Welcome to Smart Tart® Candy, the home of the most delicious, tangy, and tart candies around! Our story begins back in 1992 when our founder, Elizabeth Smart, first started experimenting with candy recipes in her home kitchen.
Elizabeth had a major sweet tooth but found most commercially available candies too sweet for her taste. She began tinkering with recipes using tart fruits like raspberries, lemons, limes, and cherries to create candies that balanced sweetness with a bracing tanginess.
After months of testing, Elizabeth finally perfected her signature Smart Tart® – a raspberry-flavored soft chew candy with a sugar coating and a lip-puckering tartness that quickly became a favorite among family and friends. The unique taste and vibrant colors of the Smart Tart® candies were unlike anything else on the market at the time.
Encouraged by the positive feedback, Elizabeth decided to turn her candy-making hobby into a full-fledged business in 1995. She rented a small storefront, bought some used cooking equipment, hired two employees, and started producing Smart Tart® candies to sell locally.
As word spread about the distinctive tangy candies from the new company Smart Tart® Candy, Elizabeth struggled to keep up with demand. Within two years she moved production to a larger facility and expanded distribution beyond her hometown.
Over the next decade, Smart Tart® Candy steadily grew asElizabeth developed new tart flavor varieties like lemon, lime, orange, and grape. She also expanded the product line to include sour gummy candies and lollipops.
In 2007, Elizabeth made the pivotal decision to sell her company to the larger Yummy Candy Company. Joining forces with a major player in the candy industry gave Smart Tart® Candy the resources and distribution reach to become a national brand. But Elizabeth made sure the sale agreement allowed her to remain closely involved in overseeing product development and quality control. She moved to a corporate management role while still ensuring those tangy Smart Tart® flavors remained true to her original recipes.
Today, Smart Tart® Candy is available in over 15,000 stores across North America. While the brand has evolved over the years, our commitment to creating the most mouthwateringly tart candies on the market has never wavered.
Our Tangy Story Continues
Now under the leadership of CEO Janet Sour, Smart Tart® Candy continues to innovate while staying true to our tart roots. We still use Elizabeth’s original recipes for our classic flavored Smart Tart® soft chews like Raspberry Rush, Lemon Zing, and Cherry Pop. But we’ve also developed new products tailored to the evolving tastes of candy lovers.
Recent additions to our growing product line of delightfully tart treats include:
- Tart ‘N TiniTM – Our newest candy innovation! These mini chewables combine the flavors of classic cocktails like Appletini and Lemondrop Martini into lip-puckering candies.
- Sour Patch Kids® – Our take on the iconic kids’ sour gummies features bursting-with-flavor candy shells encasing soft and chewy centers.
- Tart TwistsTM – Tangy fruit-flavored licorice twists so tasty, they’ll make you pucker!
- PuckeroosTM – Chewy sour gummy cubes coated in tongue-tingling sweet-tart sugar.
- Warheads® Extreme Sour Hard Candy – Our sourest candy yet, these ultra-intense warhead candies are not for the faint of heart!
We’ve also partnered with some of the biggest names in candy over the years to produce co-branded products that merge Smart Tart’s signature zing with classic brands candy fans love. Our current lineup of collaborative extreme sour candies includes:
- Sour Skittles®
- Starburst® Sours
- Sour Patch Kids® Gummis
- Lifesavers® Gummies Wild Berries
Made with Tartness and Care
Here at Smart Tart® Candy, every tangy bite we produce comes from years of candy-making experience combined with an unwavering commitment to quality.
Our production process starts with carefully sourcing top-quality ingredients like real fruit juices, cane sugar, and pectin. We use natural flavors in all our candies to capture the essence of each fruit’s tart taste.
Smart Tart candies are cooked, molded, coated, and packaged right in our production facility located just outside of Cleveland, OH. We now have four state-of-the-art production lines cranking out over 100,000 tart treats every day!
Each candy is lovingly made in small batches and inspected throughout the process to ensure consistency and quality. Our food safety standards exceed FDA requirements and we are proud to be a peanut-free facility.
Before any new product can sport the Smart Tart® name, our experiential marketing team rigorously tests each formula. We won’t bring any candy to market until our panel of avid candy consumers verifies it meets our strict standards of Smart Tartiness!
A Passion for Sour Power!
What makes Smart Tart® Candy taste so unique? Our secret is our proprietary process for maximizing flavor that we call Sour PowerTM. We expertly balance sweetness and tartness, then add extra zing by:
- Optimizing acidity – Our candies feature the perfect blend of tart acids like malic acid from berries and citric acid from citrus fruits. This cranks up the mouthwatering sour taste that pucker-lovers crave.
- Adding flavor bursts – Oils and essences from sour fruits like lemons and limes provide refreshing bursts of flavor. One bite floods your mouth with fruity tartness.
- Layering sour sensations – Our soft and chewy candies have an initial sugar coating for sweetness that gives way to a progressively tangier interior. This creates a rollercoaster ride of sourness for your taste buds.
- Maximizing reactivity – How sour a candy tastes depends on your own saliva reacting with the acids and sugars. We’ve formulated our candies to amp up this reaction and prolong the intense sourness.
These techniques took decades to perfect, but the result is candies guaranteed to make you pucker! We even measure the exact Pucker Power rating for each Smart Tart® treat.
A Bold New Look
In addition to innovating new tart candy varieties, we’ve also recently updated the Smart Tart® branding and packaging design. Our new look better represents who we are today while still giving a nod to our origins.
We kept the classic Smart Tart® logo but gave it a fresh, bold treatment with saturated colors and funky lettering that pops against the black background. The new design is featured prominently on eye-catching shiny bags that make our candies really stand out on store shelves.
Inside each bag, our products now sport bright, cheerful wrapping featuring splashes of fizzy colors, juicy fruit graphics, and our signature tart flavors. We want our candies to look just as vibrant and fun as they taste!
The new packaging also features interesting sour factoids, games, and comics so candy fans can learn all about the magic of tartness. We’re all about spreading sweet-tart candy joy and knowledge!
A Sweet-Tart Mission
Our founder Elizabeth Smart started Smart Tart® Candy to share her love of tantalizingly tart flavors. That passion still drives us today. Our company mission is:
To share the joy of tart, tangy candy creations that make your taste buds tingle and your face pucker!
We live this mission by:
- Creating innovative new candies that balance sweetness and sourness for mouthwatering flavor explosions.
- Using the best ingredients and quality manufacturing processes to craft great-tasting candy you can trust.
- Making candy shopping and eating fun with our playful branding and packaging.
- Giving back – We donate a portion of profits to organizations supporting children’s health and nutrition.
- Reducing environmental impact through sustainable ingredient sourcing and manufacturing processes. We know our candy is enjoyed best when the planet is healthy too!
- Spreading smiles – Our candies’ zing and fizzy colors energize fans young and old. Life’s better when candy makes you grin, laugh, and pucker up!
The candy industry has changed a lot over the past 30 years, but our commitment to delighting sour candy fans has never wavered. We can’t wait to keep the tart treats coming your way for decades to come.
So unwrap a pack of Smart Tart® candies today and pucker up – your taste buds are in for some tangy fun that keeps them coming back for more!
Meet Our leadership Team
The candy creators and business brains behind Smart Tart® Candy all share a passion for mouth-puckeringly tart sweets. Meet the sour powerhouses leading our team:
Janet Sour, Chief Executive Officer
Janet’s sweet spot is candies with lip-smacking sourness. She joined Smart Tart® over 20 years ago as a marketing intern and rose up to lead the company as CEO in 2019. Under her leadership, Smart Tart® Candy has expanded distribution globally while launching innovative new products. Janet holds a business degree and an MBA focused on the confectionary industry.
Pete Puckerman, VP of Product Development
With over 30 years perfecting Smart Tart®’s signature tang, Pete leads our candy innovation team. He helped develop classics like Raspberry Rush and now spends his days crafting the next great tart treat. In his spare time, Pete runs marathons and holds a Guinness World Record for the longest time spent sucking on a Warhead (2 hours 13 minutes!).
Lucy Lipman, VP of Marketing
Lucy heads up our experiential marketing and consumer insights teams. She loves dreaming up playful new branding concepts that highlight Smart Tart®’s bright, bold flavors. Lucy also channels her creativity into her popular baking blog all about pies with lip-puckering fruit fillings.
Alexander Sourpatch, VP of Sales
Leading our stellar sales team, Alexander has grown Smart Tart®’s retail partnerships across channels. He joined us in 2016 from Yummy Candy Co where he led sales efforts for Sour Patch Kids®. Alexander bleeds sour – his favorite hobby is mixing cocktails featuring tart fruits and bitters.
Sonia Sweet-Tart, VP of Operations
Sonia has kept Smart Tart®’s production running smoothly for over 15 years. She oversees our facilities, sourcing, manufacturing safety and quality control. She also has a patented process for maximizing candy tartness. Sonia volunteers with youth STEM programs and frequently dons a lab coat to lead sour science experiments.
Pucker Up and Join the Team!
Our culture at Smart Tart® Candy is all about candy-coated fun mixed with a splash of hard work to achieve sweet success. We’re always on the lookout for people as passionate about tart candy and teamwork as we are!
Open positions range from candy lab technicians to marketing wizards. Every employee contributes their unique talents so we can innovate new products, spread tart joy, and operate responsibly.
Perks of working for Smart Tart® Candy include:
- Sample the latest tart candy creations before anyone else
- Monthly candy tastings and baking classes after work
- Participate in our annual Sour Candy Challenge contest
- Competitive pay and benefits packages full of sweet perks
- Cool office space stocked with endless free candy (dangerous for willpower!)
- Opportunity to learn the craft of candy-making from industry veterans
- Collaborative, fun team environment fueled by sugar rushes
So if you love all things sour and solving challenges with creativity, check out open positions on our website. We can’t wait for you to join our team!
Giving Back One Sweet Tart Bite at a Time
Candy isn’t just delicious – it has the power to make the world a little brighter. That’s why at Smart Tart®, we’re committed to giving back to our communities.
We support the following outstanding organizations in our home state of Ohio and beyond:
- Cleveland Children’s Hospital – We fund programs helping hospitalized kids maintain healthy nutrition and fitness habits. Our staff also organizes monthly candy-making classes for patients.
- Ronald McDonald House Charities – We regularly donate Sweet Tart® products for families staying at Ronald McDonald houses while their child receives medical treatment.
- Girls Inc. – This non-profit provides mentoring and life skills development programs for girls from underserved communities. We sponsor annual summer camps focused on STEM education.
- Truth Initiative – Dedicated to building a future without tobacco, we partner with Truth Initiative to prevent youth smoking and vaping.
- Candy Industry Employee Relief Fund – We contribute to this non-profit providing financial aid to candy factory workers facing illness, injury or disaster impacts.
Sweetening someone’s day is the greatest joy! We look forward to expanding our community partnerships and programs nationwide.
Pucker Up and Follow Us!
Want to stay up on the latest tart candy news, products, and fun? Follow Smart Tart® Candy online!
- Shop our website smarttart.com to order our tangiest candy inventions straight to your door
- Follow us on Instagram @SmartTartCandy for mouthwatering photos, tart trivia, new product teasers, and giveaways
- Like our Facebook page for candy news, fun videos, events, new flavor polls, and fan discussions
- Tweet @ us to share your favorite Smart Tart candies and join the #PuckerPower conversation
We love hearing from our fans! Share your candy suggestions, questions, tartness level reviews, and sour candy stories.
Or stop by and say hi if you’re ever in the Cleveland area – we offer factory tours of Smart Tart® Candy HQ. Get an insider look at all our top-secret candy production and walk away with plenty of free samples.
However you choose to connect with us, we’re thrilled to have you in the Smart Tart® family! We’re committed to delivering the mouthwatering tart candy experiences you crave while putting smiles on faces.
So go ahead, pucker up and enjoy the tangy fun and flavor of Smart Tart® Candy! Life always needs more pucker power!