Rhonda Kave
was “bored out of her mind” as a stay-at-home mom on Long Island. She and a
friend took an Adult Ed class in candy-making, which was relegated to side
hobby for 25 years. When the kids grew up, Rhonda and her husband moved to the
city, where she worked at the Coalition Against Domestic Violence while getting
an NYU degree in sociology. For a final research project on greenmarkets, she
found herself wandering around Essex Street. It’s amazing where school can
lead.
Something in Rhonda stirred as she walked through the collective of food and other vendors that has been going since LaGuardia’s New York of the 1940’s. She spotted a newspapered-up space for rent, and thought, "If I don’t do this now, when will I do it?”
The company, probably most famous for dipping bacon into chocolate (“Pig Candy”), uses the same name and logo as Rhonda’s mother’s children’s clothing shop.
Now Rhonda works alongside a sit-com-worthy deadpan assistant Michelle to layer flavors – she’s inspired by foreign groceries as much as she is the Union Square Greenmarket – and use chocolate as an ingredient. “It’s not the end, it’s the beginning.”
Her formula: Salt/Sweet/Fat. Nothing boring about that.
