Today we’d like to introduce you to Austin Allan.
Austin, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I actually got my start in consumer products with a beverage brand called Tio Gazpacho — built it, got backing from General Mills and chef José Andrés, and sold it in 2019. Right after that, I started noticing adult desserts trending internationally, and nothing like it existed in the U.S. So in July 2022, I opened Sugar Wood in NYC with Tom Smallwood, former head of culinary at Magnolia Bakery, developing our recipes — a body-positive, playful spot where people came to enjoy “naughty” waffles and cookies.
The store did even better than I expected. Andy Cohen featured us on Watch What Happens Live, twice. We landed in the New York Post, the Elvis Duran Show, Out Magazine. But the real signal came from a pin map we kept by the register, where visitors marked where they’d traveled from — Alaska, Kansas,Saudi Arabia, Japan… all over. The demand was never just a SoHo thing. It was national, and one storefront couldn’t capture it.
So in February 2025, I closed the physical store and rebuilt Sugar Wood as a national e-commerce brand, so anyone could order our ‘naughty’ dessert decorating kits and have that same experience at home.
Today I run it with my co-founder Abby Sugar, and we ship decorating kits nationwide for bachelorettes, birthdays, and pretty much any celebration that could use a little mischief. We even partner with drag queens like Buff Faye, who hosts live decorating events — which is actually how I ended up talking to you.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It hasn’t been easy, but not in the ways people expect. There wasn’t one big crisis, it was doing it alone for three years before I brought on a co-founder, wearing every hat with barely any team around me, and putting something this personal and specific out into the world before I knew if anyone would get it. Having already built and sold one company, betting on myself a second time came with its own kind of pressure.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Sugar Wood makes “naughty” waffle and cookie decorating kits — the kind of centerpiece you’d want at a bachelorette party, but honestly they work for any adult celebration: birthdays, bridal showers, girls’ nights. We’ve even gotten requests for baby showers and divorce parties. Everything ships fresh, made to order, straight to your door on the date you request. The whole point is that it’s an activity, not just a dessert. You open the box, and the decorating is the party.
What sets us apart is that nobody else really does both halves of that. Plenty of bakeries make a great treat, and plenty of novelty shops sell a gag gift, but almost nobody combines a genuinely well-made dessert with something the whole group does together.
I’m most proud of how the brand reads: playful and a little cheeky, but never crude. Designed to be body- and sex-positive as well as risqué. We hear from customers constantly that it was the highlight of the whole weekend, and that’s really the goal: something people remember, not just eat.
If there’s one thing I want readers to know, it’s that Sugar Wood is a great excuse to get a group together and bond over something a little inappropriate, and very silly.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Resilience, without question. Building something from scratch means most days don’t go the way you planned: a launch that flops, a partnership that falls through, a version of the business you have to let go of to build a better one. What’s kept me going is not treating any single setback as the final word. You adjust, you try the next thing, and you trust the work is worth sticking with even when the payoff isn’t immediate.
Pricing:
- Our dessert decorating kits start at $49
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sugarwood.co
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/sugarwood.us
