COVID issues cramped many a small business, but for Julia Ziobro, the pandemic proved serendipitous. Julia tells us “COVID sent my daughter Joanne home to me from Smith College in Massachusetts, and volunteering at the Gold Mountain Village food bank gave us 100 pounds of oranges. ‘Let’s make marmalade!’”
Ziobro had been making jams, marmalades and other canned goods for more than 40 years, so this was an easy “Yes!” Then Joanne said, “Let’s sell it on Etsy,” and they got half a dozen orders the first weekend. Dory Dozens Delights was beginning! She marks the start date for the business as April, 2020.
Soon Ziobro and her family “participated in the two-day Labor Day Farmer’s Market at the Holistic Homestead, sold more than we had wildly imagined, and realized that we probably had an actual business opportunity in our hands.”
The wheel of fortune kept turning Julia’s way, since July of 2020 “the business has grown to 650 mail-order customers and another 200+ local customers."
“I believe in doing things the right way, legal and safe, and want to make a bunch of products that I can’t make in a cottage kitchen, so the search for a commercial kitchen was on!.... It took almost a year, but Joe and Kara Tinucci of JKQ BBQ helped me get into a wonderful small restaurant that they used to rent (the former Mountain City Kitchen) six miles from my home in Dory Lakes.”
But creating the most delicious, freshest jams and marmalades is only the beginning for this enterprising woman. She is now in the process of opening a storefront in Central City, the Dory Dozens Market. Planning a soft opening for April 1, she stresses that “this will also help increase the availability of fresh, quality food in Gilpin County, formally designated as a ‘food desert,’ but getting better all the time.” She cites the Holistic Homestead and Eagles Mart as her friendly competition.
Dory Dozens Market will have fresh food for sale, mostly breakfast ingredients “like our farm-fresh chicken and duck eggs, milk by the gallon, butter, cream cheese, cheese, yogurt, bacon, local honey from a woman-owned business, and fresh fruit. We’ll have packaged snacks, sodas, bottled water, other drinks, string cheese, and fresh hard-boiled eggs in case you need a quick bite to eat.” She is also planning to start carrying “some of the honey lady’s other products, including soap, honeycomb, honey sticks, and beeswax candles – they are so pretty!”
But Ziobro’s ambition isn’t limited only to retail. “As the Carousel Café in the Dory Dozens Market space, we hope to sell tickets to one or two single-menu brunches or dinners a month, with seating for about 20 and board games after the meal. We will also prepare food for and will host one or two private parties a month.” She hints that she might also be open to renting kitchen time to other small businesses that might need a commercial kitchen.
As the business grows, Ziobro plans to further develop her commitment to “finding fresh fruit or vegetables that are at the peak of perfection, ripe, delicious, juicy, and making them into something you’d never find in a grocery store. I have many of my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s recipes, and I can guarantee you that you will NOT find Great-Grandma Monahan’s cucumberlime marmalade at King Soopers, but I learned how to make it from her when I was nine years old and I almost always have it in stock.”
She goes even further: “Have a favorite fruit? Ask me to track it down! Four or five customers last year asked me for chokecherry jelly, which I’d never even heard of, and a Boulder friend helped me find and pick them. Voila! It’s here in the store, waiting for you.”
Ziobro and her team (her partner, Evan Conroy, and her son, Felix Sheppard) help on busy market days and with “heavy lifting.” Some of the “heavy lifting” in her startup has been shared by friends like Arwen Ek, of the Holistic Homestead, “who provided the place for me to sell once or twice a month during the cold winter months of 2020….Her gentle encouragement kept me going a few times when I thought about quitting”; and Betty Mahaffey, who “so generously shared her giant rhubarb plants on Eureka St. in Central, which gave rise to Eureka Rhubarb Cinnamon Jam.”
Meanwhile, Ziobro hopes other local businesses like B&F Mountain Market in Nederland will show interest in carrying her products as well.
Zooming from nothing to $60,000 in two years, and “from a few items on an Etsy store to a 60+ product selection on Shopify and in our own retail space. I’d say we’ve done pretty well so far and I have deep gratitude for all the customers who have enjoyed what I make and who have encouraged me to make more, and different, products.”
You will find the Dory Dozens Market at 430 Lawrence Street, Unit C, Central City. Opening day is April 1, 2022. Their website is www.DoryDozensDelights.com and their phone is 303.582.5774. They have multiple social media listings as well; just search for “Dory Dozens.”
Sponsored by Gilpin County, with funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.
