RAVENSWOOD — Lucila Giagrande and her alfajores were missing from the Logan Square, Andersonville and Low Line farmers markets this summer.
The good news: Her dulce de leche-filled cookies keep turning up in more places.
In March, Giagrande moved into a production kitchen in Ravenswood. A month later, her alfajores were picked up by Whole Foods in South Loop and Lincoln Park. They are now in 10 Whole Foods stores and in specialty stores, markets and cafes in the Chicago area, Michigan and California.
Two weeks ago, after months of negotiation and paperwork, her alfajores landed on the counters at the Tortas Frontera and Goddess and Grocer outlets at O'Hare.
Janet Fuller says alfajores are an all day treat in Argentina:
It's a coup, not to mention character-building experience, for a small business such as Giagrande's. But while the increased visibility is welcome — her first order for O'Hare, 750 cookies, was quickly followed by a call for 850 more — it's not a guarantor of profit, she said.
That's why she has applied for a $150,000 grant through the Chase Mission Main Street program. After a public voting period, which ends Friday, a panel of business experts will choose 20 grant recipients from the top vote-getters nationwide.
"We're at that level where cash is of the essence," said Giagrande, 43, a former hotel catering manager. "It's a roller coaster ride, the learning process."
That cash would buy, among other things, a chocolate-enrobing machine, which would greatly speed up production. Currently, Giagrande, her husband, Joe, and two employees dip the alfajores by hand. They do most everything by hand — pipe the dulce de leche, label bags, pack gift boxes.
Alfajores are an essential, delectable part of the culture in Giagrande's native Argentina. They're an anytime treat, "like buying a Coke," she said.
Hers are delicate but substantial, a good 1-inch thick. Think Whoopie Pie but with a crumbly exterior and dulce de leche instead of a cream filling.
In addition to the traditional alfajor rolled in coconut, she makes a chocolate-dipped one with orange zest and cocoa in the dough, a white chocolate-covered one and one filled with guava and dulce de leche. A box of 4 is $14, a 6-piece box is $20 and the 12-piece is $39.
As many artisanal food makers do, Giagrande started at home, baking the treats for her two young kids. Neighbors began asking for them. So did her restaurateur friend Philip Ghantous, who sold them at his Loop restaurant Cafecito.
Giagrande made it official in 2010 — Lucila's Homemade Alfajores — and launched at the Logan Square Farmers Market. Her husband, a trader at the time, pitched in when he could.
She had a peripatetic first few years, bouncing from a shared commercial kitchen in Logan Square to a small bakery in North Center to a coffee shop, all the while adjusting her baking schedule and gaining a following.
Giagrande pulled out of the farmers markets this summer to look for her own kitchen and concentrate on the wholesale side. She was pleasantly surprised to find a space with affordable rent in Ravenswood. The rehabbed brick warehouse at 4527 N. Ravenswood Ave. is home to a few Web design firms and a bag maker and a five-minute drive from their North Center home.
Lucila's has become a family business. Joe Giagrande, 46, is "the numbers guy," handling legal, administrative and financial matters, he said. Their kids, now 11 and 9, often help label and pack boxes of alfajores.
While the kitchen is for production, Giagrande leads hands-on baking classes there monthly, booked through SideTour. The space also is available for private events such as birthday parties — she recently hosted 11 12-year-old girls — and corporate team-building sessions. In October, she opened it for the Ravenswood Art Walk.
But she has no plans to turn it into a retail shop. Doing so, she said, would dilute the focus and quality of her product, which is hardly ubiquitous like, say, doughnuts.
"I don't do special flavors, flavors of the month, anything like that. I have my four flavors," she said. "I feel like there are so many more people I can offer what I have to. This is still an unknown product.
"If I have a retail store, what am I going to sell? I can make other things that are good like empanadas, but then it's a restaurant, and I don't think I can tend to a restaurant."
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