The two Oamaru women are both nurses, self-confessed chocaholics and they love making fudge.
The pair, who became good friends while working together at a medical centre, were originally making fudge just for family and friends.
They progressed to selling their fudge at the Oamaru Farmers Market for the past year, before deciding to take it a step further and open a business.
Real Good Fudge opened last month in premises in Harbour St, in the heart of the Victorian precinct of Oamaru. As well as a wide range of fudge, they also sell other assorted sweet treats and coffee.
The fudge business had slowly evolved and while they had great fun at the farmers market, it was time to take the next step, Mrs Stuart said.
They were selling fudge only one day a week and they wanted to sell seven days, Mrs Tessier-Varlet said.
Mrs Tessier-Varlet initially started making fudge at home from goat's milk, as she had surplus milk from her animals and wanted to do something with it. Real Good Fudge was now made with condensed cow's milk.
"We like sweet things and we like people to like sweet things.
Fudge is lovely," she said.
The product range started with just a handful of flavours - vanilla, chocolate, coffee and boysenberry - but had now grown to 26, including lemon honey, rum and raisin, chocolate cinnamon, hokey pokey, and cardamom and ginger.
Mrs Tessier-Varlet was inspired by TV cooking programmes, shopping and talking to people. Not all the experiments worked, while some flavour combinations "worked beautifully".
Her chooks were well-fed in the early days, although if the mixture was too sticky, it would stick to their beaks and she would have to peel if off.
Both women continue nursing - Mrs Stuart works as a district nurse three days a week, while Mrs Tessier-Varlet travels to Timaru two days a week to work in the accident and emergency department at Timaru Hospital.
Between running a business, their nursing work, making fudge and family life, Mrs Tessier-Varlet joked that they did not sleep. "We work half our time here, half our time as nurses. We don't have any time off," she said.
But the two women did not mind being busy; their fudge venture was fun and they enjoyed working together.
They had timed the opening of Real Good Fudge for the tourist season and they had been busy, selling lots of fudge.
"We don't count any more. We counted for the first six months and did half a tonne, so I stopped counting," she said.
While they only used to have to make enough fudge to sell one day a week, they now had to make fudge every day "because it's like a farmers market every day".
Some of the most popular varieties were passionfruit, mocha and hokey pokey.
The business is housed in the same building as Lazy Cat Pottery and Tileworks, which is run by Mrs Tessier-Varlet's husband Vaughan.
Mr Tessier-Varlet, an artist and ceramicist, has been working with clay for more than 20 years in the United Kingdom, France and New Zealand.
That business was founded in 1995 in Wales and relocated to Cherves Chatelar, a small village in France, before the family moved to New Zealand in 2003. They settled first in Cambridge and shifted to North Otago in 2006.
