By Andrea Smith
Meg Hurst’s Google calendar is a game of Tetris. The North Wilmington mom is responsible for five kids under 11 years old, five food trucks, an ice cream shop, and 22 staff members, which all take up space in her schedule as color-coded time blocks.
But unlike Tetris, blocks that don’t align perfectly are allowed to overlap. Oftentimes her kids come to work with her at Cajun-Sno New Orleans Style Snoballs, an original food truck serving shaved-ice treats with a distinct snow-like texture; DonutNV, a franchise food truck specializing in mini donuts; and Sweet Lucy’s Ice Cream and Treats on Concord Pike, the ice cream shop that’s evolved to offer snoballs and other desserts.
“Austin and Mikayla can fully work the Cajun-Sno truck by themselves if they want to, which is amazing,” Meg says of her two oldest kids. Sienna, 6, is learning to read labels and hand Meg the ingredients for snoballs. Niko, 4, can greet customers and offer them utensils. And Charlie, the youngest at less than 2 years old, is the hype girl who’s always excited for a sweet treat. As heirs to the Sugar Empire, they’re learning what it really takes to run a family business.
“Sugar Empire is [our company] over top of Cajun-Sno, Sweet Lucy’s, and DonutNV,” Meg explains. “I wanted [that name] to remind myself to keep growing, and to keep expanding, and to keep doing cool things. We definitely have the next, like, three businesses planned out.”
She says this while wearing a tie-dye hoodie with the words “SUGAR MAMA” boldly displayed across the front, which she custom ordered from another local mom-owned business, The Spilled Tee. Her husband has a matching hoodie with the moniker “DONUT DAN.”
Meg met Dan Hurst at Brandywine’s Hanby Middle School. ”He was my first ever crush,” she smiles at the memory. “We didn’t start dating until I was in college, but we both grew up here.”
They became partners in business around the same time they became partners in love, getting married in 2013 and then launching Cajun-Sno just days after their honeymoon. The business draws from Dan’s childhood memories of visiting N’awlins Snoballs on Concord Pike with his dad, who’s also an entrepreneur. “We’d wait in line for 15 or 20 minutes to get a snoball, and when they went out of business, you couldn’t get snoballs around here,” Dan says. “We wanted to bring snoballs back.”
He received an insurance settlement after a motorcycle accident in 2010, and the couple agreed to invest the money in their first venture. From there, life snowballed, if you will. “We found out we were pregnant with our first baby six weeks [after opening Cajun-Sno], so everything was like, boom, boom, boom!”
Over the next 11 years, they added another Cajun-Sno trailer plus three DonutNV trucks to their fleet. They bought Sweet Lucy’s in February of 2020 and survived the COVID-19 pandemic, depending on the local community to keep them in business while at home they faced the possibility of foreclosure on their house.
“The whole ‘blood, sweat, tears’ thing — that’s real. Anxiety is real. I’ve had panic attacks at midnight when I’m trying to pack up trucks and get things where I’m supposed to be,” Meg shares. “Difficult weeks happen… Mother Nature will decide she’ll hate you for two weeks during your busiest two festivals of the year, and in those times, it’s so important for Dan and I to lean on each other, to lean on our team, and on a lot of our friends or other food truck buddies.”
A former family and marriage therapist, she understands the importance of mental health and reserves a spot in her calendar for weekly therapy appointments. She’s candid about struggling with postpartum depression and aims to empower working moms.
Sugar Empire employee Chelsea Richards became friends with Meg while they were both pregnant with their first children, and now she’s picking up shifts at Sweet Lucy’s and in the trucks. “I was a stay-at-home mom, and once my kids went back to school, that’s when I was going to go back to work. Then I figured out ‘Wait, what am I going to do?’” she says. “Ice cream. Who doesn’t love that?”
Meg plans to expand the Sugar Empire but isn’t ready to share details about new concepts just yet. In the near future, her goals include rebranding Sweet Lucy’s and Cajun-Sno with updated logos, expanding the Cajun-Sno menu and party packages, buying and sending out even more snoball and DonutNV trucks, and creating an all-encompassing website.
“We’ve been averaging about 35 events a week,” Meg says. Cajun-Sno and DonutNV are largely dependent on event bookings, while Sweet Lucy’s has regular hours year-round. “I call it my ‘Rocky Road roller coaster.’ …There’s highs and there’s lows.”
Recently, she had to pivot after a car accident took two parked DonutNV trucks out of commission, and while they’re thankful no one was injured, it still hurts the family business to cancel events and future bookings.
“It’s organized chaos,” Dan says of their lifestyle. “Every day is different.”
Above: Meg and Dan Hurst’s Sugar Empire consists of three businesses: Sweet Lucy’s Ice Cream and Treats, Cajun-Sno New Orleans Style Snoballs, and DonutNV. Photo by Andrea Smith.