An Update on Melt Bakery at 132 Orchard Street
With summer on the proverbial doorstep, Melt Bakery is ever closer to officially opening the retail component of its brick-and-mortar HQ at 132 Orchard Street. Last May, the pushcart ice cream business signed a lease for the commercial space, but has relied almost entirely on sales from the Hester Street Fair and the High Line. Aside from a brief flirtation with the Leckerlee holiday pop-up operation, the store remains solely the rental kitchen for preparation purposes. But that will change soon enough.
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Serious Eats published an interview with Melt co-owner Julian Plyter. Pertinent bytes below:
I started Melt Bakery with a little bit of money from my retirement fund. I changed careers in ’06—I used to work in the arts. I worked for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s as their personnel manager for eight years. But I really wanted to do food. So I changed careers, and went back to culinary school at ICE. I had flirted with the idea of going to culinary school for years and years, and I finally was like “I have to just do this.”
We then had a conversation one day in the spring of 2010, and Kareem pointed out that if you’re starting up an ice cream sandwich company, all you need to do is rent a kitchen for baking. We didn’t make our ice cream in the beginning; we were buying it from Il Laboratorio del Gelato…
So I took some money out of my retirement fund to secure a space at the Hester Street Fair, pay for a rental kitchen, buy a freezer, pay for my first round of ingredients, and cross my fingers.
No details were given for official launch of the ice cream counter. All we keep hearing is “soon.” Apparently there is some storefront remodeling that needs to happen first. In the meantime, you can score their treats at the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop and Cowgirl in the West Village.
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