She’d only been selling caramels and nougat, handcrafted one copper pot at a time, for a year, when Agnieszka Jones received a call from Martha Stewart. Yes, the Martha Stewart, indicating the magazine, “Martha Stewart Living” would like to feature the nougat from Jones’s little startup candy shop, AvenueSweets, in a dessert recipe. 

“I thought it was a joke or something, and I kind of cringe every time I think of how I responded,” Jones recalled. “I told them I was going on vacation and asked if we could do it the next month.

“They said, ‘Well, I guess we don’t have to do it at all.’ That’s when I was like, ‘What am I thinking?’”

The call from Stewart was extra special for Jones for a number of reasons. A longtime reader of the magazine, and watcher of the show, Jones was somewhat of a Martha Stewart fan-girl. And like Martha Stewart, Agnieszka Jones (Agnes) is from Poland. 

“I always felt a kinship with her [Stewart]. I used to travel to Poland every summer, with the kids, and I would imagine meeting her on the plane,” Jones said. “It was silly, but she also loves her Polish heritage and featured a lot of Polish dishes. I especially like her because of that.”  

Agnieszka Nalecz-Mrozowska (Jones) spent her early years in Warsaw, but fled the country as a political refugee with her family in 1980. This was during communist times, just before martial law was instated to combat the surging, and eventually successful, solidarity movement against the Soviet Union. 

Jones was 11 years old. 

She (and her parents) left under the guise of going on a short vacation to Austria and took only a couple of suitcases. Austria was a neutral country for political refugees and the family of three stayed for one year, eventually making their way to the United States and settling in Salt Lake City. “My dad loved the mountains in Poland, so he decided on Utah.”

When she left Poland, Jones didn’t speak any English, but “at that age you learn quickly” and she was able to start at Judge Memorial High School at age 14, as a freshman, eventually graduating from the University of Utah. It took her seven years, in total, to become a citizen.

Jones stayed at home with her children while they were young, and each holiday season she cooked up eagerly-anticipated caramels and nougat for friends and neighbors, but when her youngest went to kindergarten she decided to take her hobby, stir things up, and make it a job. One that would be flexible enough that she could be home when her kids finished each school day.

“Sweets are part of the Polish culture,” Jones said. “Candy shops, pastries, gummy candies, ice cream on every corner.” 

One of her first creations was a soft almond nougat. Although nougat is a traditionally Italian candy, Jones’s version reminds her of a chewy candy sold at fairs when she was young. And her caramels taste like krówki, which means “little cow” in Polish. They are firm at first, then chewy in the center. 

With the encouragement of family and friends, she began. However, she was at a loss when it came to naming the company. 

“A friend told me to name it Sweet Agnes,” Jones chuckled. “But that sounded like the name of an adult film star to me.” Even still, she needed a name to get a business license, so Jones settled on AvenueSweets, simply because she lives on an avenue in Sugar House, and the name stuck.

Next, she created a website and started cooking nougat and caramel one pot at a time. She’d cool the candy on a couple of cookie sheets, cut pieces with a double-handled cheese knife, and wrap each piece of candy, by hand, in waxed paper. 

The first candies offered on the website were almond nougat and two flavors of caramel: golden and chocolate. 

Soon after, she added a pumpkin spice caramel to the product list. This was in 2005, just one year after Starbucks debuted their quickly-becoming-popular Pumpkin Spice latte. “Sunset Magazine” grabbed the trend, featured the AvenueSweets’ pumpkin caramel in their autumn edition, and things started to get spicy. 

Then, when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, because he’d indicated sea salt caramel was his favorite flavor, Jones added it to her menu. Again, she captured a trend. “We made it in honor of Barack, and now it’s by far our best-selling flavor.”

It wasn’t long before it seemed the little company had potential, so Jones’s husband Bruce took a risk, quit his job and started marketing candy. 

“It’s fun to work together,” Jones said. “It’s true we spend every single day together, but we have different roles, and we complement each other. He handles marketing, customer service and sales. I pretty much just make the candy.”   

It was Bruce Jones who realized that caramel and nougat candies would be good products for shipping and delivery, as they are a sweet, easily sharable treat that packages beautifully, and (most importantly) won’t melt on a doorstep. 

As such, AvenueSweets doesn’t have a local retail storefront. Their bread-and-butter (so to speak) is earned via corporate gifting, gourmet food baskets and private labeling.

It’s likely you’ve had an AvenueSweets’ handcrafted caramel at one of several national restaurant chains, gourmet grocery stores, coffee shops, National Park giftshops or airport giftshops, and haven’t even known it was a product made in Utah. 

That said, you can order their products directly from their website (free shipping on all US orders) at www.avenuesweets.com, or they sell a limited product selection via Amazon, or you can find it in the “local products” section at the Salt Lake City Airport. 

One of the avenues to AvenueSweets sweet success is continual innovation. These days one of their most unique offerings is a vegan or dairy-free line of products which includes a variety of caramel flavors, various brittles, and a sea salt caramel sauce, sold by the gallon bucket to vegan bakeries.  

They also have seasonal flavors including chocolate peppermint, the popular pumpkin spice, apple and butterscotch marshmallow. As a nod to other local companies, they use Baba Black Lager from Uinta Brewery for their beer brittle. 

The commercial kitchen is located in South Salt Lake and AvenueSweets employs a staff of about eight full- and part-time employees, with more seasonally, when they ramp up production for Mother’s Day, then again for the holiday gifting season. λ