With Love and Quiches by Susan Axelrod Page B

inside with a sample in his hand. This went on for quite a while. Needless to say, our drivers weren’t too happy about this and explained to himexactly what they were likely to do if he didn’t stop following them. We received a letter shortly thereafter accusing us of “hooliganism” of all things! Nothing ever came of it; he finally stopped because our drivers were big guys, and I guess he weighed the risk/reward factor.
    Competition from other dessert companies located all over the country also grew and kept us on our toes. This never changed, and the battle continues. It took a while, but I eventually learned from all of this that there is enough business to go around if you stay calm and focus on what you do best.
New York Stories
    Deep down in my heart of hearts, this will always be a New York story, even though for most of its life Love and Quiches has been a national, and, ultimately, a global supplier of bakery products. After all, we honed our skills supplying quiches and desserts to many hundreds of foodservice establishments in the New York metro area.
    At this juncture, we also joined a few industry organizations, including the New York State Restaurant Association and the Eastern Dairy Deli Association. Joining the former brought us quite a few steps ahead because I showed up at all of the meetings, even board meetings. (I wasn’t on the board; I simply didn’t know any better.) Even after I realized my mistake, they asked me to stay. As a result, I met many more restaurateurs, among them Vincent Sardi of the iconic Sardi’s, so well known for its star power if not for its food, and Stuart Levin, who owned Top of the Park atop the Gulf and Western Building, which is now the Trump International Hotel on Columbus Circle and houses my favorite haute cuisine restaurant, Jean Georges. Stuart Levin became another close friend and mentor. Love and Quiches also exhibited for the first time in the New York State Restaurant Show in 1978. We were slowly making a name for ourselves with the New York power players within the foodservice industry.

    One such player was the owner of Proof of the Pudding, which closed its doors owing me $700. About that same time he opened the very exclusive Palace restaurant in an exclusive apartment building on 59th Street overlooking the East River. There, well ahead of his time, he invented the hundreds-of-dollars-per-person dinner. He honored his debt to me with a due bill to the Palace, and Irwin and I enjoyed a spectacular meal on the house!
    My best New York story is the “Taste of the Big Apple,” a major event held in Central Park in 1976 that was organized as a fundraising event by the New York State Restaurant Association. Nearly a hundred restaurants and suppliers set up booths, and, incredibly, hundreds of thousands of people showed up, many more than we had bargained for. The association sold script at the event entrance, with 25 percent of the revenue promised back to the vendors so we could cover our costs. We were to hand in our collected script at the end of the day.
    We sold about five thousand slices of quiche before we ran out, and then we started selling our decorations: fruit, hunks of cheese, chopped chocolate, hard-boiled eggs, bowls filled with nuts, rolling pins, whisks, and the like, until our booth was completely denuded.The association had run out of script, yet one lady insisted that we sell her our very last apple for cash. We told her we absolutely could not; it was against the rules. Suddenly she hit Irwin on the head with her pocketbook, grabbed the apple, and ran! Although we were all really tired and out of patience, we chased her and took back the apple just on principle.

    Molly Ivins, a prominent columnist and New York Times bureau chief at the time, wrote up the successful event, and to our surprise, we were mentioned among very good company. Love and Quiches was even singled out ahead of quite a few other popular venues, including Sardi’s,