Workers are putting the finishing touches on Jennifer's Way Bakery on East 10th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue. (It's right next door to Quintessence.)
This will be the first store for Jennifer Esposito, the Brooklyn-born actress who was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2009. (Her acting credits include "Summer of Sam" and "Crash.")
She has said that she was booted from CBS' "Blue Bloods" because of a misunderstanding of her limitations due to her celiac disease diagnosis. She has been selling her gluten-free products online.
Here's more about the store in a blog post from Jan. 21:
I’m happy to say Jennifer’s Way Bakery is ALMOST here. A gluten free, dairy free, refined sugar free, soy free, peanut free, allergy friendly, organic bakery that will be a SAFE ZONE and the CELIAC STANDARD for gluten free baked goods. I’m going to also make it a center for information about this disease, and a place to find understanding and support. To say its been a TON of work would be an understatement.
Besides hand-picking every last detail, even sanding the refurbished wood in the store myself, I have spent days upon days researching the SAFEST, cleanest, purest, organic, non GMO, local ingredients I could find. I WILL NOT bake with anything less. DO you want to know why? Because as a celiac, a severe allergy ridden one, I have learned that whole, clean, HEALTHY foods is what my body needs to function. So I’ve used my own savings to make this dream spot happen not only for me but for so many like me.
51 comments:
Please have vegan, gluten-free DONUTS!
Thanks!
Welcome to the neighborhood. May you have years and years of success.
Just what we, need another celebrity here. Oy vey.
She's hardly a "celebrity." It sounds like she's an actress who's appeared in only two rather obscure films.
I would hardly say that she's a celebrity. I've seen her in the neighborhood many times at restaurants and stuff. Welcome and good luck to her, there's a need for gluten-free stuff.
BTW: was just wondering, how come nobody is on here whining about the new profusion of faux Irish Bars all over the place that condone douchie-ness more than anything? There used to be no Irish bro-budweiser bars in this neighborhood and now a bunch of non-neighborhooders are buying up failing or older spots and turning them into these boring, lame bro bars. Just saying.
@ anon 11:40
She was in the ensemble cast of Crash, which won the Best Picture during the 78th Academy Awards. Not exactly "rather obscure."
I'm impressed by her passion and dedication to a particular subject or cause. It beats trolling the Internet.
Sound great. Good luck!
I remember she used to be in Spin City with Michael J. Fox. I wonder if she does her laundry at the sitcom's laundromat namesake on B & 11th?
sounds like a real case to me.
Stogo -- an organic and vegan, gluten-free ice cream shop -- was owned by Rob Sedgwick, brother of actress Kyra, brother-in-law to Kevin Bacon. And how long did that last? Just pointing out the parallels in vegan and celebrity(ish)-owned shops. And not a vegan shop but was partly-owned by a celebrity, Pete Wentz's Angels and Kings has fallen-out. EV and celebrity-owned shops just seems to like oil and water. I like that she's a Brooklynite and more power to her with this endeavour, but she may have a better success in Times Square, Las Vegas, or Atlantic City.
Happy to have her here. The place sounds great. But I miss her very much on "Blue Bloods." I like the show but she was one of the best things about it. Let's have her back.
"A gluten free, dairy free, refined sugar free, soy free, peanut free"
well what's gonna be in these cupcakes gas?
"hand-picking every last detail, even sanding the refurbished wood in the store myself"
No kidding, wow!
Kinda sounds like the place up the block that sells water. When I asked them what was in the water - they replied "water".
To all the haters who are lucky enough to not have to live with dietary restrictions, F off! Welcome, Jennifer!!!
She was in Spin City and Blue Bloods and was married to Bradley Cooper. She's as celebrity as it gets. Is she madonna? No.
Frankly, her expected audience of celiac sufferers is pretty small.
Grow up
happy that its not another empty storefront on this block (still no one in the old obscura space right?), although its basically another hyper-speciality store that I will probably never go to (not gluten free can't say I'll be stopping by here often...)
also does anyone know who the guy is that just tinkers with motor bikes all day, and is just generally an awesome hoarder? he's between the "water store" and quintessence. the guy is such a fixture of the block, he's actually in the google street view, but he seems more and more out of place by the day.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=261+E+10th+St,+New+York,+NY&hl=en&ll=40.728342,-73.983486&spn=0.001388,0.002701&sll=40.728342,-73.983486&sspn=0.001396,0.002701&hnear=261+E+10th+St,+New+York,+10009&t=m&z=19&layer=c&cbll=40.728342,-73.983486&panoid=yimzF0suj_J8Aa9TMwZcng&cbp=12,9.17,,0,11.08
Get outta here. Why here, why here? Because every asshole in the world wants to come here, make cookies here,.. thinks it's cool here... nothing cool here... not now....never again...
stay outta here celebrities.... staying out will help the area best...... coming here will only pave the way for others who think it's cool here.......nothing cool here now....never will be.......
Welcome to the neighborhood, Ms. Esposito and wish you much success in your new venture. Ignore the haters who do not need to shop in your new store. I for one and am looking forward to buying your yummy treats for myself and my mom who is diabetic.
I'm fortunate and don't suffer from celiac disease. But I do like to eat natural foods like this — maybe cut back on a few calories and processed foods. I welcome this.
I am happy to have a variety of baked goods to choose from, especially with whole earth closing, this will be a welcome addition. Who cares what kind of flour she uses, if the goods are tasty then yay.
celebrities will bring other celebrities and affluent people. keep out. people are hanging by a thread. when they finally push you rent stabalized shut-ins out, and turn your buildings into multi million dollar condos and more celebrities move in, they won't care or even know about the history of the buildings that were cleansed, nor will they care.
I walked past there tonight, and they were already taking photos of the owner and the food. woo hoo!
gentrification! wake up!
The more celebrities we have here, the less chance we have at winning the war. Case in point. hotels go up, we oppose them, but once they are open, celebrities are the first to stay in them. High end restaurants and lounges go up by EMM Group, it destroys our neighborhood, we give our blood to oppose it, then the celebrities are the first to go there. We fight the liquor licenses and multi million dollar condos that are built on land that once housed working class people, and they are the first to move in. Why fight at all?
"Anonymous'', the hapless comments you post every five minutes as you are having this self-inflicted boxing match with your split personalities is not doing you any great favour. Basically, you are a cantankerous individual where your entire self is subsumed in a swamp of negativity. Yes, you are a very happy individual and it is quite obvious. It might just be something you are eating and not aware of the chemical ingredients. But please leave your directionless drippings on another wall. We are here to congratulate and encourage a young woman who started her own business using her own two hands and her life savings. You cannot get any better than that as a symbol of the American entrepreneurial spirit, ambition, courage and strength to create a business in some very tough financial conditions right now. This speaks volumes for her as a woman and of her background that made her to be tough, resilient, brave and to always persevere. I hardly doubt you could ever equal those traits and accomplishments, ''Anonymous''. Jennifer Esposito is an actress and now a proud, confident and independent businesswoman like no other. Her purpose is education and the health of her fellow Americans. Her goal is to provide the market with healthy products that contain ingredients that are legally true in their quality, category and description, since so many of us are getting sick from the monopolized manufactured food factories. Hence, education and factual sources of the truth of our mass marketed manufactured foods will be on display as well as the goods and products of Jennifer's Way and their remarkable healthy differences. Jennifer Esposito takes the effort to fully inspect, analyze and test the validity, quality and truth in all the ingredients she selects for all of her products first, before she provides them for the public to experience and enjoy.Please support her who has taken a step back from her former industry to enjoy many leaps and bounds helping others have a higher quality of health, happiness and satisfaction in their daily lives.
Wow her PR machine is in serious top gear. My positive opinion of this new store is now diminished. Thank you Chris for confirming our worst fears.
@Jill: Actually, Jill. I am a customer of Jennifer's Way. Owning my own business coupled with many years in university has trained me to write throughly and in depth recognizing the importance of detail. Just writing a few simple sentences reflecting a fleeting thought passing through one's stream of consciousness does not give the reader and owner any form of equal justice.You should not allow my writing to intimidate you, Jill. Your assumptions of Jennifer's Way having a ''P.R machine"" are absolutely not true. If you have suffered from horrific abdominal pain like I have for many years, I encourage you to try out what I feel to be some of the very best ingredients on the market. Any reduction in pain makes our daily life an enjoyable one. God bless and take care, Jill.
Chris P., how can you be a customer of a store that hasn't opened yet?
Ms. Esposito is a New York-based actress who grew up in Brooklyn, so I am willing to give her more of a pass than other celebrities who come here. I'm not sure opening a gluten-free bakery is "brave," though.
Just to throw this out there, as a vegan, I don't give a shit about vegan ice cream and vegan cupcakes and vegan, I don't know, alcoholic macarons or whatever. We need fresh produce markets and health-food stores and a few more restaurants that don't put bacon in and on everything.
OK sorry that was a bit harsh. Ice cream and cupcakes are fine; I'm just so tired of everything being so twee when we need the basics and have to go all over the place to get them.
@LvV: With reference to the comment you made in an earlier post: "Chris P., how can you be a customer of a store that hasn't opened yet?" LvV, I kindly ask you to take a moment out of your day to perform some basic elementary research to answer that question you asked me earlier. Please, I beg you, before you speak with such bold confidence regarding any entity of this topic of discussion, at least take the effort to fully research, examine and cross examine your references of the ''knowledge'' you may have. I cannot stomach witnessing all these grandiose assumptions and wild conjectures about any given area regarding the topic of discussion. Furthermore, by adding vulgar profanity to the discussion as a means of expression..I can say no more. You speak a great deal about something that you absolutely know nothing about. Have a great day :)
Chris P, I speak a "great deal" about something I know nothing about? I asked you an innocent, curious question.
1. The post above says (in Esposito's own words) that the store is "ALMOST here."
2. It also says above that this is Jennifer's first store.
So again I ask: How can you say "I am a customer of Jennifer's Way" when the store is not yet open? Or maybe it is open by now -- so why not just SAY THAT? Don't you think that would help the store rather than speaking to people like a hyper-touchy idiot who just bought his first thesaurus?
PS, I followed my question to you by giving props to Ms. Esposito's local roots, but you were probably too busy creating your pompous, word-vomit response to notice.
Just answer the question and stop making a fool of yourself.
So the fact that she's from Brooklyn in some people's mids gives her more EV Cred than if she was from, say, Hoboken? That's rather narrow minded and childish.
11:49, not at all! Hoboken also gets you cred. ;)
I am biased to tristate area people, I fully admit.
@Chris P - Isn't that special.
Please, please send somebody to take pictures right now. I just walked buy and they are having a party in there. i stood out front for like five minutes and noone even paid attention to me. She was in there and didn't even come out to adress me. That's a bad sign.
and guess what? YUNNIES!!!!
Chris let me assure you that you, with your discomfiting passion for an actress that sells gluten free pancake mix on a website in no way intimidates me. In fact, you might have surmised from my carefully crafted, college educated response that I think your comment was idiotic, and, after your follow ups, rather creepy, since you claim to have no relation to her personally. Additionally, your prose, while using a lot of words, actually said nothing, nor answered a single question of your critics. How very academic of you. If you had bothered to read more carefully than you write, you might have noticed that I started off defending the store.
Interesting that you have to buy your flour from a website when it's readily available in several stores within a 10 minute walk from here, and probably a few bodegas, but unlikely any 7-11's. In fact, my cubbard is packed with a wide variety of flours because I love to bake. None of them bought on the Internet from a celebrity, unless Trader Joe or Bob from Red Mill is considered a celebrity. I am certain of one thing, Ms Esposito is prettier than both.
Didn't have to look at the link to know you were talking about Chester. He is a fixture of the block. He's been in that spot for more than 20 years.
@Jill: Firstly, the support I have for Jennifer Esposito and/or Jennifer's Way has nothing to do with aesthetics, the culture of celebrity and the deification of celebrities, as I am sure we can both agree that this has become an epidemic in North American society.
Secondly, due to my geographical location, specific goods and products are not readily available. Unfortunately, I am not blessed to live in a location where such products you mention are ubiquitous and in an abundance of supply (companies that are highly skilled in the tactic of circumventing specific laws that require them to label all of their ''true'' ingredients). Once again, you are assuming I live in a city like New York or similar where anything and everything is so easily accessible.
Thirdly, do you have legal knowledge regarding the laws of international trade of dry goods and the minimal requirements necessary for a company to list a specific ingredient(s) in their product? For example, is any given product made in a specific country or is it simply a product of a certain country? I was very impressed when Jennifer Esposito knew of these facts and even listed some of those practices and products. This is one of the main reasons how and why Jennifer's Way secured my confidence in the validity and credibility of their goods and products.
Fourthly, your assumptions are incorrect again by stating that my ''discomfiting passion for an actress that sells gluten free pancake mix on a website'' and that ''in no way intimidates'' you. You are measuring the entire worth, credibility and validity of Jennifer's Way simply because it is owned by an actress that has chosen to sell her product through her website. You obviously think that the method chosen to sell this product is very trivial and simple. In essence, you are measuring a product not by its true ingredients but buy how it is marketed and sold. In my opinion, I think it is you that are hypnotized by the glitz and glam of sensationalism and not the people you accuse of being blinded by that image marketing practice.
@ Jill:Are you aware that a large portion of the purchase you make on many common shelf goods in large, well-known stores goes to the distributor, transportation companies and seller? How much room does that leave for investment in that product for any ''true'' ingredients let alone anything of quality when the main goal is to compete with other companies mainly on price and not quality? So yes, when I read that Jennifer Esposito was selling Jennifer's Way directly from her website, that immediately informed me that she can afford to assemble high-quality ingredients that are true in their actual category, worth, quality and description.
Lastly, why I am so passionate about Jennifer's Way? It is not in hopes of meeting her, befriending her or for any personal gratification whatsoever. Due to my business, geographical location and scheduled future surgeries on my back and elbows the closest I will ever get to meeting her is most likely handling a bag of flour that she most likely packaged herself at one time. Jill, if you truly knew me as a person I support anyone, regardless of their gender who takes a stand to do the right thing for the common good of everybody. She is doing it all alone and by the sweat of her own brow. Does that sound like what a ''true'' celebrity would ever admit to doing?
This exchange you and I have been having is taking away the spotlight from someone who truly deserves it. However, what turns me into overdrive is hearing people make statements and assumptions about the worth and effort of another without knowing all the true facts about that individual and the purpose in their actions--especially if they measure the entirety of an individual simply by what they can only see and not by what they know. All I ask of you is to allow your fellow female American counterpart an opportunity to display and showcase her honesty, talents, passion, skill and concern she has for people who have celiac and who demand a product that is true in ingredients as well as in the message.
Finally, North America must have more women take part in the world of business, cause how else are we going to compete and survive among many nations that are doing so already.
Jill, my intentions were never to insult you. If I did get carried away, I sincerely apologize to you. My own experiences and memories got the best of me again. Jill, I sincerely ask you to give a person who wants to make changes for the better for all of us a fair chance without prejudice and stereotype.
@Jill: I will always advocate for any individual regardless of their gender or ethnicity if I see they are becoming victims of stereotype or prejudice when they have not even been given the fair opportunity to showcase their true self, talents, skills and aptitude. You may regard this type of effort as odd or highly unusual, but up here in Canada it is what we believe that makes our nation so great! You are more than welcome to visit and experience this type of treatment like you are a member of the family--especially in the prairie provinces and most definitely in the Maritimes.
God bless you, Jill and I hope one day we can be friends-regardless of the heated discussions we just had.
All the best to you and your search for what gives you your perfect health :)
Chris P., how can you be a customer of a store that hasn't opened yet?
Not for nothin Chris but this storefront was actually a peanut plant back in the day. We like to roast our own peanuts around here.
@Anonnymous: I have had a friend share some of Jennifer's Way products with me prior to the actual store opening up. I was very satisfied with the finished product and that it did not give me abdominal pain, swelling or discomfort.
In the future I may have the opportunity to purchase items in-person at the bakery store directly whenever my schedule allows me to travel to New York( a total of 7.5 hours by plane, not including the 4 hours or more of wait and pre-boarding preparation times per flight). This is why I am really hoping Jennifer's Way website can expand to accommodate orders across the border.
It would be fantastic if I could purchase her flour and baking mixes through Amazon.com. I could not live without Amazon.com. I love Amazon.com where I can buy anything I want and have it sent right to my front door with the click of a mouse. My experiences with Amazon.com have always been perfect because of how efficient and expedient of the entire ordering, purchasing and delivery process.
I was in a motor vehicle accident a couple of years ago. I drove perfectly exercising skill, care and caution. Regardless, the vehicle was totalled and while I was still able to walk away from the vehicle, I had to dodge vehicles that were flying in the ditch at high rates of speed that were driven by some of the worst drivers I have ever seen. As a result of this experience, I try to do my shopping(household, domestic items ) online as much as possible avoiding travelling long distances.
Prior to my learning about the chemical preservatives in many of our foods,I have had to go to the emergency room at one time due to extreme pain in my liver. This was due to my liver enzymes being completely out of their safe limits. The nurses were taking my blood very often throughout the entire day to monitor them. I do not drink, do drugs nor do I take products that contain acetaminophen(which are well-known causes of this condition).
Thank you.
Is there a full moon this week?
This post, along with Jeremiah's on fancy coffee, have really made my week. lulz
@ Cosmo
Jeremiah and I are teaming up on a gluten-free coffee post.
I liked this place a lot more before Chris P chimed in. Some people just don't know when to shut up. More harm than good, Chris. ugh.
I love her!
All the endlessly wordy fancy-talking aside, those of us that actually have to live near these celebrity owned smugness factories know how they suck, look down on locals, and change the general vibe on the street to a very unpleasant one. There is also something unpleasant about a "business" that has no need to make a profit or even break even, competing for customers with businesses that actually need to sell merchandise to pay the rent, feed the kids, etc.
We should embrace and welcome independently owned businesses in place of boarded up shops, instead of more 7-11's, starbucks et al... it seems some people would rather see this neighborhood boarded up and falling apart? why the focus on her status as an actress? people are allowed to change careers as often as they wanted, even famous people. I welcome allergen-free wellness focused small business any day. It is always wonderful to see someone trying something new. Welcome to the neighborhood, I wish you much success.
Good luck jennifer. Kudos to your perseverance and passion. You are a wonderful actress, friend, daughter, baker and businesswoman!!!
"new profusion of faux Irish Bars all over the place that condone douchie-ness more than anything? There used to be no Irish bro-budweiser bars in this neighborhood"
You mean like Solas, Ryan's Irish Pub, Lunasa, Slainte, Finnerty's and Central Bar? Yeah, I'm with you. Noticed that too.
I have ulcerative colitis can your gluten ptoducts help me
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