The Secret Ingredient: Butter
By the way, I’m helping to facilitate a tempeh workshop on January 27th, hosted by the Bronx River Alliance, and taught by the one and only Barry himself! Tickets are free: get them here.
Larasati Vitoux is the owner of Maison Jar, a refillery/package-free store that opened in 2022 conveniently close to me in Greenpoint. It takes slightly more forethought to shop there (these days I keep quart containers in my totes at all times), but the experience is more personal and also easier, since — as Larasati discusses below — she’s done the work of thoughtful sourcing, so I don’t have to pick between 20 brands of pasta or similarly-packaged eggs.
Still, there’s always the balance, in life or business choices, between what’s cheaper, what’s convenient, what’s more sustainable or what brings the most joy. I love this interview with her about butter, because her approach to sustainability goes hand-in-hand with joy. She’s not going to give up butter (though she likes some of the vegan brands) but she’s found many ways to tread more lightly and intentionally on the planet and help her neighbors to do so as well.
It was fascinating to learn more about the zero-waste movement in France and made me question why we don’t have something similar here in the U.S. Do you, or would you, shop at package-free stores? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
I’m half French and half Indonesian. My mom grew up in Indonesia and I lived many years in Singapore before going to France when I was 13. Even though my mom is an unbelievable cook and cooks a lot of Indonesian food, she also cooks amazing French food. And as you probably know, in France we love dairy, we love our cheese, our cream, and we cook a lot with butter. For me, my childhood was always butter on toast with honey or jam. And we eat cheese at every single meal, after the main meal and before dessert. I know it’s not the most sustainable. I was conscious of this but I didn't want to change what was really the ingredient that I liked. I've always had that creamy dairy, butter appetite.
Kate: I mean, it's hard with sustainability, because there's an infinite number of things you can do. But you do have to choose the things that make you happy. Like I’ve been vegetarian for 20 years. But I know that for a lot of people that's difficult because they really love meat and I can understand that. If that's not the change you want to make for yourself, then that makes sense to me.
And I think just being mindful, like I still do eat meat, but very rarely. I love vegetables, vegetarian dishes and even vegan dishes. At home we solely cook vegetarian, and I don't have those cheese plates. In winter we love to make Asian noodle soups. You know how when you eat ramen, there’s the richness that comes from the fats? When we cook these at home we don’t use meat, but we add butter to give a kind of creaminess and richness. It's unbelievable how it changes the soup entirely. You don't even cook the butter with the boiling broth, you just add it at the end when you serve.
I’m also eating vegan butter, which is really “improved margarine” because we’ve always had margarine, but today, there's vegan butter that almost tastes like real butter. I'm impressed by some brands, Violife for instance, that’s the brand we carry at Maison Jar.
K: How do you go about sourcing the dairy for Maison Jar?
Being in New York state, where in the northeastern region there's a lot of cows, I think local is important. And then grass-fed and organic as well. Grass-fed really has an impact on the taste of your milk or butter. So those are the three things that I look at, and we have so many options here in the New York State area that it's not actually that difficult to source good milk and good butter.
K: I know you carry Ronnybrook milk, which is pretty good.
Yes. I’ve never been to Ronnybrook Farm and I would love to go one day as a team building activity, but we speak with them directly. They’re pretty big and I know they serve a lot of the big retail stores. I love working with small farmers and I always try and prioritize something a bit more niche, maybe with even a higher quality, but I also have to be mindful of who is my clientele and their willingness to pay. You know, there's always that balance that I need to think about.
K: Can you tell me the story of starting Maison Jar?
So, prior to opening Maison Jar, I was working for a natural food ingredient company, Givaudan. My clients were Nestle and big brands like that. I was happy helping those CPGs go from synthetic colors to natural colors, or use some açaí to make it more nutritional. That was the part that I liked the most in my job, trying to make a big consumer food product become more healthy or cleaner. But when you work in that corporate world, your impact seems so little, you have a lot of processes in place and so on, so after eight years, I wanted to try something new. I did some studies with the Tufts University, this online certificate around sustainability in agriculture and food systems. It was great, I was so happy I did the certificate, but afterwards I wasn't like, *Oh, I want to do this now*. I didn’t have a spark. And then COVID happened. And I felt a bit stuck with my work. So I decided to quit my job, without having anything else, because I wanted some time to think. My husband and I rented a van and went to the west coast to visit the National Parks. And then I went back to France to see my family and friends. And when I was in France I discovered the refillery and package-free grocery experience and I loved it.
What I really liked is how minimalist it was. Like when you go in to a big store to buy your groceries, there's a lot of products so it actually takes more time because you have that kind of choice paralysis. And I also enjoyed the community aspect of such a small store, and I got to know some of the owners in two different cities where I stayed the longest. And instantly, I was like this could be such a great concept in New York. When I came back, I enrolled at the Greene Hill food Co-Op. It gave me retail experience and I was also their tea and coffee buyer. I got access to numbers. So it was a great experience while I was building my business plan and making sure that that's what I wanted to do. And I started also connecting with potential vendors for Maison Jar. I got a sense of how they work, how they source their products. And once the business plan was done, I was like, *Okay, I'm ready to move forward*.
I’m lucky to be French because the market in France is big. Like there's more than 400 refilleries in a city of 100,000 inhabitants. Here there’s maybe three. I got all my training over there. They have trainings for owners of refilleries about how to manage and respect health guidelines with bulk foods, which doesn't exist at all here. The government of France actually helped develop the supply chains and design those trainings. Around three years ago, they put in place regulations for store owners and started pushing more suppliers to offer products in bulk. And two years ago, France made it mandatory for any grocery store above 4000 square feet to dedicate 20% of their space to bulk. Like the Walmart and Costco of France. It’s amazing. It makes it even more accessible to to people, especially in more rural areas. But the one drawback is that a lot of smaller refilleries are starting to struggle because their offers tend to be more expensive, given that they don't have the same volumes as a Walmart or Costco. But in France, local small shopping is part of the culture, like going to your butcher, then your produce shop, then the cheese shop and so on. In the U.S., we’re still far from there.
K: Do you think it’s been hard to introduce this concept in the U.S.?
For me, having a one-stop shop was very important because, you know, it's such a strong habit to change the way you shop for your everyday needs. So making it as easy as possible is very important. And having a lot of products that you need in your everyday life was very important to me. And we’re actually competitive if you compare a product, like we carry all the organic rices from Lundberg, and it's the same price as in Whole Foods. Yes, we sell mostly organic so there is that higher price point, but it's so important for me to be as competitive and accessible as possible.
K: Do you think your customers are interested in being educated about the sourcing?
Not everyone of course, but a lot of people ask questions about our sourcing, or ask for cooking tips, so one of our goals this year is to make that information more available. Given that in a refillery we create our own labels, the packaging of the brand is not there anymore. We want to try and bridge that communication gap by putting a QR code on our labels that will link to a page on the website where customers can access cooking directions, sourcing, and learn about the mission of the brand if they're interested. And we also want to do more meetups with vendors — we’ve done one during climate week where we had vendors come into the store for sampling, but also for our customers to actually speak with them and get to know the producer itself.
K: Is there anything else you want to share about running a grocery store?
I don't know if in English it's the same thing, but in France we always say that the shoemaker has the worst shoes. So you would think that as the owner of a grocery store, that I have the best products, but actually I always take the old bruised apples and produce. Or if people took too much of something and it was in their container, I can’t resell that product, so I take it home. So my husband and I are trying to be very creative in our cooking, because sometimes we don't have an option of what we want to eat. But I love being inventive and cooking with whatever leftovers we have in the fridge or things that need to be eaten fast. I love being creative in my cooking.
A Not-Quite Recipe for Noodle Soup Inspired by Larasati
Here’s how I made this soup: I thinly sliced ½ an onion and a handful of cremini mushrooms, then sautéed them in oil till transparent. I added water, Japanese udon soup base, a piece of kombu, and some chopped celeriac and let it simmer until the celeriac was cooked through. Then I threw in some fried tofu slices and kale (though I’d have used bok choy if I’d had it) and cooked it down. I finished each serving with a squeeze of lemon and a healthy pat of butter. It was so good.
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