Market Forces: Ester's Treats

This week, Patch spoke with Ester Mallach, who with her boyfriend Ryan Farrell, co-owns Ester’s Treats.  Their organic baked goods include many vegan and dairy-free options. At noon on a recent Sunday, only a small plate of cookies—along with two large stacks of empty plastic tubs—remained at their stand, which is located at the center of the parking lot facing Maple Street.

Web site: www.esterstreats.com

What’s a typical day like for you?

A typical day would be baking all morning and then going to a farmer’s market in the afternoon, or baking all night and going to the market in the morning. The schedule’s been very overwhelming, but it’s been very fulfilling. We have been getting great reception. We feel we’ve been filling a niche and offering something that people were really looking for.

Would you describe your business?

It’s me and my boyfriend—he’s my business partner. It’s just the two of us. I was a baker working for a store, and he was working in finance in the city. Last year we did the Scotch Plains Farmer’s Market, and we loved it so much, we decided to do it full time. We’re from Springfield, and we do the farmer’s markets in the area: Summit, Somerville, Chatham and Scotch Plains. 

We do a lot of custom orders–for birthday cakes, and catering for offices. We cater to people who have allergies or whose kids can’t have dairy. Everything we do is organic and homemade, from scratch. It’s all fresh, and we try to use local sources. We do some sugar-free, some dairy-free, and some vegan. I’m vegan and my boyfriend’s not, so we try to do half and half and split what our offerings are. We rent a professional commercial kitchen in Springfield. The kitchen that we use happens to be a kosher kitchen–it’s at a temple—so everything is kosher.  

How did you learn to bake?

I’ve always been a cook and helped out in the kitchen and enjoyed being in the kitchen and around food. When I became a vegan, I had to start learning to cook for myself a lot more. I used to go to places in the city and buy vegan brownies, etc., and they were all terrible. So I started to cooking vegan brownies, and they didn’t taste vegan, and I brought them to my friends and to work. I started experimenting, and I read a lot of cookbooks to learn how to veganize something without losing what it was supposed to taste like.

I was working for a publishing company in Hoboken, and I decided I wanted to be a chef full time. I got a job in Morristown at a health food store as a baker. I was there for over three years. I worked on recipes and experimented, and now here I am doing my own business. 

People have a really bad impression of what a vegan baked good is, because they’re usually not very good. I think a lot of what makes our products better is they’re fresh. I’m doing the baking the morning of the market.

How did you come to be a vegetarian? And then why vegan?

I became a vegetarian when I was nine years old. I think I felt pity for the animals. I ate some meat  here and there–my mom tried to sneak chicken in my soup–but I pretty much became a vegetarian at a young age and had no interest in eating meat.  After college, I had really high cholesterol, despite being a vegetarian. So I became vegan, and my cholesterol was going down, and eventually I got it down to a level where it was okay. So becoming vegan was part of becoming a healthier vegetarian. It was more of a health choice. I’m not squeamish, and it doesn’t bother me that my boyfriend eats meat, but for me personally, I believe in a vegetarian and vegan diet. For me it’s important for health and environmental reasons. 

Do you miss butter?

I have my vegan butter that I use, but I don’t really crave anything anymore. I don’t eat the fake meat stuff. I try to eat as much whole foods and fresh stuff as possible. Sometimes I want a bite of pizza, so I’ll nibble on the crust.

What’s your best-seller at the Summit Farmer’s Market?  

Because it’s a morning market, we sell a lot of muffins and scones, and one of our best-seller items is our breakfast cookie. It’s made with carrot, agave, and apple butter. People buy those practically in bulk. We also sell a lot of chocolate oat squares, fruity oat squares, vegan banana bread, brownies. Every week we try to introduce something new–a new muffin flavor, or a new fruit combination to keep it interesting.  

What do you do in your time off?

I like to be outdoors. We both do a lot of running, and some snowboarding in the winter. I like watching movies, and riding my bike. But I don’t have a lot of it. My only day off is Mondays, and that’s when I go to the bank and do laundry. That’s the ugly truth of it.  

What will you do when the markets end?

We’re going to take a little time off and go north and snowboard for a month. And we hope to keep in touch with our customers and do some business with local stores that would like fresh-baked goods, and build our Web site to do online ordering.  

What’s the hardest thing about what you do?

I guess it’s just a lot of hours on my feet. Sometimes it just gets physically tiring.  Because we’re always going to markets we joke that we’re a bakery on the go–we’re a bakery on wheels. We’re in the routine now–but the logistics of getting to and from every market can be overwhelming. To remember every little piece of what you need.

What’s your favorite thing about what you do? With all the work, what keeps you going?  

The best part is definitely the customers. It’s so great when you see someone for the first time and they say, ‘oh my gosh, you have these,’ or,  ‘oh my daughter can’t have any dairy’ and they see all the options, and then when they come back the next week and get more things and say how much they liked them, that feels good. And a market where you sell out of everything, that makes it worth it.