It keeps getting easier for Fox Valley area residents to buy locally-made products, as markets in the region are carrying more and more of the items.
Prisco’s Family Market in Aurora currently stocks somewhere between 25 and 30 product lines made in the Aurora area. Those scanning the shelves can find locally-made beer and wine, household cleaning products, coffee, honey, soaps, pastries, salsas and more.
Andy Guzauskas, president and co-owner of Prisco’s Family Market, said “having locally sourced products is a constant for us.”
Prisco’s is one of the stores in the area that carries locally roasted coffee from Geneva’s Judy Jendro and her husband Jerry who own the Coffee Drop Shop that moved to Geneva in April 2009 from its first location in St. Charles.
Judy said the couple began their coffee roasting business in 1980 “before there was a Starbucks.”
“We’ve been in this now about 38 years and opened before all these coffee producers were a big thing,” she said. “We were originally located in St. Charles and the owner of the property wanted there to be a place in the market where ladies that were shopping could sit down and have a pastry and a cup of coffee.”
She said the business has made sure to get its product out to local stores.
“We work with a lot of local businesses here in town like Preservation Bread & Wine and the Spice House and if people are asking for a product we don’t have or a restaurant recommendation, we give it to them,” she said. “We like keeping the products and business local and we also use locally sourced products like honey in our store.”
Local producers say the symbiotic relationship forged between communities and the products they offer makes sense, both from the retail and consumer side of things.
Maria Skokan, who operates Aroma Roots in Oswego, said her company, which produces all-natural cleaning products, soaps, bath and body items and more “is built around the community” which helps keep everything local.
“People who buy local products know where they are coming from, and by selling products locally, all the money stays here in the community,” she said. “We started this business in 2012 after operating a cleaning service that began in 2005. I’m a self-taught chemist and grew up in an environment with a dad who took me out to the farm to get milk and eggs and an aunt that shopped at the health food store. Today we make over 100 products including 30 soaps alone.”
Local breweries abound in the area — such as Two Brothers and Hopvine in Aurora and Penrose in Geneva —— but Aurora resident Bob Evanosky sells his own wine at the Aspen Lane Wine Company at 3682 Prairie Lake Court in Aurora.
Prisco’s, Evanosky said, “began selling our wine on day one, and remains the only place outside the winery where you can buy it.”
“All of our profits go back to charity, and this business was something we started after some neighbors of mine came to me in 2010 and said ‘How about if we make some wine?’ and I said it was OK but we had to do it in my garage,” Evanosky said. “The first stuff was the crappiest wine ever and tasted like battery acid, but today, we make about 10 varietals and have donated about $65,000 to $70,000 to charity.”
Evanosky said he and his wife Sonya are parents of three boys stricken with cerebral palsy including a son John who died in 2016, and wanted to help local charities “who struggle because of problems here in our state with funding.”
“Some of these places never know if a grant is going to go through or if the state will fund them,” he said. “In terms of buying and selling locally-sourced products, I hate the Amazons and the Walmarts as they destroy more property and small businesses. I like that stores … carry unique products, and there is a culture and a bond there that helps create a small-town feel.”
Aurora’s Jody Haas, who launched a gourmet cookie business Simply D’lish in 2010, credits a number of local locations for selling her products and helping promote the business.
“Locals stores have helped us a lot and really were the ones that got us started,” Haas said. “We do a lot of demonstrations and people tell us they like that things are locally made and they pay attention to that.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
