Nana’s Special Sauce: “Pure Maple Syrup With Just the Right Amount of Real Butter and Marshmallow”

Ron Cort, the creator of Nana’s Special Sauce, transformed a cherished family recipe into a beloved product. Inspired by his mother’s homemade pancake sauce from the 1950s, Ron continued the tradition by making it for his own children through the decades. In 2022, responding to popular demand, he began bottling and sharing this unique blend of pure maple syrup, real butter, and marshmallow with a wider audience. DeliveryRank finds out more.

Nana’s Special Sauce has a rich history, dating back to the 1950s when your mother first created it as a unique pancake sauce for the family. Can you share more about the journey of turning this cherished family tradition into a commercial product?

After 27 years running a New England based trucking company, Plymouth Rock Trans Inc., the company was sold and I was working as a transportation consultant selling a technology that measured the on-time delivery performance of FedEx and UPS… “when it absolutely, positively has to be there” and it wasn’t, both FedEx and UPS would offer what they termed GSR’s “Guaranteed Service Refunds”. The technology I represented automatically got our customers 100% refund anytime any of their shipments were delivered late, even by one minute. But when the pandemic hit those guaranteed service refunds were no longer offered and that job became obsolete.

Wondering “what do I do now” it occurred to me that mothers “special sauce” was really quite unique. We loved it as kids and my kids and all their friends loved it growing up as well. Over the years I heard “you should bottle this stuff’ so often, I decided to give it go!

With the financial help of my four siblings, who also knew how unique and delicious our mother’s special sauce was and having a strong business background, I set about learning all that I could about the CPG business and bringing a product to market.

Working with a wonderful professor at the Cornell Food Venture laboratory, Olga Padilla, I was able to transform my mother’s stove top formula into a commercial formula and found a microprocessor/co-packer in Philadelphia (Gaffney Foods) who helped me bring the product to life.

The sauce blends pure maple syrup, real butter, and marshmallow for a distinctive flavor. What inspired this particular combination, and how did you go about refining the recipe over the years?

My mother’s original recipe was made with pure maple syrup, butter and marshmallow fluff. She would melt the butter and fluff into the maple syrup on the stove and pour it on our pancakes, Yum! I really don’t know how or why she came up with it. It’s a mystery that will never be solved. We can only be grateful to be the benefactors of her creativity. 

I made just a couple of minor changes to the original recipe… I substituted marshmallow puffs, like the ones you’d use to make Smores, for the fluff because fluff is made with eggs and I wanted to eliminate that potential allergen, and I added sunflower lecithin as an emulsifier to try to keep it blended. Like oil and water, butter and syrup tend to separate so all it takes is a few good shakes to blend everything back together for use.

From a different angle, I first introduced Nanas Special Sauce in a traditional maple syrup jug thinking, since it’s predominantly maple syrup I should probably make that obvious. But what I quickly learned was, on the shelf it was indistinguishable from all the other maple syrup options. So, I shifted to an entirely different stout bottle to highlight that it is indeed different from all the other maple syrups. I also recently updated the label to highlight the “butter and marshmallow” ingredients so at a glance it can be seen differently from ordinary maple syrup, which we love -  we just made it a little better!

You’ve committed to donating a portion of annual profits to children’s charities. How does this philanthropic mission reflect your brand’s values, and what kind of impact have you been able to make so far?

My mother, “Nana”, was the quintessential “mom”. She always strove to bring joy to her own children and over the years volunteered with numerous organizations that catered to children’s needs. Most notably, she was among the founding supporters of Handi-Kids, an organization in Bridgewater, MA that has a 22 acres site and provides opportunities for kids with disabilities to learn, play and grow amongst their peers. Handi-kids was renamed The Bridge Center many years later and recently merged with EastersealsMA to carry on the wonderful work they do.

I believe giving back is an important ingredient in life, whether as an individual or a company. I recently saw a quote that says it best “If you have much, give of your wealth. If you have little, give of your heart”. Along those lines our stated values include Respect: People, Mission, Environment; Enthusiasm: Product, Process, Partnerships and Inclusion: Customers, Community, Philanthropy.

As a start-up we have not yet generated sufficient profit to make significant contributions, but we have donated $1000 to St Jude Children Research Hospital in 2023 and $1000 to EastersealsMA in 2024.

Nana’s Special Sauce is now available in retail locations across several states. What have been some key strategies in expanding your distribution, and what challenges have you faced along the way?

For the most part I started selling locally at farmer’s markets and to specialty food stores in the greater Boston area. Our first show as a vendor was the SBN Boston Local Food Festival on the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston where we first got to see the reactions of the people trying Nanas Special Sauce for the first time. More often than not we heard “WOW”, “OMG”, “This is so good”! 

Getting that reaction time and time again gave us the confidence of knowing we did indeed have something special, so we exhibited in the debut district at the Specialty Food Association Fancy Food Show in NYC in 2024, the largest food show in the Northeast, which gave us greater visibility and expanded our reach. Since then, we’ve exhibited at The Commonwealth Kitchen food show, the New England Made Show in Portland, ME and will be returning to the Fancy Food Show this summer in the Massachusetts pavilion. I find anytime we can get people try Nana’s Special Sauce, it usually winds up in a sale.

I suppose the greatest challenge to date is gaining traction with some of the larger retailers. But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we break into that market and begin distributing nationwide.

Customers often highlight how versatile the sauce is, using it for everything from breakfast dishes to desserts. How do you engage with your community to learn about these creative uses and share them with a wider audience?

I grew up with Nanas Special Sauce on pancakes, and to this day can’t eat pancakes of waffles without it. My daughter first tried it on vanilla ice cream and loved it, so that’s where our marketing began. But each time someone tastes it we hear of a multitude of new uses. In coffee, on oatmeal, as a glaze for salmon or chicken, with sweet potato, pumpkin or squash, in pecan pie… The list goes on.

We recently pumped up our social media presence (@nanasspecialsauce (Instagram); Nana’s Special Sauce (FB) and have added a new page to our website “news & information” where we will be sharing stories, recipes and ideas moving forward, while we also encourage followers to send us their suggestions and ideas to [email protected]

If you would like to find out more about Nana’s Special Sauce, please visit https://nanasspecialsauce.com/