Claire Georges of Butterfly Bakery, Montpelier

Chances are, if you have been to the farmers' market in Montpelier on a Saturday, you've met Claire Georges of Butterfly Bakery. She has had a vending space there since 2004—most of her adult life. She's been a steady presence selling her line of whole grain, vegan, and maple-syrup-sweetened cookies, snaps, chocolate peanut butter chunks, and granola. Most recently, she has introduced a line of hot sauces and mustard, including a wildly popular line of Vermont craft beer hot sauces. In the past few years, she's taken on a larger production space, hired employees, and seen a 50 percent growth in her business and a 100 percent growth in her family as she and her husband welcomed two daughters.

Her new space on Gallison Hill Road is fully three times bigger than the space she previously worked in on Barre Street in Montpelier, now the location of Woodbelly Pizza. In true Vermont fashion, with only one or two degrees of separation between people, Woodbelly was also the caterer at the Georges' wedding.

In her new space, she has a room dedicated to baking, a large walk-in freezer, an office, and a packing and mailing area. Georges founded Butterfly Bakery in 2003 and did all the baking herself for the next 10 years.

"It was chugging along at a steady rate but growth was stagnant. I was focusing too much on production and not on sales, marketing, and other aspects essential to growth," she says.

She knew when her first daughter came along in 2014 that the business needed to provide a more substantial stream of revenue or she had to find something that was. Though she has a degree in Computer Science and Applied Math from Oberlin College and could probably make more money programming, she says, she decided to double down on her love of making food and on Butterfly Bakery. She hired her first employee and decided to take her hot sauce beyond the farmers' market.

What began as an experiment using leftover peppers from vendors at the farmers' market that were not good candidates for the food shelf has become a line of craft beer hot sauces that is finding a far-flung audience and selling, ironically, like hot cakes. Georges began to experiment with craft ingredients like beer, mead, and cider. It wasn't long after she dropped off a bottle of Heady Pepper Hot Sauce, made with Heady Topper beer, at the Alchemist Brewery in Waterbury that she got a call, "How do we get more of this?"

In 2015, she bought 2,500 pounds of peppers to make hot sauce and barely made enough to meet the demand for the year, so she doubled her order with local farms for 2016, buying over 5,000 pounds. "I managed to squeak by with just enough hot sauce," she says.

Along with Heady Topper, her craft beer line of hot sauces includes 14th Star's Maple Breakfast Stout, Switchback's Ale, Queen City Brewery's Yorkshire Porter and Stowe's Tips Up Hard Cider. Her nonbeer hot sauce flavors are Maple Sugar Shack Sriracha, Vermont Habs, Smoked Onion, and Cilantro Onion. She's already sold 11,000 bottles this season.

When her first daughter was born and she contemplated maternity leave as a self-employed business owner, Georges had to take a hard look at her products and how they got made. Around the same time she launched her craft beer hot sauces, Georges also had the opportunity to mentor an intern who learned so much she became invaluable and now manages all the weekly baking for the business. That helped Georges make the transition to business owner and parent. She has since refined and adjusted what she can keep on shelves at food co-ops and markets that carry her products as she has grown the business in the direction of new items.

Right now, she works on the three days when her daughters are in daycare and preschool and works by e-mail and text on the other days. She goes back in the evenings after the girls have gone to bed to put in a few more hours. "I come from a long line of workaholics," she says, "but now there are other demands on my time, like splashing in puddles with toddlers."
You can buy her products at butterflybakeryvt.com and food co-ops and markets all over Vermont.

Leigh Williams of Laughing Moon Chocolates, Stowe

Watching Leigh Williams, founder and owner of Laughing Moon Chocolates on Main Street in Stowe Village, hand-dip truffles in melted milk chocolate, you would guess she has done it many times. The way she deftly swishes each ball of ganache until it's completely coated, then bounces it gently in her hand as if she's weighing it, and, most impressively, twirls the liquid chocolate to make a perfect little swirl on top, you could believe she's made thousands—and she has.

In business since 2001, Williams sells as much as 50 pounds of chocolate per day. "Making truffles is at least a three-day process," she tells me. The center of the truffle, or ganache, is a mix of semisweet chocolate, heavy cream, and Vermont butter, which is also handmade at the shop. That process accounts for one day, including the likely addition of a special ingredient like Heady Topper, the famous Vermont beer, or Green Mountain Distillers' Maple Liquor to make the Vermont Maple truffle. The ganache must then sit overnight until the next day when it can be expertly covered by hand in milk chocolate, and then set again before it's ready to box, sell, and eat.

She has also learned to prepare and staff the shop’s needs so that it can accommodate and maintain the shop’s substantial volume of sales. Laughing Moon offers corporate, wholesale, and mail orders in addition to the retail shop, where free daily chocolate-dipping demonstrations and other events are hosted.

As Laughing Moon enters its 16th holiday season, it will continue to offer the “best hot chocolate on the planet” as well as seasonal favorites like snowballs, made from homemade marshmallows, caramel, white chocolate, and coconut. The company will also be hosting its annual holiday tradition of offering handmade candy cane demonstrations on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from November 24 through December 23.

The public is invited to watch employees boil, pull, turn, roll, and twist the classic holiday candy, and a limited number of guests can reserve a spot to participate and make their own canes. A choice of five flavors is available: peppermint, spearmint, cinnamon, wintergreen, and maple. The demonstrations are so popular—with as many as 50 people in the shop at one time—that the shop offers two on Saturdays: one at 11:00 a.m. and another at 2:00 p.m. To make a reservation to attend a demonstration and make your own candy cane, call the shop at (802) 253-9591. You can read more at www.laughingmoonchocolates.com