Local markets are always a treasure trove of unique products. OBJ tracked down three businesses that are putting a unique spin on your typical holiday classics to help draw crowds at this year’s Ottawa Christmas Market at Lansdowne.
Starting today, the event will run every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through the holiday season and into the new year.
Alicja Buchowicz, founder and head chocolatier of Alicja Confections, is an original vendor from when the market started in 2019.
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Alicja Confections started small, selling a few chocolate bars on Etsy in 2015. Buchowicz said it all came out of a bout of boredom and a need for a hobby.
“Chocolate combines a lot of things I love to do, like I love to do graphic design (for the wrappers), I love to cook and bake things, and I love putting things together and having something finished in front of me,” Buchowicz said.
Things snowballed from there. What started as a hobby quickly gained traction with people who appreciated her unique take on chocolate bars.
Surprisingly, Buchowicz admits that chocolate is not her go-to snack.
“I absolutely love chocolate that has a salty element to it, like our potato chip chocolate bar is a popular one … the reason I started (my business) is because I was like, ‘I want to eat chocolate, but no one makes the flavours I want,’” Buchowicz said.
At Alicja Confections, you can find unique flavours of chocolate such as ramen, champagne, pinot noir and dill pickle, the last of which started as an April Fool’s joke and became requested by shoppers.
Some of the flavour combinations were born of spontaneous pairings Buchowicz made as a child, such as the ramen and potato chip flavoured bars.
Her other claim to fame, in addition to the unique flavours, was her idea for the postcard chocolate bar, which is exactly what it sounds like – a chocolate bar that weighs the required 100 grams or less to be sent in the mail.
Four years after starting her business, Buchowicz got a call from the organizers of the Ottawa Christmas Market, asking her to be part of a small German-style Christmas market they wanted to open in the Glebe.
“Christmas is the time for chocolate, right? We would literally just take our little cart of chocolate bars through the snowy streets of the Glebe and push our chocolate to the market,” she said.
She says the market has only grown since then.
Now in its fifth year, the market is extending its run from 15 to 25 days, allowing more than 50 vendors to showcase their products.
Neal McCarten, co-founder of Vodkow in Almonte, says events that enable direct-to-consumer sales like the Ottawa Christmas Market consist of about 70 per cent of the company’s revenue.
“The Ottawa Christmas Market has been a great place for us. Just a couple of years ago, you couldn’t sell alcohol directly … and they were really helpful in making sure that we could find a way to sell directly to consumers,” McCarten said.
Started in 2018, Vodkow sells flavoured vodka made from milk sugars, a process that combined McCarten’s background in dairy farming and his co-founder Omid McDonald’s wish for a distillery.
“Skim milk, the sugar in it, is getting thrown away … We thought, there must be a way to turn the sugar into alcohol. Maybe we could take this product that’s getting thrown away and do something useful with it,” McCarten said.
Through trial and error – including a crying-over-spilled-milk moment involving a homogenizer and $50,000 worth of over-pressurized cream – Vodkow made it to market and became one of the only cream liqueurs in North America that is lactose-free.
The innovation even landed the business a spot on CBC’s Dragons’ Den, which helped the owners scale the business further. Products are now available for purchase at select LCBOs.
While the product is popular around the holidays, McCarten and his team needed to figure out new ways to keep cream liqueurs top of mind for people year-round.
“Cream (liqueur) is a tough product because it’s traditionally consumed at Christmas and it’s the only time of year you drink it,” Anthony Seed, managing director of Vodkow, said.
McCarten said Seed pushed the team to look at ways to adapt to different seasons.
While they still cater to more holiday-oriented flavours like vanilla, maple and coffee, their summertime selection includes strawberry, orange and key lime.
McCarten says their maple-, chocolate- and coffee-flavoured cream liqueurs are achieved through partnerships with neighbouring businesses Fulton’s, Hummingbird Chocolate and Equator Coffee Roasters.
“Almonte, it’s a small town, but it … has some really exciting makers nearby who have inspired us to take those first chances with flavours,” McCarten said.
Ryan Begin, co-owner of Cookies By Kat, says it was last year’s Ottawa Christmas Market that made him and co-owner Katrina Macias believe they could move from a home-based business to a storefront.
In January 2024, they got the keys to their Orléans location and, by May, they were open to the public.
Cookies By Kat offers an array of “stuffed” cookies, which is your typical cookie with an added sweet treat in the middle. Flavours are always changing, but current offerings include an eggnog cheesecake stuffed cookie, Nutella bomb and candy cane surprise.
Begin says that the motivation behind stuffed cookies came from Macias’s love for the hard-to-come-by treat.
“Pre-pandemic, (Macias) was ordering stuffed cookies. She had a fascination with them, she was ordering from Florida, New York, Toronto … Once I found out how much she was paying with duties and shipping, (I asked) ‘Why don’t you just try making them?’ and it just blossomed from there,” Begin said.
Both Begin and Macias were personal trainers before the pandemic and when gym closures forced them to fill their time some other way, Macias began to bake cookies.
Begin says it started as a fun hobby; baking and posting their creations on social media. As more people started reaching out wanting to try them, they began to take orders and deliver across the city.
As the Cookies by Kat team gears up for its fourth year at the market, it is preparing for other new adventures as well.
Begin says the brand will host a pop-up at the space usually occupied by Love and Electric Ice Cream on Wellington Street from December 2024 to May 2025 while the ice cream shop is closed for the season.
“We’re getting ourselves a little bit more central, a little bit more exposure to a less hidden area of the city. Orléans, not everybody makes their way out here, but Hintonburg has a little bit more foot traffic,” Begin said.
