Mark and Kyla Touris
Sweet Enchantment
Kyla and Mark Touris cast a delicious spell with their Sweet Thing Gourmet jam By Nancy McKibben | Photography by Autumn LeAnn
O
nce upon a time, in a modest cottage in an unremarkable corner of Bexley, dwelt a sculptor and a writer. They raised their three children, smiled at their neighbors, clipped their hedges and mowed their lawn. “Nothing to see here,” they might have said. But when the cottage windows were open and the breeze wafted in the right direction, a passerby might catch the scent of something magical—the juiciness of ripe berries, the tart pucker of rhubarb, the yielding ripeness of a peach. “Sweet,” he might murmur, and he would be right. Because that modest cottage is the home of Sweet Thing Gourmet, and every year from its kitchen pour 18,000 jars of luscious jam, the alchemy of imagination and hard work.
Obstacles into opportunities
Fifty-somethings Kyla and Mark Touris have been professional
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SPRING 2022
jam-makers for a combined total of 32 years. And although they are scary good at what they do, jam was not Plan A. Armed with an English degree and a teaching certificate (Kyla) and a Columbus College of Arts degree and a Master’s in Fine Arts in Sculpting (Mark), they married in 1994 and began life in Kyla’s home state of Montana. “We loved Montana, but it’s a tough place to make a living,” says Mark. Baby Aaron’s arrival prompted a move to Columbus in 2000, where Mark became design director at an ad agency, and Kyla became pregnant with twin girls. Determined to stay home with her three young children, and inspired in part by Victoria magazine’s stories of women entrepreneurs, Kyla turned to jam. “Both Mark and I love to cook,” she says. “I remember forag-
