Twenty years ago this month (June, 2002) I finished a contract with Computer Sciences Corporation (I was a Project Manager on a DOD contract). The dot com bubble had just burst, and since there were no other contracts available, CSC let us all go. The job market was truly awful, and there was nothing out there at all. However, Beth and I were both part of the cast at the Colorado Renaissance Festival, and we knew the people who ran the cinnamon almonds booth. It turned out he was the US distributor for the German almond roasters, and after talking things over, we bought a roaster towards the end of the month. And the rest, so we say, is history! 
We started out with the name “Nuts to You,” and we (and pretty much every other nut vendor) used the cone shaped plastic bags to package our almonds in. We did fairly well (once we finally figured out what shows were worth doing, where to get good quality raw materials for a fair price, and all of the other two or three thousand things you need to know to run your own business), but after having done the business full time for seven years or so, I got another full time job and Nuts to You went to a part time basis (which meant that I worked full time and then worked the rest of the week doing markets and shows with the nut business). But a few years ago we decided to really make an effort to grow the business, so back to full time we went. We changed our name to Sweet Almande (Almande is an old French word for almond) so that we could get a .com website and improved our packaging and overall “look” as well. About the only thing we didn’t change was our recipes and our commitment to producing a unique and high-quality product.
And speaking of our recipes, over the last 20 years we’ve developed over 30 unique and unusual flavors – and I made a few changes to the traditional cinnamon recipe as well! You won’t find these flavors anywhere else, and we hope that you’ll try them all eventually!
So, to celebrate our 20th anniversary, for the month of July (because while we bought the roaster and formed the company in June, we didn’t really do any actual sales until July) any online order you make will receive a 20% discount (stay tuned for the discount code). And for every in person sale at our Farmers markets, we’ll take a dollar off of the final sales total, in addition to our normal multi bag discounts. Because after all, not every business makes it to a 20 year anniversary!
So we hope that we either see you in person or online to celebrate our 20th anniversary of officially going nuts.
Thanks so much for sticking with us,
Bruce Telford
