The 22-year-old has been running his company from his home in Icklesham, UK, alongside his mother, Deb and partner, Sophie.
Happy Mallows 3D characters
“I came up with the idea for Happy Mallows when I noticed there were no gourmet marshmallows in supermarkets across the UK and my plan is to fill that gap,” said Humphrey in his Kickstarter campaign video.
“Happy Mallows is unique because our marshmallows are home-made and hand-made by a family firm.”
Flavors include Salted Caramel, with fresh salted caramel sauce, Cheeky Cinnamon Churros, with ground cinnamon, Lemon Meringue Pie, Bakewell Tart, and vanilla Comfort Clouds to put on top of hot chocolate drinks. There are 10 flavors in total.
“We want to bring our marshmallows to life with their own 3D characters and ‘world’s’ in a fun way as well as a tasty range of vegan marshmallows. We want to get our product out to as many people as possible,” added Sophie.
Humphrey said he launched his business by initially ‘testing his products’ across various farmers markets, before perfecting the recipes and selling them online.
“We developed and tested recipes, researched ingredients and food safety guidelines, and prepared 100's of little bites of clouds in preparation for selling them,” he said.
Taste of London
"I must have created over 25 flavors at least within the first month of deciding that this was what I now wanted to do.
"I tried sour flavors (which tasted horrible and synthetic), retro sweet, American pudding, I even tried to go full Willy Wonka and create a ghost chilli and Belgium dark chocolate flavor that I actually then went on to perfect and sell over Halloween time. After creating all these different flavors, I managed to narrow it down to 10 final choices which are now the delightful Happy Mallows bunch we have today.
“Farmers markets were great but we wanted to progress and get our mallows out to more people. Then we got an opportunity to sell our marshmallows at Taste of London in the UK.
“This was our first food festival and we went from selling 20 bags at a farmer’s market to 600 bags in a few days. The entire event was amazing.”
Now that the firm has completed its first year selling its products across a number of food festivals, local shops and deli's.
It plans to expand by launching a £3,000 Kickstarter campaign to buy an industrial mixer, a Toasting Kit (bespoke cloud shaped box containing two bags of marshmallows and a portable Happy Mallows burner with skewers), company re-brand as well as plans to launch a Flavour Pack, Happy Mallows Merchandise and marshmallow drinks range.
For all funds raised via the Kickstarter page, due to launch on June 1 and will run for 30 days, Happy Mallows will donate 5% to the Animal Hope and Wellness foundation.