard
shift. Still, we spent our
time off from work to visit all
the little towns around Lake Tahoe
and up and down the Sierra,
sampling our candy to shop owners
and setting up displays for those
who liked the idea of selling a
locally made candy.
Interest had grown and by the time
we were looking at another holiday
season, I knew I needed
help. Well Jeff said he’d
rather be my candy cook than work
in a cabaret until 6:00am and
that’s how our partnership in the
business started. It turns
out I really needed someone with
his skills and creativity ‘cause
this is where things started to
get really
interesting.
To be
continued......
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