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IMPORTANT: If you would like your order shipment delayed to a specific later date, please indicate these details for us in the note section of the cart page, or send us an email. Unless otherwise noted, all shipments will be sent as soon as they are prepared.

Temporary STOP on Toffee & Mash Up shipments during peak heat. Locals, use code PICKUP for 25% off pick up orders. Temporary STOP on Toffee & Mash Up shipments during peak heat. Locals, use code PICKUP for 25% off pick up orders.

Our Mission

What began as a rather general desire to “create sweet gifts that foster connection” has become a very intentional journey to learn and love our city, the Bull City, in impactful ways.

DTCO's mission is to personally affect provision and wholeness for every Durham resident by sharing our profits, time, and hearts today and always. 

We cannot know exactly how our impact will take shape, but we believe ourselves to be in the middle phase of a three-phase journey.

Durham Toffee kitchen
Rebecca and David
Phase One

In phase one, we became well-established as a company. Thank you with all our hearts, Durham (and beyond), for your eager loyalty! Read more about our sweet story here.

Phase Two

In phase two, our current phase, we've brought my husband and strongest support--David Burnett--onto the DTCO team in order to meet wonderfully increasing demand.  David’s spirit and expertise empowers much needed growth at every level of our business while substantially increasing laughter output for all. (Employee joy is a secondary mission at DTCO!) We anticipate that throughout this phase we will continue operating creatively out of our home-certified kitchen, maximizing output, streamlining processes, getting better-versus-bigger.

Our Durham love in this stage will continue as participation with significantly impactful organizations like Durham Cares, Step Up Durham, and The Diaper Bank of NC. We will also ensure that our product prices accurately reflect our costs so that we can build a foundation for stage three.

Phase Three

Our dream for the final phase, which will never end, I presume, makes my heart a little giddy and frankly scares me to death. What if we could duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate our happy home kitchen, one or two kitchens at a time in one big facility?

What if two of those kitchens were “money kitchens” and two moved at a pace apart, operated by hearts and hands who are “less employable” for any number of reasons? What if in the center of this kitchen quadrangle there were couches and tables with lamps and all manner of welcome? What if our goal was solidarity and not wealth building at all? What if each month’s profit boomeranged back to those kitchens and hosted spaghetti dinners or pancake breakfasts? Where in the world could we pull this off? What type of building on what type of street?

Durham Toffee kitchen
Durham Toffee family

And then my husband, daughters and sons, and son-in-law start talking about their own unique contributions like basic finance, carpentry, or mechanic classes, a coffee bar, a community garden . . . Their curiosity and support means the world to me.

So here we are. This is the direction of our mission. For the health of us all, we stay in the present moment, hearts flung open to the Spirit and one another, offering our yeses one at a time.

Rebecca Burnett & Family