{Clockwise from top left, Kakao chocolates, Salume Beddu sausage, Baetje Farms goat cheese, Marcoot Jersey Creamery cheese}
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With Kakao Chocolate‘s third location is set to open in Clayton in two weeks, its owner Brian Pelletier is already embarking on another new business venture. Pelletier plans to open a specialty food store around Oct. 1 called Larder & Cupboard.
The shop at 7310 Manchester Road in Maplewood will sell condiments, sauces, preserves, grains, desserts, snacks and, of course, Kakao chocolates. Cheese will take center stage – including products from Marcoot Jersey Creamery in Greenville, Illinois, and Baetje Farms in Bloomdale, Missouri. The store will also sell cured meats from Salume Beddu in St. Louis and products that have won awards from the American Cheese Society, World Cheese Awards, Good Food Awards and Sofi Awards. Food will be sourced from small, independent producers.
Pelletier said store manager Cindy Higgerson, known on Twitter as Madam Charcuterie (@Mcharcuterie), is an expert at sourcing hard-to-find items. “She is well known in St. Louis food circles,” he told The Scoop. “She is known by a lot of chefs and home cooks and a lot of people who like to eat good food.”
He said the shop will complete the “foodie puzzle” in Maplewood. “This is the only thing really that’s missing in Maplewood to make it the food destination,” he said. “We’ve got chocolate, we’ve got tea, we’ve got oils and vinegars (Vom Foss), we’ve got spices (Penzeys Spices), we’ve got doughnuts (Strange Donuts) and we’ve got pies (Pie Oh My).”
He also mentioned the new Bolyard’s Meat & Provisions, set to open in Maplewood this fall by Chris Bolyard, former chef de cuisine at Sidney Street Cafe. Bolyard noted in February that people in Maplewood are very supportive of small boutique-type businesses.
-chocolate and charcuterie photos by Greg Rannells; cheese photos courtesy of Marcoot Jersey Creamery and Baetje Farms
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This article appears in August 2014.