Chef-owner Alexx Shuman has renamed her 4.5-year-old South Burlington-based marshmallow business: Nomadic Kitchen has become the Vermont Marshmallow Company.
When Shuman started making and selling marshmallows in December 2018, the trained chef gave her venture the open-ended name Nomadic Kitchen to “give myself an out,” she said. “What if nobody cares about marshmallows like I do?” she recalled thinking.
Plenty of people in Vermont — and around the country — turned out to care about Shuman’s handmade marshmallows, which come in toasty vanilla, dulce de leche, cinnamon sugar and seasonal flavors. The newly launched maple chai, for example, is made with hand-ground green cardamom, clove, black pepper, nutmeg, black tea and ginger and rolled in maple sugar.
“We are the Vermont marshmallow company,” Shuman said. “I’m ready to claim the name.”
Shuman said the business, which launched at the Burlington Farmers Market, has experienced 100 percent annual growth and hit six figures in sales in 2021. “We’re gunning for half a million a year,” she said. The company moved into a dedicated 1,200-square-foot production space this summer, where Shuman works with a team of four.
Changing the name of her growing enterprise made sense to Shuman, who also has an MBA.
“It’s one thing to come up to me at the farmers market, where I can explain the name,” she said. But as distribution has expanded and Shuman is not always hovering nearby, she wants her company to be able to stand independently without her.
“I need to be able to drop this kid off at the mall,” she said with a laugh, referring to her maturing business.
