Around The Store With Stew

July 2026

What’s Going on with the Lettuce Recall?
My wife Kim is like a rabbit and eats salad twice a day!  So, while they are figuring out the recall, Kim is buying Stew Leonard's Organic Greenhouse Green Leaf Crunch.  It’s grown in a state of the art, highly controlled automated greenhouse in NY State and never touches outdoor soil.  Our personal and family salads are sourced from California and are made (and washed!) right here in the store.  If you do buy a head of lettuce, my advice is to remove the outer leaves and give it a good wash in clean water. This morning, a customer asked me if raspberries were impacted, too.  I told them there have been no reported cases that berries have been affected at all.

What impact does TikTok have on sales? 
We are selling Stew’s dot cakes in our bakery.  It’s basically a cupcake in a cup but it’s gone viral.  Then, there’s our COOKIE MILK.  Over 30 million views!  It tastes like you added sugar cookies to your milk.  Great to add to your latte in the coffee department also.  We’re selling more than our regular milk.  When my grandfather started delivering milk 100 years ago, he would have said, “What is Cookie Milk?”

Welcome, Sarah Hollis.  My sister Beth’s daughter, Sarah, has joined our team. She worked for Campbell’s, and she has her MBA from Northeastern. She will be focused on our e-commerce business. My sister Beth began the bakery (Version 1.0) and now her daughter will take it to another level (Version 2.0) by selling our bakery items on-line and shipping nationwide. It’s expensive to ship (fresh frozen) but customers don’t seem to care.  Our sourdough bread (40+ year old starter), fudge brownie buckets, and Bethy’s Bakery sampler have been the most popular so far.  Good luck, Sarah!

Mom’s tastings are a hit on TikTok.  My daughter Chase started bringing products over to my Mom’s house for a tasting.  Lobster rolls, butter ice cream cone, etc.  She’s so honest and it’s really cute.  She’s afraid if she says she doesn’t like something, it will hurt sales.  We keep telling her, don’t worry about that, just give your honest opinion.  I like spicy guacamole and some people don’t.  That’s okay, Mom! See her review of our Cookie Milk.

The major TV (CBS, Bloomberg, Maria Bartiromo, ABC, etc.) networks wanted to hear about food costs.  The real driver is meat.  Herd sizes are at historic lows and demand for beef is high (protein craze.)  Take our cheeseburger.  Cost of the bun and cheese are the same as last year but, the burger went from $2.50 last year to $2.75 this year.  How can you save?  Three things.  Put more chicken on the grill (approx. $5/lb), try our private label (usually 20% less than national brands) and stick to your shopping list!  Stay away from our in-store demos!   It’s easy to taste a new product and then throw it in your cart!  I’m a victim of this too when I shop!

Walt Frazier can play ball…but can’t make a great ice cream cone!  We honored the Yonkers Montessori Academy’s girls’ basketball team for winning a state title earlier this year…which was the first for a Yonkers public school since 1932 and the first high school girls' state sports title in Yonkers history!  Walt attended (thank you!) and handed them medals.  They were stunned.  We then asked Walt to make his own ice cream cone.  All I can say, he should stick to basketball!  Overall, what a genuinely nice person he is.  All celebrities should act like him.  Down deep, a great man both on the court and off.

Swim Schools are Rockin’.  Clifton and Norwalk have been enrolling kids at a record rate.  I thank every parent I see at our swim schools, but they thank me too.  For every lesson you buy, we donate one free lesson to a less fortunate kid (we’re a 501(c)3 charity). We provided over 50,000 last year and it’s growing.   You can do karate lessons, ballet, etc. but swim lessons are the only thing that can save your child’s life.  If you want to donate, go to StewietheDuck.com.  A $10 donation provides an extra free lesson.

Three Things We Found at the Fancy Food Show.  There was a big food show at the Jacob Javits Center last month and we had 30 people from Stew’s attend.  We tasted all sorts of new products, but here were the winners that we’ll be bringing into Stew’s:
• Drybox freeze-dried fruit.  These are single ingredient snacks with no sugar added, no preservatives, and they’re gluten free.  I bet they’ll be in every lunchbox this September.
• Charcuterie Grab & Go, with prosciutto, salami, and coppa.  Easy entertaining.
• Chocolate-covered packaged nuts from Nut Factory. Third generation family business, just like Stew’s!

You’ll see these in the store soon. - Stew