Easter is the most last-minute holiday we have! 75% of our catering orders come in this week. Most popular is the Dinner for 8. You get a locally smoked ham (already sliced, just heat), 4 side dishes, our fluffy snowball rolls, and a cheesecake. It’s $189. That’s less than $25 a head. Add Livia Prosecco (a sparkling crowd pleaser and under $15 a bottle). When we meet our wine makers in Italy, a glass of prosecco is the first thing they hand you!
Fuel prices up, but we’re not raising prices! Reporters are asking about the impact of fuel prices on food prices. Check out this Bloomberg TV interview that I did. They asked me every question under the sun! Watch the interview.
Should you plant now, or wait? Everyone’s ready to plant, but Mother Nature hasn’t fully signed off yet. Once you get past April 15 – 20th, it's usually okay to plant everything. The plants that can handle the cooler weather now are Tulips, Daffodils and Hyacinths. You can plant Easter lilies now but, watch the cooler weather. Our greenhouses are loaded and, we’re getting daily deliveries. We want color, color, color! Tough winter!
My grandfather would never have imagined our milk sales today. My grandfather, Leo Leonard, opened his dairy over 100 years ago. He brought the milk from the farm and pasteurized and homogenized it in his dairy plant (I grew up there!). Nobody knew what skim milk was and organic didn’t even exist. Almond milk, what’s that? Today, we’re selling a lot of skim milk and organic outsells our conventional milk. Big difference is that organic uses zero weed killers on their crops (mainly corn). When I visit my daughters who have young kids, their refrigerators only have organic. That’s what the new generation wants for their kids. Now, we’re bringing in flavored milk with all-natural coloring. The Cookies & Cream milk is rocking right now. One customer said it tastes like the milk after you’re done dunking your Oreos in it. My grandfather’s head would be spinning today!
FAQ: Why does some milk have a longer shelf life? When we pasteurize our milk, we heat it to 160-180 degrees to kill most bacteria (many of this is good, like yogurt). It should last 12-20 days. But, if you heat it to 280 degrees, it kills almost all the bacteria and can last between 30-90 days. That’s called “Ultra Pasteurized.”
My Mom’s 93 and still sharp as a tack! She’s not in the store everyday but, I update her on what’s happening during my daily phone call with her. Her main question is, “Do you have my pot roast and meatballs on the buffet at the store?”. Yes, Mom!
Prevent your child from drowning this summer. The goal is to get them “waterproofed” by the time the pools open in the spring. All you need to do is get them to roll over and be able to float on their back. Depending on your child, it could be 6-8 lessons. Olympian and 3x gold medal winner Rowdy Gaines (on our advisory board) agrees. Just get your child to float and you may save their life. Any swim school will do. We have schools in Norwalk, CT and Clifton, NJ. Google them. Plus, Stewie the Duck Swim Schools are a charity so, for every lesson you buy, we provide a free lesson for a child in need. To the tune of 50,000 free lessons a year!
We have to keep our eye on TikTok! The butter cone was a TikTok fad (100M-300M views). Now we have the Cookies & Cream milk (100M-200M+ views), the Nutella ice cream cone is selling thousands a week, and the Coconut Cult Probiotic yogurt (300M-800M+ views). We also have these squeezable butter sticks (for stress?) and squishy dumpling toys in the store. But they are trending on TikTok with more than 300 million views. They are flying off the shelves. Go figure.
