So, why would you put hot sauce on ice cream?! Todd didn't just wake up one morning and decide to make hot sauce for dessert - that would be mental, right?
Before we dive into the sauce story, you need to understand the "Toad" connection. When Todd was 6 years old, he was teased on the playground during school recess in Chattanooga by a classmate who called him "Toad" - meant as an insult.
When Todd told his mother what had happened, she read him stories in The Wind in the Willows and all the many adventures of Mr. Toad. This delighted him, and he happily adopted the nickname "Toad."
The name stuck through into his professional life in Emergency Medicine where, as many Todd's know, "Toad" is a common nickname. It was used lovingly by colleagues, and when he moved from Richland, Washington to West Virginia, he received heartfelt messages wishing "Toad" all the best.
Todd's adventurous spirit and connection to natural beauty came naturally - he'd grown up living in National Parks across the USA as his parents worked for the National Park Service. This instilled in him a love of exploration and a willingness to venture into uncharted territory - traits that would serve him well in creating revolutionary culinary experiences.
It all started with a simple appetiser: cream cheese topped with hot pepper jelly. This inspired Todd to create a chilli cheesecake, focusing on jalapeños since that's what the jelly featured.
Being a chilli enthusiast, Todd struggled to make the cheesecake spicy enough for his palate. It tasted great, but didn't provide that jolt of delight and happiness he was seeking.
One evening at a party with work colleagues in Richland, Washington, Todd spotted what appeared to be cherry peppers around a vegetable platter. He popped one in his mouth and experienced an incredible burst of bright, citrusy lime sweetness - unlike anything he'd tasted before.
This lasted about 12 seconds... then his mouth exploded!
"What is that?!" he asked the hostess.
"Oh, those are just for decoration - they're not for eating!" she replied. "They're habanero peppers."
This was exactly what he'd been looking for!
Todd paired that zesty lime sweetness of the habañero with tart juiciness of the Key lime for added tartness, and the cheesecake became an immediate sensation.
After relocating to West Virginia, then Georgia following his mother's illness and subsequent death, Todd found himself at a crossroads. Given his career in emergency medicine, he could work anywhere in the country - so where did he want to build his next chapter?
Todd decided he wanted to pursue a dream he'd long harboured: learning to hang glide. He researched locations across America and discovered the world-class hang gliding school at Lookout Mountain Flight Park near Chattanooga. Perfect timing - having lived in Fort Oglethorpe as a child and having received stitches in the Emergency Department at least three times as a young boy, Todd already had a connection with the local hospital.
When he discovered they had an opening for a physician assistant, he applied and was offered the position. Adventure and career aligned perfectly.
Shortly after settling in, Todd began hang gliding lessons. Within a month, he was flying from the top of Lookout Mountain, and soon after that, he was working on mastering the sky and the invisible currents of thermals that could lift his glider high into the heavens.
The addiction was immediate and total. Todd started entering hang gliding competitions, flying all over the Southeast US - Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The same adventurous spirit that led him to experiment with habaneros on cheesecake was now taking him soaring through clouds.
At a hang gliding party one evening after flying, Todd spotted a lovely blonde pilot in the landing zone and asked another pilot who she was. Sherri was her name.
Todd struck up a conversation and invited her to the South Park watch party - a regular Wednesday evening tradition among the flying community. It turned out Sherri was visiting from Indiana, where she worked as an elementary school teacher enjoying her summer holidays. She'd taken up hang gliding after watching a teaching colleague fly off the mountain, eventually taking lessons and discovering her own passion for flight.
Todd and Sherri soon became enamoured with each other. Todd would make the 402-mile drive from his home to Sherri's house in Indiana for weekend visits, love literally giving him wings.
In 2000, they were married - two pilots who'd found their perfect co-pilot in life.
It was in the emergency department at Fort Oglethorpe where the cheesecakes came back to life again, requested by the nursing staff who often "voluntold" him he was bringing his famous creation to the next potluck.
The nursing staff there rediscovered his famous cheesecakes, frequently "voluntelling" him to bring them to the next potluck.
Soon, Todd started a small commercial operation with a bakery in Flintstone, Georgia, shipping these unique cheesecakes to restaurants nationwide - even to New York! (Talk about selling ice to Eskimos!)
At a fiery food show in Atlanta, Todd was selling cheesecake slices as fast as he could thaw them. Several customers commented: "This would be amazing as ice cream!"
That sparked an idea - not to make ice cream, but to create a sauce FOR ice cream that captured the cheesecake's incredible flavor profile.
On the drive home, Todd stopped at Harry's Farmers Market in Marietta, Georgia, bought cartons of habaneros and Key limes, and set about creating what would become the world's first "dessert hot sauce" - designed from the ground up to carry chilli zest through to dessert.
The medical staff at Fort Oglethorpe became his (mostly willing) guinea pigs as Todd perfected the recipe through several iterations. Early versions were extremely hot because he discovered ice cream muted the chilli's impact.
One particularly fiery iteration had Todd sampling it straight, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. A nurse walked into the staff lounge, saw Todd's sweaty brow, and exclaimed:
"If that stuff's so hot it's making Toad sweat, I'll wait for the milder version!"
That night, driving home through the foothills of Northwest Georgia after his 10 PM shift, Todd knew the sauce had found its name: Toad Sweat.
The childhood nickname that started as playground teasing had come full circle - now representing innovation, boldness, and the willingness to break culinary rules.
Todd brewed 1,200 bottles for the Austin Fiery Food Show in August 1997, planning to sell cheesecakes and dry rubs. But attendees had other ideas!
Toad Sweat became the star of the show. Customers lined up with pints of Corona, asking Todd to put "some of that lime stuff" in their beers. Strange? Maybe. Delicious? Absolutely.
Then came the breakthrough moment: A TV producer for Good Morning America discovered the sauce at the show, flew bottles to New York, and introduced the entire USA to Toad Sweat live on air - tasting the sauce on vanilla ice cream!
It was a brilliant introduction that quickly overtook the cheesecakes in demand. Todd still worked full-time in emergency medicine while juggling the exploding retail demand for his revolutionary sauces.
In 1999, Todd was offered a position in a children's emergency department in Raleigh, North Carolina, so he relocated there. Soon after, he married Sherri and they started their married life together in North Carolina.
They found a bottling company that could produce the sauces in much larger batches than Todd's 10-gallon pots. Soon, Toad Sweat was being sold in Whole Foods and distributed by two nationwide hot sauce distributors.
Todd joined the North Carolina Specialty Foods Association, partnering with other entrepreneurial businesses with support from the NC State Department of Agriculture. He served on the board of directors and in late 2004 was elected president of the association. This role gave him valuable insight into government-private collaboration and how both sides benefit from mutual support.
In 2002, the Food Network approached the NCSFA for small businesses to feature in a special called Tobacco Road. Along with a barbecue restaurant and an ostrich farm, Peppered Palette was selected for their revolutionary dessert hot sauces.
The episode aired over a dozen times, and each broadcast brought thousands of new orders for Toad Sweat. The concept of hot sauce on ice cream was capturing America's imagination.
In 2005, Todd was offered the opportunity to live in England and work for the National Health Service (NHS). He, Sherri, and their new family (daughter Kalena was just 5 months old) moved to Kendal in the Lake District National Park.
The location was particularly attractive to Todd, given his childhood spent living in National Parks across America. Once again, he found himself in a place of natural beauty, ready to embark on the next chapter of his culinary adventure.
The Guitons lived in the UK from 2005-2008, but the closure of the local hospital to emergency services caused them to return to the United States. They could live and work anywhere across America and chose Bellingham, Washington, where Todd worked in a community hospital while they focused their attention on raising Kalena through her formative years. They enjoyed their life in the Pacific Northwest spending a lot of time in Vancouver, British Columbia and other parts of the magnificent area.
For eight years, Todd continued his emergency medicine career while the Toad Sweat legacy simmered in the background, waiting for the right moment to re-emerge.
In 2016, the opportunity came to move to the UK permanently. Todd returned to work in the NHS Emergency Department in Lancaster, bringing his family back to the region that had captured their hearts. Life was settling into a comfortable rhythm until 16 November 2021, when everything changed in an instant.
On a rainy night in Preston, Todd's train from Blackpool to Lancaster was running minutes late. With over an hour until the next connection at 11:15 PM, he decided to park his bike on Fishergate and walk to enjoy Preston's winter lights.
At 9:47 PM, his front tyre caught a tiny kerb, causing him to fall onto a large concrete cube. The impact was devastating and he heard the ribs break like dry twigs - three ribs broke on the left front of his chest, two ribs in the back left shattered into dozens of fragments under the compression force as three vertebral bodies in his mid-back were compressed.
This single moment left Todd over an inch shorter and unable to continue his career in emergency medicine.
About a year later, while still recovering and grappling with the end of his medical career, Todd had been working at the medical school at the University of Central Lancashire (now the University of Lancashire) and walked past a table advertising:
FREELANCING
SIDEHUSTLES
START UPS
Intrigued, he spoke with the team at the table and joined the Propeller Hub at UCLan to learn how businesses operate in the UK - quite different from his American experience. He networked with other entrepreneurs and gradually began to see a new path forward.
In October 2022, Todd came to the profound realisation that he would never return to medicine. Instead of mourning what was lost, he chose to resurrect what had been dormant: he founded Peppered Palette Ltd.
Over the next year, Todd embarked on an intensive transformation journey, working to rebrand the US Toad Sweat Dessert Hot Sauces for the UK market. He took sales courses, marketing classes, and researched the business landscape.
Working with a team of students from Lancaster University School of Management (LUMS), he created a comprehensive business plan for relaunching the sauces in Britain - this time minimising for focus on Toad Sweat and featuring the flavours - Kickin' Key Lime, Zippin' Lemon, Tinglin' Orange, Zingin' Cranberry and a new addition to the Toad Sweat line, Punchin' Pineapple.
The relaunch strategy began with a year of direct-to-consumer food festivals across the UK. The journey started at the Bolton Food & Drinks Festival in August 2023, where British customers first experienced hot sauce on ice cream with the same amazement Americans had shown decades earlier. Interviewed twice on the BBC Radio Manchester, the sauces started a buzz in the wind.
Success at Bolton led to festivals throughout Lancashire: the Vintage Festival in Morecambe, Light Up Lancaster Festival, and Lancaster Brewery Christmas Markets. Each event brought new converts to what would become the Sweet Heat revolution.
The following spring found the Guiton family travelling across the UK, exhibiting at Foodies Festivals, Great British Food Festivals, and other food festivals across England, Wales and Scotland. They returned triumphantly to Bolton and expanded to new territories like Nottingham, spreading the "everything sauce" gospel nationwide.
The festival circuit success was building momentum, but the ultimate validation came in an unexpected way. In Fall 2024, Peppered Palette was announced as one of three finalists for the prestigious Taste of Lancashire Producer Award in the pantry, preserved and ready-to-eat category.
The competition was fierce - facing off against some brilliant Lancashire businesses: Crave Marinades of Preston and Choc Amor of Mawdesley. Each represented excellence in their own right, making the competition genuinely daunting.
The awards ceremony was held in the grand ballroom of Blackpool Tower in February 2025 - a setting as magnificent as it was nerve-wracking. When "Peppered Palette" was announced as the winner, Todd was genuinely stunned, appearing shocked as he and Sherri (beaming with a huge smile on her face!) walked to the stage to accept the award.
The judges' comments captured exactly what made Sweet Heat revolutionary: "Peppered Palette wowed the judges with their truly unique product offer, their energy and creativity. Who knew that Dessert Hot Sauces were a thing? But the judges soon agreed that they absolutely are. Great tasting, versatile and guaranteed to bring the heat and fun to so many plates."
Standing on that stage, holding the Taste of Lancashire Producer Award, Todd experienced a profound realisation. While he had originally developed the sauces to complement desserts - and they would always be the original dessert hot sauces - the time had come to acknowledge a fundamental truth:
The sauces work on everything, and the brand must recognise how customers actually use them.
Festival after festival, Todd had watched customers discover Sweet Heat on ice cream, then immediately ask about using it on chicken, in cocktails, on breakfast, in marinades. The "dessert hot sauce" category he'd pioneered was just the beginning of something much bigger.
Working with a design agency he'd been introduced to through his work in the NatWest Accelerator Hub in Manchester, Todd partnered with Bang On Brand to create the next evolution: Peppered Palette Co. and Sweet Heat Fun!
This wasn't just a rebrand - it was a recognition of reality. Sweet Heat Fun! had become what customers always knew it could be: the first true "everything sauce" that breaks every food rule while respecting every palate.
The new identity captured the rebellious spirit that had always defined the sauces, while acknowledging their incredible versatility. From dessert pioneer to everything sauce revolutionary - Sweet Heat Fun! had found its true calling.
Now, with award-winning credibility and crystal-clear brand positioning, Peppered Palette Co. focuses on building strategic business partnerships with retailers across the UK. Starting with an initial focus on Lancashire, Cumbria, and West Yorkshire, the plan is methodical but ambitious.
As the business grows, Sweet Heat Fun will reach retailers further afield - but the family knows their secret weapon: satisfied customers who become advocates, asking their local farm shops, delis, butcher shops, cafes, and speciality food retailers to stock these revolutionary sauces.
From a childhood nickname meant as an insult, through medical school and emergency departments, across continents and decades, through triumph and tragedy, Todd's journey has come full circle.
What started as an accidental discovery of habañero sweetness in 1990s Georgia has evolved into Sweet Heat Fun! - Lancashire's own "everything sauce" that's breaking food rules and creating unexpected joy, one bottle at a time.
The revolution that began with cheesecake and crystallised with ice cream has found its true home in the UK, where culinary tradition meets American innovation, and where everything can indeed taste happy.
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