Allison Spadone did not wake up one day with an idea for a butterscotch company. Rather, she inherited the recipe and idea from her mother. Her mother also created the adorable hedgehog mascot; she used to pass the image out to her children’s elementary school teachers and send it as gifts. While most of the family may not be involved in the business’ daily operations, love and community are at the heart of Aunt Tatty’s Beautiful Butterscotch, a small-batch dessert company based in Warren. Spadone’s admiration for her mother remains at the center of this Hope & Main success story, and now her son’s teachers look forward to the same gift at the holidays.
Tell me a little about the start of Aunt Tatty’s.
I have a 10-year-old son, and we moved to Providence about five years ago, and I was trying to decide whether to go back to work or start my own business. My husband said, “You’d be a good interview and a terrible hire, you should start your own business.” So, I wondered what that might be. Well, my mother had always made this butterscotch, which we passed out to teachers at Christmas and that sort of thing, and I thought that I might make her hobby into my full-time job.
Aunt Tatty’s sounds like a true family business.
It was my mom’s idea, and there was even a point when she would dress as Aunt Tatty, the hedgehog, and distribute jars. It was already so great, I just took her idea and made it bigger. My son was my taste tester, when I got the recipe from her, it wasn’t very scientific, so it took a lot of tries to get it right. Finally, I got her, with my son’s help, to spend the afternoon making butterscotch – and this time, carefully measuring out the ingredients to get the recipe perfect. That’s the original Aunt Tatty’s Beautiful Butterscotch.
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