NORTHAMPTON — A slight warmth emanates from the goopy, honey-colored syrup through the flexible casing.
The thick mixture of sugar, water and a plant-based fiber called pectin conforms to the hand like a waterbed, but this substance is not for sleeping. It is for eating.
With the addition of citric acid, this liquid gels into chewy candy — one of three pre-made gummy bases produced by Northampton-based food science company Melt-to-Make.
Co-founded by Sarah McLaughlin, Jake Goodyear and Tim Van Epps, the company cooks up organic pectin- and gelatin-based gummies at its 99 Industrial Drive facility that are 90% complete, so cannabis and nutraceutical companies can easily add their own active ingredients without having to master the science of gummy making.
“My little line: You don’t need a chef,” said Kirsten Wedgegartner, vice president of sales and marketing operations at Melt-to-Make. “You need Jeff, who shows up on time and can follow basic work instructions.”
Since its 2018 founding, Melt-to-Make says that more than 1,000 companies in 16 countries have turned to its product to solve the sticky science of gummy production. The gummy base producer landed on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the United States in 2026, posting a 163% revenue increase from 2022 to 2025.
The company estimates that its base is now used by about 7% of United States cannabis companies selling marijuana gummies.
Bright future
While Melt-to-Make’s product may move like molasses, McLaughlin, Goodyear and Van Epps see the company’s growth picking up speed as it sits at the intersection of the highly competitive industries of cannabis, supplements and food. Its small size and dedication to research and development give it the ingredients to keep growing, the owners said.
“It’s just following the science because the science is always years ahead of the trends,” McLaughlin said.
Before Melt-to-Make was founded in 2018, fledgling cannabis gummy producers either spent hours in the kitchen, or melted down gummy bears to infuse with cannabinoids. Despite hours spent sorting heavy packages of the bear-shaped candy by color and the machinery damage caused by the melted candy, it was still easier for the food science novice than the trial-and-error process of candy creation.
The ingredients of gummy candy are simple, but the process is fickle. A candy maker must properly dissolve sweeteners and disperse the gelling agent at the correct ratios and heat level. If the temperature is too high, the gelling agent begins to break down. Too low, and it never fully activates, leaving the gummies either chunky or unset. Pectin requires an acid to gel, but adding it too early or in too great a quantity will cause it to firm up before it ever reaches the molds.
“There’s a lot of science involved,” McLaughlin said. “So basically we’re allowing people with very little science to be able to make stable finished gummies.”
McLaughlin was better positioned to tackle the challenge. A dietitian and nutritionist by training, the candy she developed for her, Goodyear and Van Epps’s cannabidiol business Heritage Hemp garnered a lot of attention for its flavor and texture.
But Van Epps’s other company, the Heirloom Collective, could not crack the code. McLaughlin demonstrated the process to Heirloom Collective employees in Bernardston, but the liquid refused to firm up as soon as she left the facility. When Van Epps returned to McLaughlin for help, he asked her to send up buckets of gummy base to Bernardston, where the dispensary infused it with cannabinoids.
“It fixed their problem so quickly,” Goodyear said. “We were like, ‘OK, this could be a bigger need for companies.’”
It turns out, it was. The company quickly outgrew Van Epps’s carriage house kitchen and moved a mile down the road to a 27,000-square-foot warehouse in Northampton’s industrial park. The location draws talented doctoral students and graduates from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Food Science. Currently, the company employs 35 people, but as the business carves into more areas of the industrial building, Goodyear expects to hire more.
“Our plan is to stay in Northampton,” Van Epps said. “We have no plans of leaving. This will be the business in Northampton for many years to come.”
The process
At the warehouse, watermelon and blue raspberry waft through the air of the facility, growing in potency with proximity to the confectionery room. Workers in lab coats and hairnets buzz around to the whirling sound emanating from the gummy manufacturing.
On one side, employees feed ingredients into the mixer, which passes through a large machine of pipes and vats to cook, vacuumize to remove air and enhance with the company’s all-natural flavors and colors. After circling around the machine, blue globs of viscous gelatin drop through a funnel into silicone molds.
On average, Melt-to-Make produces four tons of gummy base per day, and Goodyear said the output is about to grow exponentially. Currently, the machine produces 300 kilograms of gummy base per hour, switching daily between gelatin and pectin. But Melt-to-Make just ordered an additional machine that can produce 1,000 kilograms per hour. This larger machine will be solely dedicated to pectin, which makes up about 75% of the company’s sales. The current machine will become a gelatin-only production.
As infrastructure expands, so do the number of products. A small white room at the back of the warehouse serves as the test kitchen, and it is packed to the brim with samples and experiments. Sitting on the table is a bottle of the sugar-free prebiotic pectin gummies for gut health, the company’s newest product. A bag of gummy base, the latest of McLaughlin’s research projects, hangs inconspicuously above the sink.
“We’re so small and nimble,” McLaughlin said. “If it’s a flavor, we only need a few months. If it’s a base, we need more like a year. But we can develop extremely quickly.”
Van Epps said this is only the beginning of the gummy company. McLaughlin said the new prebiotic pectin uses ingredients approved in Europe, so the company can now expand its reach into across the Atlantic Ocean.
Goodyear said the company looks to grow further in the nutraceuticals industry. And McLaughlin continues cooking in the test kitchen.
“Keep an eye on this company,” Van Epps said. “It far exceeded everyone’s expectations.”
