{"id":51,"date":"2016-10-17T19:35:09","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T19:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disrupt2create.com\/upstaterdemo\/?p=51"},"modified":"2017-03-02T10:53:33","modified_gmt":"2017-03-02T15:53:33","slug":"lagusta-yearwood-vegan-chocolatier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/upstater.com\/lagusta-yearwood-vegan-chocolatier\/","title":{"rendered":"Lagusta Yearwood &#8211; Chocolatier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong><span class=\"s1\">Hometown:<\/span> Phoenix, Arizona<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>Came to the Hudson Valley from: <span class=\"s2\">New Jersey<br \/>\n<\/span><\/strong><strong>Lives in: <span class=\"s2\">New Paltz<br \/>\n<\/span><\/strong><strong>Lived there since<span class=\"s2\">: 2004<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p class=\"p4\">When she was 12 or so, growing up in Phoenix, Lagusta Yearwood became one of Arizona\u2019s few vegetarians. Her mother joined her. Together, they went to animal rights marches and handed out flyers. But after a few years, Yearwood grew weary of the whole scene. \u201cIt wore me out,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was too tiring and too sad. I was not really suited to being an activist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\">So instead, Yearwood, now 38, became a vegan chocolatier. Today she has a rapidly expanding business that counts a flagship shop in New Paltz, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lagustasluscious.com\/\">Lagusta\u2019s Luscious<\/a>; an expansive mail order business; a caf\u00e9 around the corner from the original store, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LLCommissary\/\">Lugasta\u2019s Luscious Commissary!<\/a>;<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/confectioneryNYC\/\">Confectionery!<\/a>, a shop in Manhattan\u2019s East Village.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\">It was a strange and winding path that brought the fast-talking Yearwood to the Hudson Valley. Although she\u2019d never been to the East Coast, she got offered \u201ca weird scholarship\u201d to the University of Rochester\u2014she uses the word \u201cweird\u201d a lot, but maybe that\u2019s fitting for her career arc. It took her a while to realize that during winter, the East Coast\u2019s cold weather doesn\u2019t relent as morning gives way to the afternoon, but she\u2019s fit right in.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\">After college, Yearwood went to the <a href=\"https:\/\/naturalgourmetinstitute.com\/\">Natural Gourmet Institute<\/a> in New York City, which teaches aspiring chefs to cook locally, responsibly, and seasonally. And then she began an\u2014illegal\u2014vegan meal delivery service out of her home in New Jersey. It did well enough, even after she decided to get away from the city. \u201cI could pretty much move anywhere,\u201d she remembers. \u201cSo I just started looking at where good farms were, because I knew that I wanted to cook. Someone said, \u2018Take a look at New Paltz.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\">Yearwood liked it there. And what\u2019s more, the then-26-year-old mayor, Jason West, was making national headlines for licensing gay marriages and personally officiating them in front of town hall \u2013 long before such a thing was legal. \u201cI was like, \u2018That sounds like a great town to live in!\u2019\u201d she recalls. \u201cLife has been great ever since, really.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\">Gradually, Yearwood would learn to make most anything vegan and at home. In 2003, she\u2019d begun making chocolates for fun. That became a business too, which eventually overwhelmed the meal service. In 2011, she opened her first chocolate shop. It took off. \u201cI didn\u2019t set out to have a mini empire,\u201d she says. \u201cI just wanted to work for myself. The whole thing is weird.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\">At Lagusta\u2019s Luscious, unusual ingredients are combined. Yearwood\u2019s favorite chocolate bar, for instance, is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lagustasluscious.com\/shop\/bars\/smoky-corn-on-the-cob-chocolate-bar\">corn-on-the-cob bar<\/a>, made with sage, smoked paprika, smoked sea salt, and crunchy bits of freeze-dried corn. \u201cIt\u2019s inspired by a summer barbecue, as if you\u2019re eating a chocolate bar in the middle of a barbecue,\u201d she explains. But there\u2019s a philosophy behind these novel concoctions. She likes to remember that the Aztecs originally used chocolate as a savory food. \u201cNow, it\u2019s gotten so sugary and it\u2019s a desert thing, but we make a lot of more savory things that tie back to that lineage,\u201d she explains. \u201cI think people are craving things that aren\u2019t so sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\">Everything, of course, is made completely from scratch.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cI\u2019m obsessed with this idea that for everything you buy, there\u2019s a whole chain of decisions behind it,\u201d she says. \u201cWith food, I try to be mindful of that, especially with food that I buy and serve to other people. I feel like I have a huge obligation to use my purchasing power to buy things that are in line with my values. So a lot of times, what that comes down to is, we\u2019ll just make it ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\">In a way, Yearwood has become an activist after all. She\u2019s discovered that people will happily eat healthily and responsibly if they enjoy the taste. Her customers in the beginning \u201cmostly weren\u2019t vegan,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of been my goal throughout my whole business life. I feel like now this is kind of like my activist work, having people who wouldn\u2019t be vegan eat vegan food.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Hometown: Phoenix, Arizona Came to the Hudson Valley from: New Jersey Lives in: New Paltz Lived there since: 2004 When she was 12 or so, growing up in Phoenix, Lagusta Yearwood became one of Arizona\u2019s few vegetarians. Her mother joined her. Together, they went to animal rights marches and handed out flyers. But after [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":61101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[1553,1554,1555,1556,1557,1558],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lagusta Yearwood - Chocolatier - Upstater<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/upstater.com\/lagusta-yearwood-vegan-chocolatier\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lagusta Yearwood - Chocolatier - Upstater\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&nbsp; Hometown: Phoenix, Arizona Came to the Hudson Valley from: New Jersey Lives in: New Paltz Lived there since: 2004 When she was 12 or so, growing up in Phoenix, Lagusta Yearwood became one of Arizona\u2019s few vegetarians. 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