Linden gets a sweet new business
Linden’s new arrival is a dandy.
Nancy Snodgrass has been a Texan for only a few weeks, but already the California native has jumped in to host a pop-up store in Linden’s business startup promotion that ended last week.
Her specialty is sweets. She makes chocolate and bakes. But this is only a start for the 60-year-old who also owns, breaks and trains horses. She brought two with her here to Texas.
Her delicacy business is called Grancy Nancy’s—Sweets, Snacks and Treats. How this business name came about says much about this resourceful person. Here’s the tale.
She came to Texas following her daughter’s and grandchildren’s move here. The daughter had remarried and her new husband had a family, so when Nancy arrived she gained three new great-grandchildren.
“When I was introduced to the great-granddaughter, 5-year-old Brookie, she started making fun of my name. Not the Snodgrass but the Nancy and grandmother name,” the sweets lady said. “They must have been studying phonics that week in school because Brookie started rhyming my name.”
“Grancy—swancy—fancy—pancy—Nancy,” Brookie began singing.
Then, her sister Kenzie, 8, and brother Bubba, 4, joined in and so “grandmother” became “grancy.”
“Grancy Nancy. That was my name,” Snodgrass said. “So when I was looking for a name for my new catering business, that was it.”
It seems that Nancy has a long history of doing and being the unusual.
“If you’d like to know my previous occupations, it would take a year to tell. I’d been a single mom most of my kids’ lives, so if it paid a pay check, I did it.”
She worked in malls, ran a boarding ranch for horses for more than 20 years and now that she bakes, she has a cake decorator’s credential, and loves to experiment.
“I’ll do what others need,” she said. “I even have a Texas cookie recipe that had been handed down in my family for 100 years called a canteen cookie bar. But I focus on candies.”
Recently she’s begun to specialize in the “candy table” that seems to be in fashion with modern brides and grooms. This is a table set aside for the most imaginative sweets in the wedding couple’s colors. This is Grancy Nancy’s forte.
Snodgrass’s relocation to Linden has seemed perfect, too, she said.
“When I looked for a house, I found Miss Lucky’s house on Dorsey Street near the Macedonia church and cemetery. It was a yellow house. Miss Lucky was Jessie Dorsey—and like me in a lot of ways. She baked and gave away candy to the neighbors all the time just like I like to do.
“One day it just came to me that maybe Miss Lucky’s relatives would like to come back to this house, their home place, and visit it. I found some of the relatives and told them they were welcomed to do so. Some just started crying and said they would drive by, look and just want to come in but not knowing if it were OK.”
Grancy Nancy suggested everyone return for a barbecue regularly.
“I love to please people,” Snodgrass said. And the purchasers will notice she takes extra steps to package and use colorful first-class decorations in which to place her original chocolate candy creations. Grancy Nancy has her reason.
“When you love what you do … you can taste it,” she said.