East End Food Helps Make Dreams a Reality for Local Food Producers

When Marilena Anastassiadou started making sourdough crackers in the kitchen of her Amagansett home during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, she had a dream and clear sense of purpose, but wasn’t sure if she had the means to achieve it.

She obtained her home producer’s license, allowing her to sell her product at places like Balsam Farms, to get a sense of whether there was a strong local market for her product. The feedback was good, but many other farmstands and markets she approached to put the crackers on their shelves wanted them to be made at an FDA-approved facility.

That’s where East End Food came in.

A simple Google search led Anastassiadou to the organization, a nonprofit with a mission to “support, promote and advocate for farmers and producers while ensuring everyone in the community can enjoy and be nourished by local food,” according to its website. East End Food operates both a year-round farm stand in Riverhead and a commercial kitchen on the campus of Stony Brook Southampton College. The nonprofit is also in the middle of a fundraising campaign that will greatly expand its Riverhead location and bring the commercial kitchen and more to that area, which will allow it to expand its mission.

In mid-September, Anastassiadou was one of several people in the busy kitchen on the Stony Brook campus on weekday morning, using a industrial-grade dough spreader to prepare a new batch of crackers.

Nearby was East End Food Executive Chef Jay Lippin, stirring a giant aromatic batch of a hot sauce blend that would eventually be bottled for sale, and other workers busy slicing, chopping and preparing products.

With the help of East End Food, Anastassiadou has been able to expand her business, obtaining the FDA approval she needed, and earning valuable training she says she can’t imagine getting anywhere else.

She’s one of many local food producers who sings the praises of East End Food.

“In the summer of 2023, I thought, maybe I can expand but I didn’t know how,” she said. “I discovered East End Food and paid them a visit, and they were incredibly helpful. It still amazes me how easy they make it for somebody to make that step from a home producer to being a legitimate, certified commercial kitchen producer. That opened so many doors for me.”

East End Food not only helps producers like Anastassiadou obtain the necessary certifications and pass food inspections but also provides continuous support in plenty of other ways, from offering to sell products at their year-round farmers market and on their website, to offering tips for building a business presence on social media. She added that Lippin’s expertise and guidance in the kitchen is invaluable as well.

In short, the nonprofit helps turn dreams into reality, and along the way, provides an important benefit for the community.

“This is my dream,” Anastassiadou said. “I have always wanted to take from the land immediately around me, and give to the consumers immediately around me. I’m a huge believer in having a small carbon footprint.”

Anastassiadou sources the ingredients for her crackers from Balsam Farms and Amber Waves Farms, and said the result is a win-win.

“It’s something that’s good for the consumer, and it’s tasty,” she added.

The support that East End Food provides to Anastassiadou and the other vendors who frequent the kitchen can’t be understated, she said.

“They’re really hands-on with everybody. We’re very lucky to have them around here. It’s better for the farmers, because all of a sudden they have an expanded market. Everybody is helping each other.”

That spirit of community was something that came up repeatedly in conversations with other local food producers like Anastassiadou who have partnered with East End Food to produce and distribute their products.

Jason Wagenheim is the owner of East End Cowboy, which produces a line of barbecue and hot sauces made with local ingredients. Wagenheim has a demanding “day job” as president and chief revenue officer for Bustle Digital Group, but has been able to pursue his secondary passion and turn it into a viable business thanks to East End Food.

“I’ve always loved barbecue,” Wagenheim said. “We would host 50 or 60 people at our house in East Hampton in the summer, and people would say, ‘You have to open a restaurant.’”

Wagenheim wasn’t interested in doing that, but he was interested in bottling and jarring the homemade barbecue sauce he enjoyed making for his guests.

“As a hobby, I wanted to explore how acidified food works, and how canning works,” he said. “But I didn’t know where to turn. I didn’t know what kind of resources existed.”

Wagenheim was one of the first producers to work with East End Food, back in 2019, and said since then he’s seen his business take off. East End Cowboy products are in demand, particularly the honey peach barbecue sauce and apple jalapeño sauce, made with produce from local farm stands, including peaches from Frog Hollow Farm, honey from Sag Harbor Honey — another vendor associated with East End Food — and apples from the Milk Pail in Water Mill.

East End Food came through in the clutch when East End Cowboy got an order from Citarella for 150 cases of sauce. Wagenheim said that East End Food Executive Director Kate Fullam and Associate Director Bob Hatton taught him how to scale his recipe for the large order, and it was certified by Cornell for shelf stability, among other things.

“I saved so much money and avoided so many costly mistakes by working with Kate and Bob and [Executive Chef Jay Lippin],” he said. “They’re such wonderful people and they’re so knowledgeable. For an independent small-batch producer like me, their resources are indispensable.”

Wagenheim said that East End Food fills three crucial needs for food producers like him — access to the equipment and resources necessary to produce the food; the knowledge and assistance required to produce the food properly according to code, including ensuring all the food safety guidelines are followed; and, perhaps most important, fostering a sense of community.

“It’s all about community,” he said. “All of the food producers are friends; we see each other at farmers markets. We all support each other and get to know each other, trade info, and share knowledge about what’s going on with food entrepreneurs on the East End.”

Brothers Dylan and Sean Carroll, owners of L’Isolina Pasta, frequently invoke the spirit of community when they talk about their partnership with East End Food. The brothers make pasta with whole grains grown by both Amber Waves and Balsam Farms, drawing the pasta through bronze dies in small batches, and slowly air-drying at low temperatures. They launched their company — which touts “mouthwatering” homemade pasta — in 2020, and said that East End Food has been a big part of their success.

“They’ve been invaluable, particularly for a startup business in the food space,” Dylan Carroll said. “I certainly had no idea how much would go into launching a food business; it’s myriad things beyond just creating a good product people want, and East End Food is so helpful on all those fronts. There’s a really nice sense of community, and they’re really supportive.”

Access to the commercial kitchen alone is a huge boost for businesses like theirs, that perhaps might never have a chance to get off the ground without that kind of support.

“Accessibility to space and the cost of space out here is really high,” Carroll said. “It’s great to have a place that’s affordable to work out of and launch out of in a way that you don’t need to fundraise or raise a bunch of capital to just test out your idea.”

Carroll added that East End Food has helped them in other important ways as well, pointing out that the nonprofit does a good job making connections.

“Every time we need to hire somebody, they share it out,” he said. “They’re a really good connector bridge of growers, producers and people looking to get involved in the food community.

“More broadly, they’re just a really good resource for working toward a more localized, sustainable, healthful, flavorful food system out here,” he concluded.

Sofia and John Witzenbocker started their business, Sag Harbor Honey, several years ago and, like many other vendors who have partnered with East End Food, they say the organization has enhanced what they’re able to do in many ways.

Sofia said that Lippin has been particularly key in helping them experiment with different recipes, particularly when they were fine-tuning a recipe for their “hot honey,” which is made with locally-sourced habanero peppers.

“They connected us with Balsam Farms for the peppers,” Sofia said. “It’s all processed by East End Food, Jay does it all, and we’ve had a great partnership.”

Sofia and John were in the middle of working with Lippin on a new lavender-infused honey in September, and they also worked together on a honey mustard that East End Food produces.

“What’s so wonderful about them is they try to keep things local and support all local people,” Sofia said.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that many of the vendors who are now operating thriving local businesses, making food from locally sourced ingredients, would still be operating on a very small scale, or perhaps not at all, if it were not for the presence of East End Food.

“Everybody that starts from scratch has a certain fear; will I succeed? Do I have a chance?” Anastassiadou said, speaking to her experience growing her sourdough crackers business. “East End Food makes it so you don’t even have a chance to think about ‘what if?’ They make you get going. They made an idea and a dream I had a reality.”

For more information on East End Food and the food producers they partner with, visit eastendfood.org.