Stacie Wernick’s journey to create NO Whey! Chocolates began with a little family challenge. Stacie’s brother Ron, a typical meat-lover, became a vegan after reading Mad Cowboy, inspiring Stacie’s mother to create a vegan form of milk chocolate that would satiate Ron’s craving. This helped push Stacie from vegetarianism into full-on veganism, and together the family [...]
Photo courtesy Stacie Wernick
Stacie Wernick’s journey to create NO Whey! Chocolates began with a little family challenge. Stacie’s brother Ron, a typical meat-lover, became a vegan after reading Mad Cowboy, inspiring Stacie’s mother to create a vegan form of milk chocolate that would satiate Ron’s craving. This helped push Stacie from vegetarianism into full-on veganism, and together the family launched NO Whey! We had a chance to sit down for a delicious discussion with Stacie recently…
Vegan Mainstream: So, I’m excited to hear about your company. It makes me want chocolate for breakfast! How long has NO Whey! been in existence?
Stacie Wernick: We’ve been in business about 4 years. We’ve had a website for two years and have mostly been selling locally to farmer’s markets. We like to appear at festivals and fairs promoting something different, so there’s another choice besides stuff with trans fats.
VM: Where are you based out of?
SW: Cleveland.
VM: What made your mother and you begin a vegan chocolate company?
- Photo courtesy Stacie Wernick
SW: Well, I have a brother [Ron]. He thought I was weird because I was vegetarian, but one day he read the Mad Cowboy book and he went straight into being vegan. He was somebody who would always order extra meat, extra sausage on his pizza, that was him. He told my mom he could eat this way forever, but he missed the taste of milk chocolate. She’s a Jewish mother, always trying to please her children and afraid he would starve this way. So she went to work and created a vegan substitute for milk chocolate. He’s a very particular person, so if he didn’t like it, he would tell her. She went through a trial and error period, and he loved [the final product], so he said we should give it to the world. We were interested in having a vegan restaurant, but we started out with the candy and enjoyed doing it, so we just kept on doing that.
VM: Did you have any people or companies you used as a model?
SW: We didn’t. And we didn’t really know what the heck we were doing. We started out marketing strongly towards vegan and people wouldn’t even try it. They were very scared of that word and they would think of sprouts and health food. They didn’t want to have anything to do with it. So, we hated to do this, but we took the word vegan out of the equation at first and marketed it just as chocolate. We got a lot of people to try it that way. A few years ago I decided I really didn’t care if people knew if it was vegan. I want them to know because it’s totally more healthy, and people seem to have opened their minds a little more.
VM: Are you still only selling at farmer’s markets?
SW: Farmer’s markets, festivals, Etsy. There are a few vegan cafés we sell to close-by. We were working out of our house and then we started in the church kitchen to get a commercial license. We’re looking for a commercial kitchen to work out of and we want to expand and do a lot of wholesaling. Our goal is to get into Whole Foods and things like that. But we’re just in the middle of trying to find a place where we can do the manufacturing.
Check out NO Whey’s Etsy site.
VM: Is it still just you, your mother and your brother or do you have helpers now?
SW: We had help for the holidays and we are slowly getting help and having other people help us permanently. We’re just trying to grow and use other people when needed, but my mom’s getting a little older and she’ll need help. She works 8- or 11-hour days. She’s great, but I want her to get help because it’s hard on her.
VM: What changes have you seen in the last 3 or 4 years since you started?
SW: We’ve gotten bigger every year, we’re reaching more people and our sales have grown every year. When we first started, we really weren’t aware of other people doing [vegan] milk chocolate, but now we are seeing there are other people. We feel ours is better! We’ve started making things like caramel and things that are scarce. We feel we’ve perfected a wonderful caramel! At the farmer’s markets, people would come, my regular customers, that weren’t vegan, but loved the caramel. As we’ve stayed in business, we’ve expanded and added more gourmet stuff. At first we were just wanting to satisfy people’s sweet tooth, and let them know that when they’re vegan they can have good stuff. Then we expanded to things that are much harder to make.
VM: Did anyone in your family have cooking experience? Some of the designs are quite intricate.
SW: No, my mom was never a chocolatier, but she became one. I’ve been creative my whole life, but my passion was not chocolate, but now it seems like there is so much to do and there are so many avenues you can take with it. There are so many ways to be passionate. My mom had business experience and had owned several stores, but it was never like this. We wanted to be restauranteurs, but we ended up just doing the chocolate and loving it because we can be creative in so many ways.
VM: Do you find it hard to get all the ingredients you need?
SW: It is a little hard, but we would like to get them more local. Some things we can, and we support vegan stores for the most part. We aren’t big enough to get things wholesale. You’d have to order pallets at a time and we can’t. We’d love to be all organic and be considered a healthier food. As it is, it’s healthier than mainstream [chocolate] would be. We’d love to have more health food things, and more raw.
VM: What are some of the more popular items you sell?
SW: People love the cranberry cashew bark. From the very start, I had this idea about giant peanut butter cups. They do take off, but not like in my dreams. Doesn’t everybody need a giant peanut butter cup? Another one is our caramels with sea salt. We even make espresso caramel and we find people just love the caramel. In the summer, we make frozen bananas and caramel apples. Those are big sellers. We were surprised with the frozen bananas. And these people aren’t all vegan. When people aren’t all vegan, we know we have something. That’s what we consider the taste test.
VM: Do you have any fun things coming up for Valentine’s Day?
SW: We usually do some of the Bizarre Bazaars in the area, which is marketed as “Not Your Granny’s Craft Fair.” We love to do those and we do have some farmer’s markets coming up that we’re excited about. I just started on Twitter. There are so many wonderful vegan organizations and I’d like to get the word out. I’m trying. We’d like to be followed on Twitter. It’s so heartening when someone says, Oh we’re your friend on Twitter.
Find NO Whey! Vegan Chocolates on Facebook.
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