Warm Hugs owner Suzanne Saraf traces downtown shop to family recipes, craft shows and hand-made mixes

Suzanne Saraf, owner of Warm Hugs in downtown Greeley, said family recipes and a string of successful craft‑show sales led her to open a brick‑and‑mortar store she’s now run for about 15 years.

Saraf told host Becca Vaklovic on the City of Greeley’s Greeley Business Beat that she converted her grandmother’s and family recipes into packaged mixes and used creative, handmade packaging to make giftable products. “A warm hug is best,” Saraf said, explaining the name and the emotional origin of the business. She recalled selling out at her first craft show and deciding to open downtown after repeat success.

The store mixes an assortment of items — fashion, candles, garden goods and the proprietary mixes that Saraf described as the shop’s “bread and butter.” Saraf said the mixes are still made on-site in a back kitchen and packaged by hand. “We manufacture all our mixes by hand, 1 at a time,” she said, stressing a scratch process rather than automation.

Saraf described the Greeley retail environment as unusually supportive compared with other places she’s heard about. “The community supports local,” she said, adding that fellow retailers often help one another. That local support, she said, helped Warm Hugs stay downtown for more than a decade.

On operations, Saraf said she’s kept her recipes largely unchanged while updating packaging annually. Her husband handles mixing and bookkeeping; her daughter joined the business about seven years ago and introduced organizational systems that helped scale operations. Saraf also credited longtime friends who help assemble packaging — a small production network she described as the store’s “secret sauce.”

Regarding scale, Saraf said the mixes occupy an “8‑foot wall” in the store and estimated the shop produces “thousands” of mixes a year; an exact annual total was not specified. She framed the mixes as the largest product line by units sold and a central revenue driver for the business.

Asked about expansion as Greeley grows, Saraf said she prefers steady improvement at the current location over rapid growth, warning that scaling too fast can create financial and staffing pressures. Her advice to would‑be entrepreneurs: test the product, pay attention to customer feedback and, if it looks promising, move forward. “Feel the fear and do it anyway,” she said.

The interview concluded with host Becca Vaklovic thanking Saraf. The episode notes that the Greeley Business Beat is produced by the City of Greeley in collaboration with 1 k creative and directs listeners to visitreally.com for more information.