Since retiring from a 35-year career in finance and software in 2020, Eileen Gannon has parlayed her “passion project” for baking and specialty sauces into success after success. Her company, Sunday Night Foods, uses elevated techniques and gourmet ingredients to produce shelf-stable chocolate sauces of the highest quality and flavor—her products have taken home sofi™ Awards from the Specialty Food Association in 2022, 2023, and 2024. In August 2024, Eileen appeared on Netflix’s Blue Ribbon Baking Championship competition show, and she recently spoke to SFA about her journey thus far.
Congratulations on being featured on Netflix’s Blue Ribbon Baking Championship. How did your participation come about? What was it like baking competitively?
I received an email from a friend who had heard about the show’s casting call. I emailed the casting producer, and once she learned that I had won over 600 baking ribbons at the Iowa State Fair, she cast me within a week. Baking competitively on an extremely tight timeline was daunting. When I created complex desserts with a variety of elements, I often ran out of time and wasn’t able to finish all of the food styling and decorating I had planned.
We understand that you had a different career before founding Sunday Night Foods. Was food always a big part of your life, or your “dream job”?
After 35 years of working in corporate America, including finance and software, I finally turned my passion for food into a profession when I founded Sunday Night Foods in 2020. My pivot into CPG triggered when I turned 55 years old. When I was in high school, I set a goal to retire at age 55. I began working for pay on our family farm at five, so I figured that 50 years in the workforce would be enough. But by the time I got to 55, my goal had changed. It wasn’t to retire from working; it was to retire from working for someone else. I was finally brave enough (and experienced enough) to launch a passion project in specialty food that had been at the back of my mind for decades.
I have always loved baking, and I happen to be really good at it (I’ve won over 600 awards.) I love reading about it, thinking about it, creating it, and sourcing the freshest ingredients (I annoy my family when I fly home from Northern Michigan with 80 pounds of Balaton cherries in my suitcases). I bake when I’m stressed, I bake when I’m sad, I bake to procrastinate, and I bake to make people happy. Pretty much all of the time.
Can you walk us through your product line and what makes your sauces unique?
I created Sunday Night Foods to evoke the comforting and indulgent feeling of a Sunday night. Driven by my experiences growing up in a large family on an Iowa farm and navigating the corporate world, I found solace and purpose in the kitchen. I craft our silky, rich, shelf-stable, chocolate sauces in small batches with only the finest pure ingredients, winning three sofi Awards in my first three years: sofi Gold in 2024 and sofi New Product Awards in 2022 and 2023. My Vegan Chocolate sauce was also a NEXTY Finalist in 2024.
Consumers want better-quality, gourmet convenience food, and Sunday Night sauces satisfy that need with a new, disruptive product in an old category. The extraordinary silkiness and gloss in our sauces are achieved by using a classic French technique, creating pure, chocolate sauce without corn syrup, preservatives, palm oil, or emulsifiers. Our premium ingredients – Callebaut and Guittard chocolate and cocoa, Nielsen-Massey vanilla, fresh cream and butter (or coconut cream and coconut oil in our vegan sauce) pure cane sugar, and sea salt – shine through, creating a flavor profile of rich, robust chocolate with fragrant, fresh-brownie cocoa notes, rounded with hints of caramel, pure vanilla, and sea salt.
Sauces this decadent were once only the domain of classically trained chefs, but with Sunday Night sauces, home chefs can have this secret ingredient in their pantry, ready to be poured, dipped, drizzled, or transformed into stunning desserts, drinks, pastries, and more. We offer more than 60 recipes and sweet inspirations at SundayNightFoods.com.
We donate 1 percent of sales to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, in honor and hope that through baking we can help people stay present, find purpose, and create joy within them and around them.
Who or what inspires you?
My family.
Given all your recent successes, is there a moment that stands out to you as the company’s “break-out moment”?
Winning my first sofi Award within seven months of launching my first product was thrilling. I cried for joy. I will never forget that moment.
You exhibited at the 2024 Summer Fancy Food Show. What was that experience like? How has exhibiting and winning a sofi Award (congratulations!) improved your brand’s visibility?
Winning a sofi Gold Award at the 2024 Summer Fancy Food Show was such an honor.
We were also fortunate enough to be a Grand Honors Finalist and in the running for Outstanding Product of the Year. What a thrill! As a new emerging brand, winning a Gold sofi gave us the powerful validation that we needed. It also drew many new people to our brand and improved traffic to our booth. It was such a positive experience.
How has Sunday Night Foods benefitted from participating in SFA’s Mentorship Program?
SFA’s Mentorship Program has been a huge game changer for us. We were lucky enough to be matched with Mary Ann Sack, who is a CPG marketing and merchandising genius. She guides us in so many valuable ways, keeps us from making mistakes, redefines how we tell our story, introduces us to her vast network, and makes a profound impact on our brand every day. I cannot express in words how important her work is to us. We could not be more grateful for her involvement in our brand.
What advice or recommendations do you have for food and beverage entrepreneurs who are just starting out?
Be patient. Everything, I mean everything, takes much longer than you anticipate. Be honest with yourself and identify what you don’t know or can’t do by yourself. Then lean on experts to guide you where you need it most. When hiring consultants or finding mentors, don’t rely on generalists–instead find people who specialize in the specific areas that you need to round out your business.
Thanks so much to Eileen for sharing her story! Learn more about Sunday Night Foods on their website.
From a Corporate Career to Breakout Specialty Sauce Success, Meet Sunday Night Foods Founder Eileen Gannon
