It started with a cookbook. When pastry chef Fany Gerson couldn’t find a book on treats from her native Mexico, she decided to write one herself.
“Most of the sweets in Mexico are part of an oral culture passed down from generation to generation,” Gerson says. “There’s not a lot of documentation about it.”
Published in 2010, the same year Gerson founded her New York City-based frozen-treat company, La Newyorkina, My Sweet Mexico was nominated for a James Beard Award. Two cookbooks and one retail store later, Gerson is running a small business that pulled in $1.4 million in 2019. Her hugely popular paletas—ice pops made with Mexican flavors—inspired a miniature version called paletitas, which recently landed in Whole Foods.
“You want to be differentiated in the right way. People connect to stuff…
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Inc. (Digital) - 1 Issue, May/June 2020