The June New Amsterdam Market, at the old Fulton Street Fish Market location, was a bounty of fresh foods, heavenly baked goods, and very cool chalkboards. In a very old part of New York surrounded by rehabbed brick buildings, it’s a great destination that was off the beaten path for me and my friends. And we LOVED it.
If you’re planning a trip to New York for Fall and you love good food I’d definitely try to arrange it around the market’s next dates. You will eat well, cook well, and give well. Just see…
From all the great press and reviews you’ll see on Lisa’s Cookie Shop website, you might think the company name is a quaint descriptor for a secretly big operation. You know, like how elves make Keebler Cookies.
Quite the opposite. It really is “Lisa’s” shop. And the shop is a commercial kitchen, attached to her home, in which Lisa herself makes all the cookies.
Recently I had the chance to visit Lisa – on the weekend in which she and her family were furiously producing and packaging cookies for the 2010 Emmy’s gift bag.
It was a made for reality TV moment: Over a thousand cookies, all nighters, and in laws assisting in the production. The cookie? “The Kitchen Sink,” a crispy yet chewy oatmeal cookie laced with chocolate chips, cranberries, and other tidbits. In other words, one of those “healthy snacks” you can justify even for breakfast.
The Emmy gift bag recipients will be enjoying a cookie that Lisa originally made for family gatherings, throwing in whatever she had in her kitchen. Today this cookie is shipped nationwide and has a loyal following in her local town on down to Manhattan.
Food Business Tips from Lisa’s Experience
Product Offerings Tip: “Don’t try to please everyone.”
Lisa started out with options to customize the cookies in lots of ways, along with a number of cookie flavors.
When it’s just you, and you’re starting small, it’s hard to make dough for every order and tweak it. Go with crowd pleasers. Consider how well they travel and shelf life. Test new products at local stores or include samples when you ship a package.
Packaging Tip: When you’re just getting started it’s a big decision to pre-print packages. You’re locked into the flavors and ingredients. If any small thing changes, you’re out the investment. On the other hand the cost and labor of producing and applying many labels can add up. There are always tradeoffs.
The proud (and relieved) Cierello family gets ready to deliver to the post office. They’d given the post office a heads up the packages were arriving.
Shipping Tip: Shop around for different delivery options and consider how to minimize the number packages to greatly reduce shipping costs. You can often tape FedEx boxes together for example.
Jones Tip (for any reader): You can find Lisa’sfreshly baked cookies and cookie bars at Lisa’s Cookie Shop or her Foodzie store. And at various stores in New England.
Do you have a small food business? Please share any other tips from your experiences.
Have you ever wondered why hand made artisan farmstead cheese is so costly?
A visit to Krugerrand Farms, a daughter and father goat cheese operation in upstate New York, gave me all the answers. Here’s a short list:
The high cost of goating: feed, hay, and general caretaking
The time to individually milk 60-odd goats
The 1.5 gallons of fresh goat milk (about 10 pounds) it takes to make each pound of cheese. (After it gets finished aging it comes out to about 12 lbs of milk to a pound of cheese.)
Many hours to make each wheel of cheese (check out all the steps below; I left all the time cleaning up out, but this place is clean!)
Then many hours to wash the natural rind off the cheese before delivering it to customers
However it’s all worth it. Here I’d like to share my delightful visit and give you a taste of the story, love and labor that goes into Krugerrand Cheese. As well as the visual here of my latte made with milk straight from the goat. (Instant foam!)
Making Cheese – From Goat to Grate
Morning begins with the “running of the goats” – into the barn that is. There they await their milking and munching. The farm has a variety of goats, some prize winners. Lisa is a co-owner of the cheese company and also recently graduated with a civil engineering degree from a Michigan college.
Lisa and James Andela love their goats, which they milk each day. The goats – each who they know by name – eat natural feed during the milking.
Every other day, Lisa and Jim make cheese. This one vat makes about 30 pounds of cheese. Each pound of cheese takes 9-10 gallons of goat milk. During the aging process, due to the natural rind, the cheese evaporates which is important to factor in when calculating the cheese making costs.
This was the most fun part! There’s a horizontal and a vertical slicer and running it through the vat breaks up the soft curd into chunks.
Working the curds by hand lets the cheese maker more closely monitor the progress of heating and texture of the curds. Lisa gathers the curds to mold into wheels.
The pressed curds go through several stages before they’re ready to be aged. First it’s put in the brine (salt) solution for a couple of days. The brine creates the protective layer.
Then the cheese drains and dries for a couple of weeks on racks, before getting ready to hibernate to its glorious state of aged-ness.
The raw milk cheeses are aged for about 6 months (2 months is the minimum raw milk cheese needs to be aged in the U.S.)
All of the cheeses have natural rinds, and it takes a lot of scrubbing to “clean them” before the team ships them out to cheese shops, restaurants, and cheese lovers.
Learn more about Krugerrand Farm and the qualities of their cheeses.
For food entrepreneurs and the people who love them, Susie Wyshak--consultant, author & speaker--writes about successful food businesses; observations on trends and customer experience; and, offers ideas from her travels and encounters with makers, farmers, and experts.
Shop website, you might think the company name is a quaint descriptor for a secretly big operation. You know, like how elves make Keebler Cookies.
Have you ever wondered why hand made artisan farmstead cheese is so costly?
However 
For food entrepreneurs and the people who love them, 
