Fairy Floss Club owner Tara Carbis with two sticks of fairy floss. She opened the store last week.
Photo by
Rodney Braithwaite
It should be the least surprising thing in the world, but walking into The Fairy Floss Club on Wyndham St, Shepparton, you can’t help but be overwhelmed by the smell of, well, fairy floss.
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Next you notice the pastel colours - plenty of pink and purple hues, and after that it’s impossible not to notice the bubbly personality of Tara Carbis.
Mrs Carbis and her husband Justin opened the bricks and mortar store last week, after the business she started in June 2020 - after losing her job due to the pandemic - outgrew the family home.
It was not something anyone, including Mr Carbis, expected to work.
“I couldn’t get a job anywhere and thought if I can’t get a job I’ll make a job,” Mrs Carbis said.
Tucking in: Tara Carbis enjoying a bite of fairy floss.
Photo by
Rodney Braithwaite
“I’ll never forgot this, I said to Justin ‘I’m going to buy a fairy floss machine and make fairy floss for people’ and he laughed and said ‘you’re going to get a f***ing job, that’s what you’re going to do’.”
It’s now Mr Carbis with egg - or fairy floss, if you will - on his face, having left a 15-year career driving trucks to help run the store.
“I never expected it, we didn’t imagine it would come to this,” he said with a laugh.
He loves it, working alongside Mrs Carbis and four other employees.
“It’s a bit surreal. I can’t even explain it,” she said.
“We come up with these crazy ideas and Justin helps me execute.”
From stocking with party supplies and candles to creating cards saying “sorry COVID f***ed your birthday” to Halloween and Christmas hampers, they’ve gone gangbusters and couldn’t keep up with demand at home, forcing them to look for a store.
She said opening the store had been “one of the happiest weeks I’ve had in a long time” and some customers had driven from as far as Warrigul to visit.
They’ve got more coming, too - Christmas flavoured fairy floss is on the way, as well as the long-awaited Nutella fairy floss to draw more people through the sweet-smelling doorway.
