Two Bargersville girls have an accolade most don’t at their age — award-winning business owners.
Best friends Grace McCauley and Tinley Smith, both 11, were recognized as the “Start-Up of the Year” by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation for their budding business Cotton Candy University. The girls started the cotton candy business in June 2023, and decided to call their business Cotton Candy University because 50% of their profits go toward Smith’s and McCauley’s college fund, Smith said.
What first began as selling cotton candy to their peers at school has now become a full fledged business for the two 11-year-olds. They have curated 30 flavors and opened a commercial location through the AppleWorks orchard in Trafalgar. They have also sold their products at various farmer’s markets throughout Johnson County, as well as expanding to events at Dollie’s Farm, a flower farm in Franklin.
When it came to coming up with a wide selection of flavors for their cotton candy, it took a lot of trial and error, the pair said. They would taste flavors and hold a vote for what the new flavor will be named. Smith said that they have two ways of integrating these flavors into their products — allowing them to experiment with different flavor profiles like birthday cake, bubble gum and strawberry lemonade.
“One way is we have a pre-made sugar that already has a flavoring and we can make that on the big machine and our two small machines,” Smith said. “We have the oil based ones and how to get just granulated sugar and we put the oil in. And sometimes we put color in it. But sometimes we don’t.”
Cotton Candy University also offers seasonal flavors such as pumpkin spice flavored cotton candy during the fall — one of their busiest seasons, McCauley said.
After finding out they were named Start-Up of the Year by the IEDC in April, Smith thought they might have been pranked, but the girls soon celebrated their success with a sleepover. The award instilled more confidence in Smith and the business she started with her best friend, she said.
McCauley credited her and Smith’s parents as major contributors to their success.
“They’ve helped us start it, paid for a lot of stuff for it. They support us and they always help us with the business whenever we need help,” McCauley said.
Due to summer heat causing their products to melt more easily, Smith and McCauley expressed that this summer was slower than the last, but that they do have ambitious goals for the future.
“We would like to take over the world, starting with Canada,” McCauley said.
Despite their goal to take the world by storm with cotton candy, the pair said they want to get to $20,000 in profits this year. In the last six months, they have made already made $18,000.
“I think next year’s goal should be [$50,000],” Smith said.
In a world where only half of the 4.4 million businesses that start each year are successful, Smith encourages business owners to persevere. In addition, McCauley shared her hopes that the community will embrace other small, local businesses the same way it did theirs.
“There might be challenges in your way. Just keep going,” Smith said. “We hope that [new business owners] will get the same attention as us,” Smith said.
