FLORENCE, Ky. — At just 16, Aubrie Sink is more business savvy than most kids her age.
In the back of her Florence candy store, a team of 25 employees prepares hundreds of bags of freeze-dried sweets for customers across the country.
But it took Sink several years to get "Freezin' with Aubrie" to where it is now. Her success story started within the confines of a cellphone screen when she was just 12-year-old, after a sugar-filled Tik-Tok video caught her eye.
"I see all this freeze dried candy and I'm like that looks cool," Sink said.
After sampling the treats, Sink said she understood the appeal and set her mind on making her own.
At the time, Sink had been making and selling jams and apple butter at local markets and events. It took her a while, but she eventually earned the $5,000 to purchase her first freeze dryer at 14.
Then she hit the ground running. She spent the next year and a half working out of her Boone County home, selling at local events and even expanding the business online.
"I was just like, let's try this. Let's try this. It's so hard to get things up and going at first and it's so hard to figure out how to make the candies right," she said. "At first, the candies were coming out still chewy and I'm like, 'What's going on?'"
Sink and her mom, Cris, joined a Facebook Group for freeze dried candy lovers (yes, that's a thing!) and those fellow members offered tips and advice to help Sink through the process.
As sales ticked up and her notoriety grew, Sink convinced her mom to open up the first ever freeze dried treats store in Northern Kentucky.
The brick and mortar located at 4997 Houston Road is filled with candy pink shelves stocked with varieties of offerings, from freeze dried cookie sandwiches, gummy worms and even grilled cheese croutons.
"It's just something different," Sink said. "It's really good for people with dentures, braces, with TMJ (Temporomandibular joint dysfunction) that like hurt their jaw to eat or it's stuck to their teeth and they can't really have chewy candy and it definitely helps a lot with the crunchiness and it's light and airy."
Almost anything can be freeze-fried, with a few exceptions.
"Swedish Fish do not work. They have modified cornstarch so they won't freeze dry," Sink said.
The same goes for Sour Patch Kids and Twizzlers.
A bummer for some, but there are still plenty of options to choose from.
"We get like 20 orders a day on Tik-Tok Shop," Cris said.
That's when Aubrie doesn't post a video on the social media app. When she does, the orders skyrocket.
"Then we'll get hundreds," Cris said. "Last year during the holiday season, it blew up. We did Advent Calendars so every single day was a different piece of freeze dried candy, so we would literally send out hundreds of those every single day.
It's proven to be such a popular concept, the freeze dried goodies have caught the eye of some big local companies.
"We're in 30 different businesses," Cris said. "We're at the Cincinnati Zoo. (They're) our very first wholesale distributor and we're at the Cincinnati Museum Center, and in the airport."
You can also find Freezin' with Aubrie treats at Kings Island, Jungle Jim's, Plato's Closet, Once Upon a Child, Dorothy Lane Market and other places.
High-profile clients means lucrative contracts. Cris said that also means she has to place daily orders for thousands of dollars worth of candies, which then take many pairs of hands to unwrap, freeze dry and package to be shipped off.
And the small business isn't just just local anymore either — Freezin' with Aubrie now has partnerships in 11 states, including at Knott's Berry Farm, Kalahari Resorts, Carowinds, Cedar Point and Dorney Park.
"We're actually doing something really fun with Dorney Park. 'Tastykake' is really big in Pennsylvania, so they have us exclusively freeze drying for them and they have their own custom bags," Cris said.
They're also in the midst of a partnership with a major Florida theme park, Cris said, though they're currently unable to share which one because they're entering into a private labeling deal.
Freezin' with Aubrie didn't have an official grand opening, so they are having a 1-year birthday party to celebrate.
You can visit the store the weekend of June 7-9. Event hours will be Friday 11am – 7pm, Saturday 10am – 8pm, Sun 12pm – 7pm. Free samples of freeze dried birthday cake will be provided, with limited quantities for purchase.
"It's just kind of like weird like, people are like, 'You're actually everywhere,' like so many people know of me but I don't really think of it that way. I'm just trying to run my little candy store," Sink said. "So many people I know were like, 'That's a dumb idea. Why would you do that? Like, you're not going to get anywhere', I just kind of took that and pushed that away. I didn't let it get to me and I'm glad I did because just like, go with your dream. Do it."
