I recently acquired quite a sweet opportunity: to interview Heather Esposito, co-owner and founder and Sweet Freedom Bakery in Philadelphia. Opened merely a year ago, the 100% (let me take a breath).. vegan, soy-free, nut-free, gluten-free, refined sugar- free, and corn-free store has been serving up some of the most innovative and nutritious desserts on the east coast. But I was personally motivated to find out more about the woman behind it all, so on a warm, sunny day a few weeks back (uh, where did that weather go?) I chatted with her while she multi-tasked around the shop, and here is what I found out..
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| Heather Esposito, Co-owner of Sweet Freedom Bakery |
Heather Esposito, happy to be able to prop open the door of her bakery, stared down South Street at the
traffic zooming past on Broad. Noon of the first balmy day of the year was underway, beckoning many visitors into Sweet Freedom, including the usual donut and coffee-hounding policemen. But Sweet Freedom is the only gluten-free, refined-sugar free, corn, soy, and peanut-free bakery on the east coast- worlds different than your average Dunkin‘ Donuts. Busy packing and shipping order upon order of her delectable, danger-free treats to allergy-prone customers around the nation, she found time to get out a bowl of greens, apples and bananas to add to her VitaMix blender. “Sorry, just making my daily green smoothie,” she said, running from counter to blender to oven in her web-toed shoes reminiscent of Californian, granola-snacking kayakers.
Opening merely a year ago, the concept of Sweet Freedom Bakery was born when Heather Esposito and Allison Lubert, fellow students at
Integrative Nutrition in Manhattan, started talking about wanting to do it. “Allison and I just kept talking and talking about it and we were like, ‘let’s do it!’ And then, we did it.” Building off a small storefront off Broad st. in the heart of Philadelphia, the dynamic duo gained national recognition for supplying the growing population of those inhibited from desserts by allergies. Though the original plan was to create a gluten-free safe haven for those suffering from Celiacs sufferers, Esposito’s background in Health Counseling brought her to clients with other allergies that she wanted to include as well. “I really started wanting to open up a bakery that was gluten-free and refined sugar-free. It made sense to be vegan because most people that have celiacs are allergic to dairy and eggs. And then I had a client who was allergic to soy and most things that are vegan have soy all over the place and so I didn’t want to do soy. Then I had another client that was allergic to corn.”
Though both these determined ladies had a hand in the process of opening the storefront, Esposito’s past has been directing her toward this business venture all along. Now the source of meaning in her life, Esposito has learned that her bakery is much more than a menagerie of tasty delights, both to her and her customers.
As she scooped the holes out of cupcakes and filled them with either raspberry or apricot preserves, she talked about her personal struggle with her own diet. “ I did have a lot of dietary issues.” But young Esposito didn’t start paying attention to how much diet could impact a person until she was diagnosed with hypoglycemia her junior year in high school. “After I was diagnosed, I was still eating really crappy, but my mom read that the Atkins diet, which was popular at the time, was really good for people with hypoglycemia or diabetes, so I did that and changed- I was so much less irritable, much more pleasant, and had much more energy, etcetera.” Though she found a better way of eating, she still wasn’t consuming good quality foods through high school and college.
After receiving her Master’s in counseling, Esposito started working at a group home for bipolar and mentally ill teenage girls. “It was kind of like my personal journey and my professional journey coincided,” she explained. She started to pay attention to the girls’ perilous routines: they would get up, eat pop tarts, and then go to school and eat a typical school lunch like french fries and pizza, then come home and they have a “fruit snack” while watching t.v.
After her time there, Esposito’s spirit slowly drained as the holiday season rolled around. She accredits a lot of the stress to the excessive holiday sweets she binged on. “I was in this Limbo stage and I just got in this funk where I was so depressed that I was like, I’m gonna kill myself. I thought about 15 different ways I could do it,” said Heather. So she thought, maybe it’s the sugar, just maybe. “So I gave it a week; if I still felt like it, I’d go for it. But, ya know, maybe there’s something here.”
Heather cut back on refined sugars for one of the most influential weeks of her life, and surprisingly, her mood skyrocketed. She thought, “Okay, I think there’s really something here.”
So after seeking information in a nutrition class at a local night school, she was inspired. As she drove home with a brochure on her lap about Integrative Nutrition, a nutritional counseling program, Esposito came to a realization. “It combined the counseling tools that I had already had with food stuff that started seeming so much more important that counseling cause if you can change someone’s diet in 3 weeks, you can change their disposition.” So she signed up for Integrative Nutrition, left for Manhattan, and struck a whole new chord within herself. While turning her life upside down, she also met one of the most important people in her life at the culinary school, her current business partner, Allison Lombart.
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| Esposito and Lombart, friends and owners |
With her new training, Heather started doing health counseling as well as cooking classes, “Which now I look back on and laugh because I had no idea what I was doing,” muses Esposito. But she didn’t let that stop her from soaking up the nutritional world like a sponge. She decided to go to the prestigious
Natural Gourmet, a culinary school in Manhattan, “... because even if I never use it professionally, I figured I’m gonna eat for the rest of my life so I might as well learn how to cook.”
Despite her woes, Esposito graduated with a culinary degree and started practicing being a private chef, teaching cooking classes, and still doing health counseling. “I was doing a lot of different jobs cause in this field you have to bust your butt to make a little bit of money. It’s a lot of work.” But by this time, Heather knew in her heart what she really wanted: to open a gluten-free, refined-sugar free bakery so all her clients could finally eat desserts. But surely, people had doubts about her dreams.
“My friend’s husband said ‘You’re totally narrowing your market, you’re making it too small,’ but no, actually were actually opening it up because our stuff is gonna be good enough that anybody will like it but also safe enough for people with 101 allergies to be able to come,” respited a determined Esposito. And while she experimented with her everything-free desserts in the kitchen, some things came out good, while others, “well, we all knew they were terrible,” she laughed. But her and Allison eventually got serious and moved into the storefront on South and Broad.
With the success of their storefront came unexpected media coverage. When asked whether or not she felt recognizable in the Philadelphia area, Esposito responded, “No, no, no. But I think I’ve realized how much of a private person that I am. I love doing behind-the-scenes stuff.” And it’s easy to tell, as she runs around the bakery, coating donuts in cinnamon sugar and packaging packages of cookies to ship to around the continent while remaining carefully pensive over the interview questions.
Esposito explains, “I mean, for
Cupcake Wars, Ally was our spokesperson. But the one time I was walking down the street and someone came up to me and said, “Hey, you’re the owner of Sweet Freedom!” I didn’t know what to say. I’m much more of an introvert than that so for me it’s awkward and weird,” Esposito said humbly. “Cause I’m like, I didn’t do anything that anybody else couldn’t have done, I just did it.”
Although Sweet Freedom serves as a haven to the community, Esposito’s mission is nation-wide, “I mean, sugar is still sugar is still sugar, you know, and desserts are still desserts, unfortunately America is not going to change and go to a plant-based diet, and never eat sweets again, so if we can provide them with something better, I think we’re doing a good job.”
Visit phillybroadcaster.com to read the full exclusive interview
xoxo,
Jane
