Froggy’s Cotton Candy Bar puts a flavorful spin on the traditional treat

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111 N. Main Street, Le Sueur, Minn. 56058 507-665-0023 froggyscottoncandybar.com

Facebook: @ froggyscottoncandybar Instagram: froggyscottoncandybar E-mail: froggyscottoncandybar@ gmail.com

Robin Seger spins up a serving of her tasty cotton candy, which comes in more than 300 flavors, at her shop, Froggy’s Cotton Candy Bar in Le Sueur. (Tom Nelson photo)

Froggy’s Cotton Candy Bar puts a flavorful spin on the traditional treat

BY TOM NELSON

Sometimes when you want something done, it’d best to take matters into your own hands. Such was the beginning of the awardwinning Froggy’s Cotton Candy Bar in downtown Le Sueur.

The concept for the sweet shop located in the distinctive green building at 111 N. Main Street in Le Sueur started as a desire to help build the audience at the community’s weekly summer farmers market in 2020.

“The idea for the shop got started at the farmers market in Le Sueur,” said Froggy’s Cotton Candy Bar owner Robin Seger, who also serves as a vice president for the farmers market. “We wanted to bring out something sweet at the farmers market for the kids during COVID-19. We weren’t able to find anyone to come out and I figured ‘what the heck, it couldn’t be that hard to do this myself.’ I did some research into making cotton candy, bought my first machine and it just snowballed after that.”

Prior to the her debut at the farmers market, Seger had been a stay-at-home mom raising her four children and also doing direct sales with products such as Tupperware, which was her initial connection with the Le Sueur farmers market.

“I was a stay-at-home mom and had never done cotton candy before, but it was just something we wanted to bring to the farmers market, so I just decided to take the leap,” Seger said.

“I thought I would just do it for fun at first, and then it just started going big. People wanted our cotton candy and it just did the snowball effect. We opened up in July last year and were then booked until the end of November last year with private events and small festivals.”

From those beginnings at the farmers market, Seger’s business quickly grew.

“People started asking us where they could get our cotton candy when the market was over,” Seger said. “I didn’t want people to start coming over to my home, so we started looking in town for a location. Everything just fell into place for us, we found this building (111 N. Main

Robin Seger uses candy to flavor her cotton candy. That gives her lots of options to choose from. (Tom Nelson photo)

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Dec. 19 (2020) because people were still looking for our cotton candy.”

Seger noted that business has already doubled and Froggy’s is already getting booked into 2022 for events. The reason for the success points directly to its unique flavors and quality of her shop’s cotton candy.

“Ours is not your traditional cotton candy,” Seger said. “It melts in your mouth and it has a variety of flavors.”

At that first foray into cotton candy making at the Le Sueur farmers market, Seger and her team offered one basic flavor.

“We went out that first time with the traditional sugar puffs,” Seger said. “My husband (Keith Seger) came home that night and found out we could do hard candy. We played around with the process and were just blown away by the flavors.

“The flavors we created were so much better. Hands down, when you eat it you get that smack of flavor. We then created 10 new flavors and went to the market the next week and had lines for our cotton candy.”

The list of flavors since produced by Froggy’s has just under 300. The current menu has 106 flavors.

The shop will soon be bringing out its fall flavors and rotating out its summer flavors.

“Our brains don’t shut off, we are thinking about new flavor ideas 24/7,” Seger said. “We have a lot of flavors and we are not done creating new ones.”

Seger indicated the top five cotton candy flavors are bubble gum, banana, birthday cake, blue raspberry and root beet float. Some of the shop’s more unique creations include huckleberry “psych” and cucumber watermelon mint.

“When you hear cucumber watermelon mint, it doesn’t sound like a good flavor for cotton candy, but when people tried it, the cucumber watermelon mint was one of top sellers for that month and we sold out of it.”

The shop also produced a peach mango with raspberry chipotle in celebration of Cinco de Mayo.

“It has been fun trying to create crazy flavors and seeing people’s reactions,” Seger said.

In addition to the multiple flavors of cotton candy, Froggy’s Cotton Candy Bar offers a variety of tasty treats at its location in Le Sueur including funnel cakes, eight different flavors of fresh-squeezed lemonade, mini donuts, hand scooped ice, snow cones, popcorn, pretzels, caramel apples, hot cocoa bombs and chocolate dipped pretzel sticks along with coffee and other beverages.

Still, cotton candy is the store’s top attraction.

“Here in the shop, we spin it (cotton candy) right in front of them and they can watch us make it,”

Seger said. “That is one of the things that sets us apart from everyone else, is that you get to actually watch us make it and that intrigues people — especially with the kids, they love watching us make the cotton candy.”

Froggy’s continues to sell cotton candy at the weekly farmers’ market in Le Sueur and has been making the rounds at fairs and festivals around the region. County fairs worked by her team this summer included Brown, Sibley, Scott and McLeod along with Northfield’s Defeat of Jesse James Days and New Prague’s Dozinky festival. The remainder of the season will bring stops at area pumpkin patches and fall festivals.

“It has been really fun to go out and see the smiles on kids faces when they try our cotton candy,” Seger said. “I would say our business has grown to where it is 50/50 between the store and the festivals. Our business in the store has really grown thanks to word of mouth and also when people hear about us on social media, in the newspaper or the news.

“We are starting to become a destination hot spot as a sweet shop and we would like to keep that going and grow bigger.”

The shop has attracted visitors from neighboring states, including customers from locales beyond the upper Midwest.

“We’ve had people come to the shop from as far away as Arizona and California, who come here because they have heard about our cotton candy.” Seger added.

The shop currently has a staff of five, and that number will grow during the summer festival season. Froggy’s popularity has allowed Seger to purchase more cotton candy making equipment to be able to increase its presence at fairs, festivals and events in the area.

Seger’s family also plays a big role in helping at the store and festivals. She and her husband Keith have two daughters (Kenzie and Aurora) and two sons (Gannon and Trystan).

A recent transplant to southern Minnesota, Seger grew up in Mesa, Arizona, and moved to Le Sueur after her husband took a new job locally in the heating and air conditioning business. Of note, their oldest daughter (Kenzie) still lives in Arizona while Aurora works at Froggy’s.

The family has embraced the move to Minnesota along with its lifestyle, scenery and winter. She also loves the support from the community.

“I love the town, it has been great,” Seger said. “The community has been very supportive of us … and that is what made me decide to take that leap of moving into a store front, just because the community really supported us.

“I love that I can give back to our community by giving them something that is unique. I love it here. To me, this is home.”

The store was recently recognized by Luxlife Magazine as the Best Gourmet Sweet Shop in the Midwest for 2021, and given a Best Cafe award for 2021 by Restaurant Guru. Seger is currently working to try and bring her trademark cotton candy to select Hy-Vee stores, but says her biggest goal at present is to move the store to a bigger location.

“Our goal is bigger store and have a nice big area, attract more people and give customers something to do when they come in. We want to make it a place you have to go see,” Seger said. “We would definitely like to stay in Le Sueur if we can Pind the right building or property to build on, just because this is where it all started. We want to become that sweet shop that everyone talks about as a must go to.” 

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“It is an automated tree trimmer, meaning you sit in a cab and trim the trees, unlike the more traditional manual way of bucket truck and tree climbing. Our product has fiberglass booms that extend 75 feet with a saw that rotates 180 degrees so they provide the precision cuts that they need. We provide the industry’s most efficient way of trimming while in the safety of a climatecontrolled cab.”

“Our products are intended to be safer, more efficient and more profitable.”

The second product developed was the 4-wheel drive Linebacker brush cutter, a heavy-duty machine designed for land clearing, RoW maintenance and other vegetation management applications.

“The Linebacker mulches and grinds as it clears,” Strait said. “The cutter head can extend up to 11 feet and has the ability to take down anything up to 8 inches in diameter.”

The third product developed was the Mini-Jarraff urban tree trimmer, Strait says, “is intended for trimming operations in residential and other tighter quarters.”

“It is fully remote controlled, so the operators can stand a safe distance from to operate it. The Mini has the ability to extend and retract its legs so you can go through a standard fence opening, giving them access to residential areas where a standard Jarraff wouldn’t be able to go.”

Jarraff customers are national, regional and local contractors as well as with utilities and municipalities. Clients Asplundh and Wright Tree are national contractors that would be seen in southern Minnesota.Projects include maintenance of vegetation around transmission and distribution lines.

“A good example would be on highway 169 between here and Mankato,” Strait said. “They need to make sure that there is adequate clearance at all times to prevent damage to the line or damage that would result in a fire.” 