A Fredericton Charcuterie Business That Meets All Your Grazing Needs
FREDERICTON — At every event with friends and family, Maeve McNutt arrives with a charcuterie board full of cheese, jams, bread, crackers and cured meats. At a birthday party last August, a friend asked McNutt, “Why can’t they buy this?”
Now, Frederictonians can have charcuterie delivered right to their door. A month after that conversation McNutt started Curated, an online company that makes grazing boxes.
McNutt wants to break the preconception that charcuterie is pretentious and inaccessible.
“First of all, I think it’s fun,” said McNutt. “It’s really cool to be able to share the experience of grazing with people around you.”
Curated set up in a commercial kitchen in September. They rent commercial kitchen space from Greener Village, a food bank on Fredericton’s northside.
“I loved that feeling that every penny that we pay is going towards their wonderful initiative in the community,” said McNutt.
At the same time she was launching her business, McNutt also was entering her final year at UNB. McNutt said that juggling school while figuring out how to run a business was at times challenging.
“I’m really excited that over the summer I’m getting to spend all of my time on this,” said McNutt.
Luckily McNutt has some help. She has a business partner and her friend Liz assists in the kitchen and with deliveries.
“Even having members of the community just offering me advice and help, especially as I was just getting started, it’s been very cool,” said McNutt. “It definitely takes a village.”
Curated’s boxes and boards are available on Fridays and Saturdays. To purchase, customers order online on the Thursday before the weekend they want their box. Options for boxes include the Date Night, Dessert Box, The Big Box, and The Evening In. They also carry gluten-friendly and plant-based boxes.
“We use a lot of local products and one of the local products that we use in our plant-based boxes is Scottage Cheeze and it’s delicious,” said McNutt.
To get the freshest and most interesting ingredients, they source materials from a variety of places. They have used over 10 local products in their boxes so far.
“We are really excited over the summer to be able to do even more local produce even in our homemade jams,” said McNutt.
Starting her business during the pandemic has changed the way McNutt connects with her customers.
“Because everything is online I don’t get that face-to-face interaction with my customers,” said McNutt. “Also because of Covid we do contactless pickup so that’s been something that I’ve been missing.”
McNutt says instead she has gotten to know people through social media, where they give her feedback and write reviews.
“I was kind of surprised at how personal that feels,” said McNutt. “I really feel like I know these people and when I see orders come back over and over again from repeat customers, it’s just a really great feeling that I created something that folks want and want to share with others.”
This summer, McNutt is looking forward to catering a few weddings, and she is generally excited for the post- COVID world and being able to do more in-person events.
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