Canesmith & Co

Award-winning gourmet sweet maker Laura Brown talks to us about Canesmith & Co…

I’m Laura Brown, and my business, Canesmith & Co, makes gourmet sweets for grown-ups.  We launched in May 2015, just a couple of weeks after my first Grub Club.

Canesmith & Co make award-winning gourmet sweets, such as caramels, salt water taffy and sherbet dippers.  All our sweets are handmade using the best possible ingredients, and take inspiration from childhood favourites and modern food trends.  We’re reinventing sweets, one chew at a time. 

Grub Club Cambridge has been great to meet people who are doing something similar – having changed career completely, it’s really helpful to meet people who are not only doing what I’m doing, but are also good company, and free with their (very helpful) advice.  

The biggest benefit – albeit indirectly – of attending Grub Club Cambridge was me getting into Selfridges.  Vhari and Kelly didn’t arrange it per se – but when I attended my first one I got talking to people who gave me very sage advice: just get on with it.  So the next day I sent Selfridges an email, and three weeks later I had a meeting where they said they wanted to stock my sweets.  I might have got on with it eventually, but speaking to other food entrepreneurs definitely made it happen a lot sooner!

Entrepreneurship, whilst great fun, rewarding and challenging, can be a bit lonely at times.  Grub Club Cambridge provides a fantastic group of people to meet and speak to about business, and food, and I feel like I’ve made some great ‘colleagues’ as a result.  

Laura Brown, Canesmith & Co

 You can buy these delicious, award winning sweets direct from the online shop or at any of these stockists.