OVIEDO, Fla. – If you spend a few minutes with Kathy Wrey, you’ll quickly see why she has a passion for sweets.
“I have a sweet tooth and I enjoy making sweets for others,” Wrey said.
You could say it runs in the family. Wrey owns Sugar-hi, a sweets shop in the Oviedo Mall, along with her daughter Ella.
“We have a lot of fun,” Wrey said.
“We’re like best friends!” her daughter, Ella Riccard, added.
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The pair sat down with News 6 reporter Catherine Silver to share how they started their business together.
“This started way before anything professionally. I never missed a dessert after dinner. There was always something new,” Riccard said. “I would come home, ‘What is that smell?’ ‘Oh, I tried a new little thing, just a new little recipe.’”
Wrey says her love of baking stems from her own mother.
“On Mother’s Day, it makes me think about my memories with my mom always being in the kitchen,” Wrey said. “My mom had her own restaurant for a short time and ran kitchens. She really set the tone.”
Wrey was a stay-at-home mom of six children for 15 years before she started her own business. In 2019, she started making hot cocoa bombs when they became trendy. She sold them at farmers markets and fairs before she expanded into other sweet treats.
Now, she has grown her business at the Oviedo Mall, where she started with just a kiosk. When a spot in the food court opened up, Wrey and her eldest daughter decided to work on this venture together.
Their Sugar-hi shop is combination of them both. It’s nostalgic and new. Classic candies are served alongside newer combinations, such as cotton candy cakes and burritos.
“One of Ella’s favorite things to make is a cotton candy burrito,” Wrey said. “We get cotton candy and fill it with ice cream and toppings and roll it burrito style.”
It’s cotton candy with their own spin. Riccard likes to make the sugars that they turn into different creations. They have all kinds of flavors.
“Butter beer, and fireball,” Wrey said. “You know, flavors that you’re not going to find everywhere else.”
Riccard says it doesn’t feel like work when she gets to spend time with her mom.
“We just have a blast, and I love being around her,” Riccard said.
Wrey says their business is part of what makes their bond so special.
“We’re not spinning cotton candy. We’re spinning a legacy for us and for the kids and for future generations,” Wrey said. “I do think about the future, and sometimes it makes Ella cry, but I want her to have this to, you know, learn how to run a business and how to be a successful in life and hopefully we can franchise out and build a future for her and the other kids.”
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