History of Jan Shaw, Graham Sutton & Effie Marie

Effie Marie’s Rum Cake was one of the great sales successes in the gourmet food business in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. The company was founded in 1985 with an original family recipe by Graham Sutton of San Francisco.

Jan Shaw was hired as an assistant to Graham Sutton in 1988 and moved to sales within 3 months. Sales rapidly expanded and exceeded $1 million (wholesale) sales within three years. As the company succeeded Mr. Sutton sought out other interests and sold the company to Dole Foods in 1990. Graham and Ms. Shaw became very dear friends and sadly in 2000 Mr. Sutton passed away.

Effie Marie’s cakes had a delicious taste, baked with simple but high quality ingredients and finished with a rich rum glaze. This unique taste rapidly developed a huge following in upscale department stores, close to 2,000 specialty retailers and gift basket packers.

Jan Shaw (Founder, CEO)

Ms. Shaw has more than 25 years of sales, marketing and specialty food industry experience. She decided to leave the specialty food industry and go into woman's apparel in 2001, founder of J. Shaw, women’s clothing in Tiburon, CA. Missing the food industry she closed the store in 2006. Early in her career, she served as Corporate Account Sales Manager for Peerless Coffee; and then migrated to the baked goods market as Director of Sales & Marketing/Coffee division for Otis Spunkmeyer, the nation’s #1 muffin baker, after spending number of years at other specialty food companies, in 2006 she decided to go out on her own with a cake company similar to Effie Marie’s. Now she is spending her time doing the marketing and creating new products for J. Marie cakes.