One of the happiest treats on the planet came from the darkest time in Joanna Czikalla's life. Czikalla's known for creating the unicorn hot chocolate that went viral last December, sparking endless articles, 4-hour wait lines in her tiny California dessert parlor, and inspiring her to create one of the most magical menus of any cafe, anywhere.
It's impossible to take in her pastel-hued sweets without smiling, and yet, right around the time Czikalla created them, she considered quitting everything. "It was the lowest point of my life," she says. "I didn't know who I was. I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror."
Czikalla's marriage was crumbling, and her mom had been diagnosed with cancer. When she wasn't helping her mom go to chemo, she was working around the clock in her fledgling cafe, Anaheim's Creme & Sugar. And it was all taking a toll on her.
"I was drained, tired, broken, and emotionally hungover all the time," she explains. "I didn't want to do anything, and I was in a really bad place."
She Needed An Escape From The Everyday.
Then, on an unseasonably chilly day for Southern California, Czikalla decided to play around in the kitchen. She needed something other than work and binge-watching Grey's Anatomy to get her out of this funk. Forget idle hands being the devil's playground; in this instance, boredom was the catalyst for reinvention.
"I was bored, and I wanted to make hot chocolate, but I'm not a chocolate person," Czikalla says. She had just hosted a foodie event with a Nightmare Before Christmas theme, serving cakes inspired by hallmarks of the movie — deadly nightshade, the film's title character, Jack Skellington — and even an Oogie Boogie Frapp. So she took out some of the leftover ingredients and got experimenting, adding vanilla and pink food coloring to white hot chocolate, then topping the treat with whatever was on hand: a mixture of rainbow sprinkles, a handful of fruity marshmallows.
"I tried it, and it was bomb, but I was too lazy to change my menu, so I just posted a photo of it on social media," she says.
It wasn't an immediate hit.
A Little 'Sparkle' Changed Everything.
"Nobody was ordering it, and then one day, this Instagram influencer, Team Sparkle — that's her handle — posted a photo of it next to her rainbow purse," Czikalla explains. Before long, Cosmo came calling, asking to feature her, and within a few days, there were 12 pages of search results on Google, all referencing her treat. Which wasn't even on Creme & Sugar's chalkboard menu.
Suddenly, a shop that barely seats 30 had lines out the door and wrapping around the block. People were waiting four hours to sip her psychedelic hot chocolate, and Czikalla's dad was racing out to every grocery store in town, making three to four extra trips a day for ice cream, milk and fruity marshmallows, just so they could keep up with demand. Czikalla had four employees at the time. In the six months since unicorn mania erupted, that number's almost quadrupled.
But, if you think Creme & Sugar's a one-trick pony, you're all wrong.
Czikalla's not the type to rest on her laurels, riding the wave of a single success. In fact, it's been drilled into her to always. Be. Innovating.
She's Fighting Trolls With Unicorns. And Mermaids.
"When I opened this shop, people always told me, 'you're never going to make it,' and 'I'm sorry, but nothing survives here.' It was all of this negative juju," she says. "Even when the shop was crowded, people would say, 'well, I hope it lasts.'"
So, she let her ideas run wild. In addition to an entire unicorn secret menu, she launched a Beauty And The Beast-inspired menu, tied to the live-action movie's release. Most recently, she went full mermaid, offering shakes, floats, a cake, and shaved ice all inspired by the mythical sea creature. While the purple ombre cake is vanilla, the rest have a tropical blue Hawaiian flavor — a mix of blue raspberry, coconut and lime. She also sells Mermaid Water, a blue Hawaiian lemonade topped with a drizzle of Czikalla's signature sea salt cream, making the drink mimic the seafoam-capped waves of the Pacific.
Business has mellowed out a bit. With planning and hiring the right people, Creme & Sugar still has lines out the door, but things move so quickly that nobody has to wait hours to try one of her sweets, and Czikalla has time to keep experimenting and testing new ideas.
She's Gone Mad. And She's Okay With That.
She's now hard at work on a second shop, which might be even more fantastical than the first. It's called Sugar Gone Mad, a Willy Wonka and Alice in Wonderland-inspired cafe that turns every unbirthday into an extraordinary occasion. An exact opening date hasn't been set, but the shop will officially announce it on Instagram: @sugargonemadoc.
"I don't sleep, honestly," the 31-year-old says. "I'm always looking online, searching Pinterest, jotting down ideas."
That's the thing about Czikalla: As young as she is, she's lived a dozen different lives, working at restaurants, schilling mouse-eared tchotchkes at Disneyland, running two successful Etsy shops, launching a shaved ice stand at a farmer's market, getting a Cosmetology degree to do 3-D nail art, even teaching herself graphic design. (In fact, most of the silhouettes donning the walls at Creme & Sugar are Czikalla's own creations.)
She's not slowing down anytime soon, and that's been the greatest surprise of the success of her unicorn hot chocolate — it helped reignite her joie de vivre.
"You hear the word 'viral' and you don't really know what it means until it happens to you," Czikalla says. "One website compared me to Willy Wonka, and I just started crying when I read that. It was this moment of clarity; this was what I was meant to do."
For a girl who grew up worshiping Gwen Stefani and collecting Disney cookbooks and Mrs. Potts tea sets, everything clicked into place. Unicorn hot chocolate's not going to save the world, but it can make someone's day. And to Czikalla, that means everything.
Mermaid menu footage courtesy of @OCBusinesses.
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