Sometimes Marty and I have to divide and conquer when it comes to the spätzle business, which by the way, was launched six years ago yesterday.
He went to the farmers market, and I made deliveries in Saratoga, NY, with Nelly. It was a good decision since it was cold and windy.
After I loaded up the deliveries, we hit the road. Nelly was happy as a clam in her little bed on the heated seat.
She is safe in the truck since she is harnessed in and can’t distract me or jump around the car while I am driving.
After our first stop at Healthy Living, I got her out of the warm truck to pee. When I opened the door, she was squinting at me. Squinting = she doesn’t like something. 😂
She wouldn’t pee since she is stubborn, so we went to the store five below to look at their cute doggie clothes, which cost $5 or less.
When I was looking at little fleece jackets in her size, I heard her snorting. I turned around, and she had a pair of shoes held together with elastic around her neck.
I started cracking up, and so did the customers who saw her. It was hilarious, and so was her reaction. I found her size and some puppy wipes and left.
When I harnessed her back into her seat, I put the jacket over her with the wipes, and she squinted at me again. Lol.
After we made our next delivery at the store Four Seasons, I got her out of the truck again since I wanted to walk across the street to the Saratoga farmers market. She squinted at me. 😆
I was a vendor at the Saratoga market for four years and wanted to say hello to some of my vendor friends. Nelly loved the market.
As I recall, there are many dogs at the market and lots of Frenchies. She got to meet one of my favorite Frenchies named Louie.
Louie used to run to my table and sit for a piece of spätzle every week. He knew exactly where my tent was and would drag his owner down the sidewalk.
We started heading home, and Nelly fell asleep before I pulled out of our parking space. She snored the whole way home.
When we got home, I took her out of her harness and put her down on the driveway. She squinted at me.
When we got inside, I tried on her new jacket; she squinted at me again. By now, I laughed out loud and kissed her on her little head. She is really something.
It turns out she did like the jacket because when I asked her to pose, she did, and I squinted her and snapped her photo.
It was an enjoyable and different delivery day with my little Nelly girl. She was happy to see Klaus when we were home.
The shenanigans began right away since they both woke up from a nap. She was raring to go and ran around like hell on wheels.
Since I wrote about her peeing in the house, the weather got warmer, and she could go in and out whenever needed.
She hasn’t had one accident, even when they are playing hard. I watched her run out the door, run down the stairs, run skidding to the one step down to the grass, and run like crazy until she found a spot to pee, then ran back inside.
I’m glad she finally got the hang of it; we just have to ensure the sliding door is open when they play inside.
Life with little Miss Squinty is never boring; she makes everyone smile when they see her. She really is the best and Klaus is one hell of a good sport.💕
I am experiencing a setback in my pneumonia recovery. I started getting sick again yesterday, sliding backward quickly by the evening.
Without getting into it, the dosage was wrong for one of my medications. It took all day today to get more of the medication since all the pharmacies didn’t have it in stock.
Finally, The Pharmacy, a small town, privately owned business, had it in stock. This is why it is essential to support local small businesses.
Marty is on his way home with the antibiotic as I type at 7:15 pm. He’s such a good friend, not just a husband. I am very lucky indeed.
On Saturday, at The Troy Farmers Market, one of our weekly customers gave Marty a carved wooden healing bird to help with my recovery. This touched my heart so deeply that I wept when I held it.
This customer is an older gentleman and a retired chef. I feel so humble and honored by how many people love our spätzle. We are currently on the menu in most high-end restaurants in Manchester and Dorset.
The interesting thing about the carved healing bird is its shape. It is shaped like a sparrow. The direct translation of the German word spätzle is sparrow. The shape of the noodles resembles little sparrows. Is that cool or what? I’ll have to ask him when I thank him if he knows that.
We have the kindest, most wonderful customers who truly care about us. The feeling is mutual as we get worried when we don’t see someone for a long time or hear someone is ill.
Our customers are from all walks of life, not only from our country but also people who are visiting from other countries. Our spätzle has even traveled on airplanes as far away as India!
We have met thousands of wonderfully interesting people. We love hearing their stories and memories of their grandmothers, making them spätzle as children.
Spätzle is also made in many Eastern European countries with different names and served with things like Chicken Paprikash or Goulash.
In the six years we’ve had our business, only a tiny handful of assholes have existed. I’m good with faces and names, so I remember them. I can also remember people’s names. Everyone loves when someone remembers their name. Like on Cheers.
I can recall what the asshole people looked like and why they were jerks. One extremely rude couple dared to come back and complain about their spätzle the following Sunday.
This was after tricking us, paying for their bag of spätzle with expired food stamps. They wanted another bag to make up for our lousy spätzle.
Before you assume, we love that many customers use their food stamp money at the market. After all, that is what it is for.
The market gives those customers twice the amount in market tokens to shop with. Even if a customer doesn’t have enough tokens or money, we still provide them with spätzle. We have given away a lot of spätzle to those in need.
Healthy food has always been our priority in feeding people, especially when we were both school lunch food service directors and cooks. Poverty is a real problem. Unfortunately, being dishonest is another one.
So back to the scammers that stole from us on purpose and then demanded more. Their rudeness and lying ignited my “Jersey,” and I lost my shit.
I told them I remembered them and the expired coupons they gave us. The spätzle they got for free couldn’t be what they claimed because it was made the day before and has a 16-day shelf life.
I said if they needed food, they should have been honest with us and not treated us like we were idiots. Then I told them to get the fuck out and never come back.
The surrounding vendors almost applauded me because this often happens at the Schenectady Farmers Market. We loved doing that market but stopped because we couldn’t keep working 7 days a week, and it’s the furthest away from home.
Schenectady, NY, has a wonderful farmers market on Sundays and is the home of Proctors Theater; the city is up and coming. However, most of Schenectady is a rough shady place with lots of crime.
The look of shock and how red the couple’s faces got spoke volumes. That, my dear readers, is what happens when you piss off a Jersey girl.
Marty just got home, and I started taking the correct antibiotic for seven more days. I will be better about resting and not overdoing it. I was shocked at how quickly I relapsed after returning to my old self.
Like our spätzle customers, you guys are also kind and wonderful people. I am honored and grateful to have all of you in my life.
Thank you for taking the time to read my posts and, better yet, commenting on them. Have a great week. ♥️
Last year outdoor scenes from the HBO series The Gilded Age were filmed in Troy, NY. Hollywood turned downtown Troy into New York City during the 1880s. I walked around and took photos of the shops and their windows, meticulously done down to the most minor details.
I walked around on that wet, cold, rainy Saturday of Memorial day weekend feeling like I had traveled through time. I wrote about my experience in the Hollywood on the Hudson blog post.
We heard through the Troy Farmers Market that HBO was back to beginning the transformation and shooting of the second season of The Gilded Age on Monday.
We get to the market very early, set up by 7 am because I am married to a German who wants to be there first, and saw the painters and prop people rolling their carts down the street to a series of buildings they were transforming.
We walked around again, and I snapped shots of the already complete shops. Once the market started, I forgot all about the Gilded Age and HBO since we were busy with customers, handing out samples, and giving people our spätzle spiel.
I gave a sample to a couple who loved the spätzle when they tried it. The woman told me she had celiac disease and was always looking for things she could eat. Same here, sister! They bought one of our 2 lb family packs and left.
A few minutes later, the husband returned and told me they were in town because his wife was filming. How could they get more because she liked it so much? I gave him a business card and told him we have two farms that do shipping for us.
Actress Carrie Coon aka Bertha Russell.
It turns out his wife is Carrie Coon, who plays one of the leading roles in the series, the ruthless Bertha Russell. He was Tracy Letts, a famous Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. They were both friendly, and I was happy another gluten-free person, famous or not, fell in love with our product. I don’t think a celebrity ever tried our spätzle before.
We don’t get HBO, so we never saw the first season of The Gilded Age, but as soon as the weather gets cold, we will sign up for a month and binge season 1 for sure.
I told our friends David and Arthur, who also walked around the transformed streets last year, about meeting Carrie Coon; they thought it was excellent even though they hate her character. LOL. Now, I definitely need to watch the series.
Not a bad view while out making deliveries. Better than traffic jams any day!
Today, Marty and I went on a delivery day that usually would have been done in 3 separate days. It was a 250-mile delivery run on a recording-breaking hot day. We honestly stayed cool driving around in Skye, my Maverick pickup truck.
We started making two deliveries in Manchester, one to a restaurant and another to a retail store. Next, we headed to Pawlet to an old general store.
We wiggle-waggled through back roads to Shrewsbury for another stop; a very small general store. We continued north to Rutland and delivered to another one of our restaurant accounts.
We stopped at a food truck called The Hangry Hogg and split a brisket and coleslaw sandwich. It was delicious and gluten-free; the owner Jason was very friendly and passionate about his business. His food truck will be in Bennington, VT, at Brewfest, which is coming soon.
Snack time and the last delivery!
The last delivery was 2 hours away in Albany, NY, to one of our busiest retail accounts. They ran out of Spätzle 5 days ago, so we had to get it there today. It was like stepping straight into an oven whenever we got out of the truck. It was 102 degrees in Albany this afternoon.
We enjoyed a quiet, late lunch at our favorite gluten-free friendly Chinese restaurant called Ala Shanghai. Marty said we are creatures of habit because we always order the same thing. The food is delicious, and the staff is friendly and efficient.
At a table in the corner, a group of waiters were sitting, making more dumplings for the dinner rush, which was pretty cool to see. I usually have their steamed shrimp dumplings, which are rare to find gluten-free but not today after having that brisket sandwich snack earlier.
The Maverick knows its way home from Albany almost by itself since we travel back and forth so often. We took more back roads avoiding the main road as much as possible. When we got home, I ran into the house and changed into a swimsuit. I dove straight into the pool and left poor Marty to put away all the coolers and ice sheets. Oops. 😬
Right now, we are under a severe thunderstorm warning here in Arlington. We saw the storm rolling in over the mountains while we were in the pool. We need the rain desperately as everyone’s lawns in the Albany area were brown and dried up. We have received a bit more rain here in Vermont, but definitely not enough.
It’s always good to see the chefs, stockroom people, and shop clerks whenever we make deliveries. We make small talk with them and then move on to our next stop. It’s nice to see so many familiar faces; everyone says, “Hey! It’s the spätzle people.” Lol.
We filled wholesale orders all week and dropped off a bunch yesterday to Wilcox Ice Cream, who does our dropshipping. We had to make all the other deliveries today since we couldn’t give up or cut another production day short. Finally, our delivery board is clear! Woot-woot!
Tomorrow, it’s back into the kitchen to make spätzle for the Troy Farmers Market on Saturday, but tonight, we are enjoying being caught up. 🤗
Last week, I wrote about all the characteristics that made up me. As a new blogger, I often forget that many of you only know me through the blog, not how I got to be Julz. I also forget that you don’t know how I have accomplished some of the things I did.
Before we started The Vermont Spätzle Company, I reinvented myself many times. I was a cashier, store clerk, administrative assistant, store manager, and stay-at-home mom for 11 years.
I worked for a caterer and did some catering with Marty; I was a lunch lady and a food service director. I was a hotdog lady and a convenience store supervisor. In every one of those positions, I worked my ass off. Marty and I have very strong work ethics, and in any job we have, we work as if we were the owners.
Over the years, I worked for many assholes who didn’t appreciate my hard work and dedication. When I drove home from those jobs, I prayed out loud in my vehicle this prayer “God, please let me have my own business someday. A business that no one else has.” I did this for years.
I was in a reiki master class and meditation group on Sunday nights during this time. This is where I heard about the book and movie the secret. My friend Everley, my reiki master, told us about it, and we watched the movie.
The Secret is about positive manifestation. The movie taught you step-by-step how to achieve anything you wanted in your life by positive manifestation. The movie changed my life.
I didn’t make a tangible manifestation board with photos, dreams, and aspirations; I made mine in my head. I knew exactly what I wanted my life to look like in ten years.
One day, back in 2005, Everley and I went to visit a friend of hers who was a psychic and had just lost her husband. She did a reading on both of us. I was nervous because this wasn’t something I had planned.
In my reading, Loretta told time that she saw me teaching. I told her I was a belly dance teacher; she said that wasn’t it. Less than two years later, I was hired as the food service director at the Arlington School District, and students would be my employees. I was going to teach them the hands-on side of culinary arts while they had a teacher to follow up with classroom work. She was right! I taught and worked at school for 7-years.
Loretta also told me in more than ten years; she saw me making large sums of money doing what I love. Everything I would learn up to that point would be considered my “college” education. She also told me it would all start with writing, not a book or CD, something she didn’t know what it was. I was aching to know what that something was! After 8-years or so, I forgot all about it.
Jump to 2017 when I finally figured out how to make our gluten-free spätzle after seven years of experimenting with all kinds of ingredients. Finally, I figured it out! I was so excited and said aloud, “This is the birth of The Vermont Spätzle Company!” I even did a Facebook post saying so since I was so damn proud of myself.
When I served the spätzle for dinner that night, Marty said, “We have to share this with the world!” Later that night, I realized it was like God slapped me on top of the head and said, “This is it, dummy! This is the business no one else has!”
Excited, I told Marty, “This is it! This is what Loretta was talking about! We can’t fail! This is what I asked God for!” At that point and still today, our spätzle is the only gluten-free spätzle in the world. Even after five years, we are still the only commercial spätzle manufacturer in the states. There is no other product like it.
We decided that night we would start this business and go into it 150%. Over the next three months, I had to figure out how to make it again; then, I had to figure out how to make bigger batches. Doing big batch cooking in the schools made this easy for me.
We had to design a logo and search for packaging. Marty worked tirelessly getting our licenses, both state and federal. He also designed our label and learned how to do our nutrition information. He also figured out how to make a UPC for our product if we wanted it to be in stores.
That very first day! We sold our first package to Matt Bittle.
Marty was working full-time, so all this was done after work in the evenings. On June 3, 2017, we sold our first package at a small farmers market right across the street from our house. We gave out samples, and people flipped over them. We went with 32 packages and sold every one of them.
I immediately gave my notice at the two jobs I had at the time because I was going to become a full-time spätzle maker! We built our production kitchen and bought used work tables, refrigerators and freezers. We found everything at the right time for the right price. We met all the right people at the right time, so everything fell into place quickly.
On Wednesdays, Marty’s day off, he would drive through the state to every co-op and specialty store, dropping off samples while I stayed home and made spätzle. He got us demos in the stores we would be in. After we were in stores throughout Vermont, he made a 500-mile delivery loop every other week while still working full-time and volunteering on the rescue squad at night. I honestly didn’t know how he did it.
WCAX did a story on us then more people found out about “the spätzle people.”
I was our social media person, which was the thing that identified us as the “spätzle people.” Whatever store we went in, people would say, “Oh look, it’s the späzle people!” Okay, so we wore our “Keep calm and eat spätzle” shirts, but they still knew us from Facebook and Instagram.
Our menu of hot food we made and sold at Oktoberfest Vermont and Glenville. We quickly discovered we couldn’t continue to be both the manufacturer and hot food vendor. It was fun but too time-consuming.
We did many events for the first couple of years, including Oktoberfest in Burlington, VT, and Glenville, NY. We also did a tasting event at Stratton Mountain and won a trophy for best presentation. We did another tasting at the Vermont Cheesemakers Festival, one of the top ten food events in the country, and won for best artisan food. We didn’t even know people were voting!
Knowing we couldn’t fail through positive manifestation and Loretta’s prediction, we made the scary decision for Marty to quit his full-time job and become the other spätzle maker. My body took a beating making so much product myself that I ended up with carpal tunnel syndrome in my right arm.
Now we use a local business, Wilcox Ice Cream, for distribution throughout the state of Vermont; we no longer could lose a production day with Marty on the road. We did as many as five farmers markets a week, but after doing that and working seven days a week, we started to burn out. We decided we needed to take one day off a week and scale back on farmers markets.
We do the deliveries in New York state, trying to hit as many stores as possible when we head out. We have a distributor, The Alpine, who delivers our product to Weis Supermarkets and Key Foods in Pennsylvania.
During the pandemic, it was a scary time for us. We were constantly worried about being able to get the ingredients and supplies for our product. I held my breath every day, hoping we didn’t come down with covid and have to stop production when so many people wanted our product due to the ease of preparation. You don’t boil our egg noodles; they get a quick sauté and are ready in less than 5-minutes. Again, no other product like it anywhere.
Photo credit Fran Kieltyka
Now, we do only the Troy Farmers and are concentrating on our wholesale business. We did come down with covid in April, two years after it reared its ugly head and had to shut down for 10-days. It wasn’t the end of the world, but we hated that people had to wait for more spätzle. Even though people don’t have to cook so much anymore, they still purchase our product because they love it and how easy it is to cook.
After reading my Jewelry blog post, my writing mentor, Jon Katz, called me, reminding me that my readers don’t know how I got to be a successful business owner, belly dance teacher, wife and mother, a good cook, and a confident, strong-willed woman.
I have much more writing to do, sharing with my readers how I overcame negative obstacles and became who I am. When life hands you lemons, you have two things you can do; crumble and be weak or become a strong, confident person persevering and succeeding.
Loretta’s prediction of “making large sums of money” definitely hasn’t happened yet, especially now with the doubling of ingredients and supplies and tripling in price.
Loretta said I would be doing something I loved, and she was right! I still love making spätzle, and we are as passionate about it as we were the first day.
She said it all starts with writing, which may be the social media that gave our business an immediate boost, or maybe this blog? Only time will tell.
Marty and I are super excited that our farmers market, The Troy Farmers Market, will be moving back outside on May 7. The farmers’ market will be located back on “the street!” “The street” is located around Monument Square and down side streets around the square.
Before the pandemic, the farmers market had a festival-type atmosphere, with nearly 15,000 people visiting the market every Saturday. Can you imagine between 10,000 & 15,000 people visiting the market between the hours of 9-2?
It didn’t feel too crowded because the vendors are spaced perfectly. There are multiple musicians, many food vendors, areas to eat, and places to people watch. Customers also visit the shops on River and many adjacent streets.
In 2019, The Troy Farmers Market was ranked the number one farmers market in the state, region, and country. Ranked number one in the country!!! Wow!
The market did a great job making a massive pivot during the pandemic setting up the market in Riverfront Park, located right along the Hudson River. To follow protocol, vendors were spaced with vehicles in between the booths.
The market was set up with a one-direction-only traffic flow, and masks were mandatory. The market was carefully supervised. by market employees. Older customers could shop 30 minutes before the market was open to the public. The market did a fantastic making the best of a shitty situation for the last two summers.
Marty and I discussed the summer market and decided our five-year-old market setup needed an update. We needed a new tent after so much wind and weather damage. Standing under a tent that leaks is not fun…at all. Our sidewalk sign and table clothes are beat-up beyond repair.
Our setup did as many as 4 markets a week for the first two years and 3 markets for 3 years. We’ve decided we will be only doing one market from now on with a possible guest appearance at our local market if time and production allows.
Our wholesale business has grown during the pandemic, which is where we need to concentrate our attention. We love doing The Troy Market, making new customers by giving them the spätzle spiel, and connecting with our regular customers in person.
We are still as passionate as we were at our first farmers market in Arlington and still love spreading the spätzle love. ❤️
We’ve ordered a new tent and table clothes. We also purchased two new chalkboards. At Riverfront Park, each week, I made a saying of the day with chalk on the pavement of the sidewalk. People got a kick out of it, and we looked forward to it each week. Here are some of our favorites:
When the new chalkboards arrived today with regular chalk and chalk markers, I watched a few YouTube videos on chalkboard art. Did you know you have to season your chalkboard? Chalkboards are porous, so seasoning them makes the chalk easier to remove when you erase it. If you write on a chalkboard without seasoning it, it’s a son-of-a-bitch to clean. Who knew??
After I seasoned the chalkboard by lightly running the side of chalk on the whole chalkboard and then erasing it, I took the advice on the Youtube videos and practiced with my laptop. I realized quickly this it was not productive for me to do the board twice.
Seasoning the chalkboard, then it’s ready to go.
The advice I will be using is to use a measuring tape and trace lines as we had in elementary school when we were learning cursive writing. Do they even teach cursive writing anymore? I was told no but can’t believe it.
Regular chalk on the left and chalk marker on the right.
First, I used regular chalk and did a mock-up without measuring anything to get an idea of how to do it. On the other side of the chalkboard, I used a chalk marker, which came out better.
The two fails I had during my practice time were the stencils that came with the chalkboards. I got frustrated quickly and decided my handwriting was better than using those fuckers. I wasted precious time, the time I don’t have doing a mock-up on the computer first.
After you are done with your chalkboard art, you use wet and dry Q-tips to clean up the letters to make the whole thing look better, neater, and more professional. I was happy with my outcome for the first stab at it. The wording wasn’t correct, but I was only practicing.
I hated getting called on as a kid to go up to the board when I was in Catholic school. I also hated the kid in charge of writing down the names of bad kids if the nun or teacher had to step out of the room for a minute. I did love being able to go outside and bang the erasers together to clean them or wash the board with water. I do like these new chalkboards and look forward to using them.
We have four more indoor markets then it’s back out to “the street” with our new setup. Guess what? We can’t wait! ☺️
Klaus enjoyed the warm sunshine this morning while we were working. It turned cloudy and started to rain around noon.
It’s hard to believe it’s already a week since we were on the train heading into Penn Station. While we were gone, the orders started pouring in; all of our biggest accounts placed orders.
Large orders always happen when we take a couple of days off, just like they did when we were in Vegas in September. Three years ago, we tried to get away for a couple of days in Connecticut but came home after only one day to catch up. Just for the record, this is a great thing, just a bit overwhelming for me, and is kicking my ass.
Boxes staged to be filled for deliveries.
It’s Thursday morning; I fed the dogs while Marty prepped out in the production kitchen. After today, we will have made more spätzle than we do in two weeks. Tomorrow, we still have another big production day to prepare for the farmer’s market.
My legs have been tired after walking for miles in NYC and then standing so much in the kitchen, but I was utterly exhausted after I got home last night from almost three hours of belly dance.
By the time I got groceries lugged into the house, put away, and made dinner, my legs felt like someone from the Sopranos had put cement boots on me.
After I ate, I dragged myself upstairs and got ready for bed. Usually, I have to unwind after a long day, but last night I couldn’t have been more unwound already. I needed to go to bed, period; I couldn’t get out of my own way fast enough.
Music pushed me along today in the production kitchen. The speaker is always covered in the very fine blend of flours we use, it’s inevitable just like in a bakery.
The alarm woke me from a deep sleep early this morning; I had to set it; we had a long day ahead. Production was brutal for me. BRUTAL! I felt more exhausted this morning than I did at the Amtrak Station on Friday night, which didn’t seem possible.
Spätzle making.
Somehow, I worked my way through production and cleaned up; we finished in record time because we had to hit the road to make deliveries. These were deliveries that needed to be at restaurants in time for their dinner service.
It’s 1 pm. I am in the truck with Marty; we are making deliveries to The Cooper Grouse, the restaurant in the Taconic Hotel in Manchester, VT. Tonight the new chef, Chef Dusty, is launching his new menu, and we happen to be on the menu with pork chops. ☺️
It’s always wonderful to see when local restaurants use local products from local farmers and food artisans. We live in a place that screams, “Use local,” even though most restaurants find it easier to use products from Sysco, a colossal food service company.
We are also going to HN Williams in Dorset, Southside Steakhouse in Rutland, and The Mountain Top Resort in Chittenden, where our spätzle is a popular option on their wedding reception menu. Wedding season will begin right after mud season is over.
The dining room in the bar at The Mountain Top Resort.
When we got to our last stop, The Mountain Top, we were starving. We decided to grab a late lunch there before coming home. We were the only people in the bar dining room and had a table with a fabulous view. I was tired; it was fantastic that the service was fast and the place was quiet.
The view from our table at lunch. Imagine your wedding cocktail hour on the terrace, one of the many reasons why it’s such a popular wedding venue.
It’s 5:30 pm, almost 12 hours from when I started my day. Finally, this is what I have been waiting for all-day…to put on my pajamas, make an ice-cold dirty vodka martini straight-up with 3 olives, and sit on the couch with my feet up. If I end up in bed by 8 pm, then good for me, tomorrow is another big production day.
~ The central point, pin, or shaft on which a mechanism turns or oscillates. (noun) ~ To turn on or as if on a pivot. (verb)
The word pivot has a lot of meaning in my day-to-day life, more than you would think.
In belly dance, we do pivot bumps, which is turning a dance move called a bump in a circle, and we use one foot to pivot on while doing calibrated spins which is four spins in a row.
Chefs have to pivot on a dime in the culinary world and even in my kitchen. This has two meanings. The first is to turn in their cooking stations from one to another quickly. For example, they pivot from the work table station to the stove or oven then back again.
The second pivot in a kitchen is to change the food preparation or menu from one idea to the next for various reasons. I’ve seen many chefs on Top Chef use this word during one of the cooking competitions.
A chef must adjust if a sauce “breaks” during service by fixing the problem or removing the sauce altogether. A chef may also have to pivot if an ingredient has an issue or availability. Being able to think on your feet is essential in any kitchen.
When the pandemic hit, it became a pivotal point for many businesses. Restaurants needed to pivot by changing their dine-in status to take-out only or to make family-style dinners instead of individual meals. Some restaurants had to close entirely. This is still so sad to think and write about.
Many other types of businesses needed to pivot quickly during the pandemic or risk going out of business. For example, by offering zoom classes for dance, yoga, or exercise. Some switched to zoom for business meetings and employees working from home.
Some people had no options to work, such as landscapers and hairstylists, until mandates were lifted. This was such a scary, terrible time for all of us.
This week we needed to pivot our business plans for the rest of the week. It happens quite often, so we are good at it now. Our production schedule can change daily depending on orders that come in or deliveries that need to go out.
During the pandemic, the biggest pivot or curveball for us was not getting the packaging we used to pack our spätzle in for retail stores. We had to use three different kinds we didn’t necessarily like, even though we knew the difference, they cost three times as much.
This week’s productional pivot came about because of Mother Nature. Getting orders to our wholesale customers needed to happen, snowstorm or not.
When Marty got up on Thursday, he saw the weather forecast for Friday night through Saturday night with the possibility of dumping 12-15 more inches of snow.
The original plan was for Marty to drop me off at the farmers market on Saturday, and then he would make our deliveries in Albany and Schenectady, NY.
Typically, we would make these deliveries after production one day during the week. Still, with the rise of gasoline prices, we decided we couldn’t afford to make that extra trip anymore and make our deliveries on Saturdays.
That plan changed quickly because we couldn’t risk the weather forecast and could not make the deliveries on Saturday. The stores in Albany waiting for our delivery would still be open and busy with customers coming in for food even if it storms, especially if it storms.
So after a shorter than scheduled production week, we loaded up Skye (my pickup truck) on Thursday and headed down to Albany. We were glad we did since one of our best customers was completely sold out. Now we knew their customers could get our product for the weekend.
Niskayuna and Honest Weight Co-ops.
We also decided not to go to our farmer’s market today on Thursday. I am glad we made the call because the storm did precisely what was predicted for a change and started dumping snow during the market hours. As a company that makes a fresh, perishable product, we have to decide early since we make spätzle specifically for the market a day or two ahead.
I always feel like Lucy Van Pelt this time of the year.
It’s always a little depressing getting these late winter snowstorms. Hopefully, today will be Mother Nature’s last hurrah for the season. The difference with these kinds of storms is they don’t last long like they do in January. Vermonters call these storms “natures fertilizer.”
It felt strange yesterday not being in production on a Friday and staying home today. We can’t wait to get back to normal next week.
Lastly, why all this made me think of the word pivot is beyond me, but I decided to write about it anyway to describe my week.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend, guys, and don’t forget to spring ahead by one hour tonight! It’s always been worth it for me, even when the kids were small, losing an hour of sleep to have it stay lighter later. Now, spring is literally right around the corner.🙂
Once upon a time, an Irish girl tried to make gluten-free spätzle for her German husband. She tried, and she tried, then she finally nailed it on 3/11/17.
That’s how it all started. I found out in 2010 I couldn’t have gluten anymore due to medical issues. Ironically, a year later, Marty found out he was gluten intolerant. After following my strict gluten-free diet, it made him sick when he did try to eat it. Very sick. We both loved food so much; this really sucked for us.
We could find shitty bread, bagels, pizza, and pasta. When I say shitty, I mean shitty—products with terrible texture, taste, and shelf life. The gluten-free food industry has improved by leaps and bounds over the last ten years.
As I said, we could find all the essential gluten-free items we missed, but I couldn’t find spätzle anywhere. I couldn’t find a recipe or product anywhere in the world. That’s when it became my mission to make a gluten-free spätzle for us.
Over the next seven years, I developed recipe after recipe to come up empty-handed. I used various gluten-free flours and grains, different liquids, and mixing methods. Every time I thought I had it, the spätzle disintegrated in the pasta water. You know me by now; there are still curse words out there floating around the galaxy.
Then on March 11, 2017, I had an idea and tried something new. I was getting closer and closer each time I tried, so I crossed my fingers and held my breath as I pushed the spätzle batter through the spätzle press into the simmering water.
It held together! It floated to the top of the water when cooked like it was supposed to! It tasted delicious! I said out loud, “This is the birth of the Vermont Spätzle Company!”
I drained the spätzle and sautéed it in some butter, put it on a big white platter with pork schnitzel, and served it to my family. Marty took one taste and said, “We need to share this with the world.” The rest is history!
OMG! Deliciousness! So much better than that dry af cake I made for Marty’s bday!
This morning I made us pineapple upside-down gluten-free pancakes to celebrate. Our productions plans have changed with making deliveries yesterday and today instead of making product for the farmers market tomorrow.
We decided to stay home from the market due to the impending snowstorm, which is forecasted to be at its worst with one inch of snow per hour while we would be at the market. High winds at 40 phr are also predicted, making us nervous that our power will go out again. At the end of the day, the hour drives there and back with the thought of what we may find when we get home isn’t worth the stress and anxiety involved.
I hope our customers who venture out won’t be too disappointed we won’t be there and will understand we live an hour away with more snow in the forecast in VT. It’s always tough to call closing your business due to weather, which is definitely something we don’t like to do.
Happy Friday! Today I will be making deliveries, doing chores, getting ready for the storm, and possibly losing power…again. Be safe and stay warm, everyone!
