Market Forces: Picklelicious

This week, Patch spoke with Robyn Samra, owner of Picklelicious. A mother-daughter team runs her pickle stand at the Summit market, where customers often crowd to taste samples of several kinds of pickles, olives, and marinated mushrooms, and happy children walk away biting into crunchy pickles on a stick. The stand is located in the corner of the market lot closest to Springfield Avenue and Beechwood Road.  

How did you come up with pickle on a stick?

One day we were at a street fair, and kids were walking around with ice cream cones, and it was just that – it took off.

How did you get into the pickle business?  

I was in the food business for 10 to 12 years prior to this. I always knew I wanted to do something on my own. At that time, the Meadowlands free market might have been opening. I brainstormed and thought I’m going to do pickles; there’s not much overhead.

I grew up loving pickles. I went down to the Lower East Side, which as everyone knows is famous for pickles. I went to Essex Street Pickles, and I said I wanted to work with them but branded as Picklelicious. And I got started that way.

We first started in 1991 by doing one or two flea markets. Then we started street fairs, then the farmer’s markets came, and then the store came. Our first store was in Manhattan on 88th and Amsterdam, on the Upper West Side. We started making all kinds of olives, olive pastes, tapenades. During market season, we try to get things from the farmers at the markets and try to pickle things on the spot.

The markets are the main part of our business. We’ve expanded from doing four markets to doing 34. We’re in New Jersey and New York – not Manhattan, mostly Westchester and Orange County. We do have a retail store in Teaneck, which is the base of the business--people come there when the markets are not running. That’s why we opened the doors, and it became a fairly big hit. We produce the product at a warehouse we have in Bogota, which is in the same area as the store. And we have an online business, which is for people from all over the country. As far as farmer’s market customers, on the Internet we offer a special where they don’t have to pay for shipping. We try to gather up e-mails during the season for the off-season.  

Our employees are basically in house--family, friends of family. We’ll have a couple people that will come in just to work for us for the season. Those people are able to run the weekday markets. Saturdays and Sundays are most of our markets. We have people who have full time jobs and are looking for extra income on the weekends, and they’ve stayed with us, thank God, though the years.  

How do you make pickles?

It’s a cucumber put in a brine. Our brine is made from water, garlic, salt and spices. There are some that are made with vinegar, but we try to stay with a garlic pickle. How long you keep it in brine depends on the pickle. We start out with a new pickel, which we put in the day of, to a full sour, which takes seven to nine months.

What’s your best-seller at the Summit market?

Usually in Summit it’s new pickles. Those are what we call the closest to the cucumber; they haven’t been brined that long.

What’s the hardest thing about what you do?

Trying to make sure that everyone gets to the market on time. Most of the markets are very strict. It’s a business. If you’re late, you’re making everyone else inconvenienced. You have to devote seven days a week. It’s not a part-time job, whether you’re at two markets or 22. 

What do you like best about what you do?

We like to hear the people comment on how much they enjoy our product, our staff and what we’ve created. The phone doesn’t stop ringing all day, thank God. “What market are you going to be at this week; if not how can we get it?” It’s one on one - personal.