Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/523050
store tour CACAO MARKET A specialty chocolatier opens a chocolate "apothecary" in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For more than a decade, Maribel Lieberman has delighted choco- late lovers with her downtown Manhattan shop, MarieBelle. The cocoa she turned into artisanal ganache and Aztec hot chocolate was produced in a factory across the East River in the northern- most Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint. As that area began to go from gritty to trendy a few years ago and foot traffic increased, Lieberman wondered whether she could open a second chocolate shop on the ground floor of her factory. In April, she did just that, launching Cacao Market, where cacao beans imported from her native Honduras and other parts of Central America go from paste to bar. At 1,100 square feet (800 square feet devoted to product), the cozy store has an Old World feel. Old-fashioned pharmacy jars hold chocolate truff les and bars on rustic wood shelves, and wall-mounted dispensers proffer choco- late-coated nuts, toffee pieces, and more. Fans of the film "Chocolat" will feel like they've stepped onto the movie set. "Our idea was to educate people about the cacao bean," says Lieberman. Cacao Market offers the same all-natural, additive-free chocolate of MarieBelle as well as 15 hot and cold varieties of choco- late drinks. Display cases hold cacao beans and chocolate sold by the pound, and Cacao Market also offers cookies and pastries, as well as handmade gelato. Visible from the store is part of the chocolate factory, where about 20 workers help produce the goods. (Eight employees work the retail store.) cacaomarketnyc.com DR. COW TREE NUT CHEESES This Williamsburg, Brooklyn, shop sells only cheeses made from tree nuts. Artisanal cheese shops are not exactly hard to find, but this one is different: it's devoted solely to house-made cheeses derived from cashews, macadamia, and other tree nuts. "We make 15 types of cheese, and all are nondairy, vegan, and organic," says co-founder and co-owner Pablo Castro. All of the nuts used to make the cheese come to Dr. Cow raw and unprocessed, which Castro says tastes better and offers a superior nutritional profile. For eight years, Dr. Cow was a wholesale-only operation. But with the gentrification of Williamsburg, the neighborhood began attracting more of a foodie culture and plenty of foot traffic. In 2014, Castro and his business partner, Veronica Schwartz, took a gamble by opening a 300-square-foot store adjacent to their manu- facturing facility. "We thought it could be a good showroom for our products while drawing customers looking for an alternative to dairy cheeses," he says. That gamble paid off, and Dr. Cow has a new retail customer base made up of cheese lovers who are vegan or have dairy intoler- ances, as well as people who enjoy experimenting with new foods. Besides producing some out-there cheeses, such as cashew cheese with algae or cashew and truff les, Dr. Cow is expanding its offerings to include desserts, such as cheesecake and Key lime pie, made with the nut cheeses. dr-cow.com EMPIRE MAYONNAISE CO. Taking the classic condiment to the next level in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Growing up, Elizabeth Valleau couldn't get enough of the mayon- naise her French-born mother made from scratch. "I'd go to other kids' houses and see the store-bought mayo their families used, and I couldn't believe this is what they considered mayonnaise," she recalls. As an adult, she had a hard time finding a version with the fresh- ness and flavor she was used to. So she had an idea—to recreate her Old-fashioned pharmacy jars hold chocolate trufes and bars on rustic wood shelves. Cacao Market Dr. Cow Tree Nut Cheeses 116 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com