A trio of small businesses credit their sweet success to the farmer’s markets in and around Kingston.
Each year, as spring rain gives way to blooming flowers and leafy trees, it signals the return of what many people have been waiting all winter for — farmers’ market season. While many farmers’ markets run all year long, the best time of year is always when iterations like the Memorial Centre Farmers’ Market in Kingston head back outside in early May. From beads to bagels, returning vendors fill the grassy lawn with their colourful tents, while newbies join the fray, hoping that shoppers will buy their wares.
Audrey Brown, the owner and head chocolatier of Cocoa Bistro, has been selling her treats at markets across the region since 2015. Even now, eight years after opening her own brick-and-mortar chocolate shop, she is back at the market every Sunday, selling to loyal, fresh-faced customers.
“In Kingston, in the summer, there are so many markets, [events], cultural festivals — you name it, I’ve been there,” Brown says. “When I first started, farmers’ markets were driving the majority of my sales.”
Krista Gill, owner of 23 & Co., started her cookie business at Brockville Farmers’ Market before building the business enough to open her own shop. And the new kid on the block, Kyle Plumb, owner of Bon Bagel, set up his own blue tent selling Montreal-style bagels for the first time last summer at Memorial Centre with hopes of expanding to a local breakfast spot.
If you want to get a food business off the ground in Eastern Ontario, farmers’ markets are a good place to start. Those markets play a pivotal role in determining whether the business is viable with local customers and in locking in loyal returnees, giving food entrepreneurs enough cash flow to grow the business.
Cocoa Bistro owner and head chocolatier Audrey Brown, right, and Melanie Helsby put the finishing touches on the Decadent Butter Caramels with Salted Milk Chocolate. Brown uses imported Belgian chocolate, natural flavours and local ingredients inspired by Kingston’s farmers’ markets to make her truffles and chocolate creations. Photos by Tim Forbes.
Chocolate town
While her storefront has become an important part of the business, Brown says the market still plays a vital role. “The shop gives me credibility and a place to make my chocolate and have people see it get made in front of them,” Brown says. “But the market is where I get inspiration and is still my single best-selling day every single week.”
She sold almost exclusively at markets when starting out in 2015, until Tourism Kingston asked her to take part in a video series promoting area businesses. Through that partnership, Brown started selling her chocolate to local hotels and working with Queen’s University for various events. All of that gave her enough cash flow to set up shop at 840 Development Drive.
When you walk into Cocoa Bistro, you’re immediately hit with the sweet, unctuous scent of warm chocolate. Brown is known for her colourful truffles made with natural flavours. The process starts with large bags of imported Belgian chocolate, melted down and tempered before being poured into molds and finished with a flavourful centre.
It takes three days from start to finish, and the end result is often infused with local Kingston touches. An Earl Grey martini truffle uses Kinsip gin and tea from Cha Cha Tea. There is also lemon green tea with a white chocolate ganache and a masala chai truffle. “I usually try to incorporate three to four different teas into each seasonal lineup,” Brown says.
Brown discovered local small-batch coffee roaster Haymakers’ Coffee at the farmers’ markets and now infuses its coffee into ganache for truffles. She adds maple syrup from Salmon River Sugar Bush in Tamworth, honey from Sticky Forks Apiary and works with Tara Natural Foods for dried fruit and nuts. Most of these products can also be found at the front of her shop.
Along with truffles, Cocoa Bistro offers custom work, especially for weddings, birthdays, and bridal and baby showers. She also makes confections, including chocolate-covered jujubes, pretzels, sponge toffee and marshmallows.
“I want to create flavours that evoke memories of childhood, or help transport people back to simpler times,” Brown says. The only flavours she hasn’t quite mastered yet are banana and pear — for entirely opposite reasons. Banana overwhelms the chocolate completely, while pear is so delicate that its flavour disappears. But Brown likes the challenge. She carries a pear jam at the store from fellow farmers’ market vendor Jack’s Jams and Jellies, and she’s convinced that one day she’ll finally figure pear out.
Cocoa Bistro
840 Development Drive, Kingston
cocoabistro.ca | 613.453.8169 | @chocolatewithlove
Kyle Plumb, owner of Bon Bagel, bakes 1,200 bagels a week to sell at Memorial Centre Farmers’ Market and local shops.
Everything and the bagel
Kyle Plumb, owner of Bon Bagel, is just getting started on his own journey after earning a PhD in geography and working in healthcare for nearly five years. He made his first-ever bagel in 2024, after a trip to Montreal that left him craving one.
“I couldn’t find a good bagel shop in Kingston that made them authentically with a wood-fired oven,” Plumb says.
Bagels, Plumb points out, are affordable, widely loved and easy to share — the kind of food that naturally brings people together. It’s a ritual he enjoys with his own wife and kids, and one he hopes other families are creating too with the roughly 30,000 bagels he’s sold over the past two years.
Each Montreal-style bagel starts with a dough of flour, yeast, malt flour, egg, oil and sugar. Once the dough has risen and proofed, around 90 grams is broken off and rolled into a rustic shape with a large hole in the centre. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, I prefer there to be a variety of shapes that are all generally round,” Plumb says. The bagels are then boiled and baked in a wood-fired oven.
In contrast, a New York-style bagel has more yeast and no sugar or honey for a bigger, fluffier bagel with a smaller centre hole, if there’s any hole at all.
“A Montreal-style bagel is denser, has a distinct centre hole and is much sweeter,” Plumb says.
He leans classic with his flavours, selling sesame, poppy, everything, plain, and rosemary and sea salt.
Plumb works out of Pizza Monster on Montreal Street, making his bagels overnight after the staff go home. He’s keeping the operation small — Plumb is the only staff and works by himself three nights per week to make roughly 1,200 bagels.
Eight hundred of those bagels are earmarked for wholesale at Wheat Kings’ locations in Amherstview and Kingston, as well as at Fine Balance Brewing Company and Pedal Works Café.
The other 300 to 400 bagels are set aside for weekends at Memorial Centre Farmers’ Market. At his very first market, Plumb had already quit his day job and was just hoping to sell a couple of bagels to make an impact. But he only brought 100 bagels with him and “I sold out immediately,” he says.
Rather than hiring more staff and scaling quickly, Plumb is making as many bagels as he can himself and saving all that extra money to open his own shop. Ideally, that place would include his own wood-fired oven and serve as a gathering place for families. “From the beginning, I’ve viewed this as a way for me to connect with the community and contribute to it,” he says.
Before that happens, he’ll be back at the markets all summer. He’s hoping to expand his flavours, adding an onion option and a salted bagel, both of which could lend themselves to another expansion — sandwiches.
“I keep workshopping new flavours at the market and seeing what sticks,” Plumb says.
Bon Bagel | @bon.bagel
Krista Gill has been making and perfecting her chocolate chip cookie recipe for more than 30 years. After selling at farmers’ markets and hitting the pavement to break into the wholesale market, Gill opened her brick-and-mortar cookie shop, 23 & Co., in downtown Kingston. Photo by Anna Ruck, Tourism Kingston.
Cookie craze
Krista Gill officially started 23 & Co. five years ago. But she has been making and perfecting her chocolate chip cookie recipe for more than 30 years. Her husband, Todd, was a professional hockey player for the Toronto Maple Leafs, San Joe Sharks, Detroit Red Wings and more, over a 20-year career. And whenever he would head to the rink, Krista would send chocolate chip cookies for him and the other players to snack on. That trial-and-error process has now blossomed into the best version of a classic cookie and a full-blown business.
“I combed through cookbooks and tried bits and pieces from different recipes until my husband called me on the way to a game and said to stop tweaking that I had done it,” Gill says.
While everyone has a different opinion of what makes the perfect chocolate chip cookie, Gill has determined a few key ingredients. Milk chocolate is a must. The dough has to be cured overnight in the fridge (not the freezer). Skip the brown butter and, above all else, the cookie should be “crisp on the outside, but chewy on the inside,” she says.
From there, Gill uses the classic cookie as a base to add other flavours — her most popular is the sea-salted caramel. There is also one with a Skor bar baked in, one with a Cadbury Egg and one with a peanut butter cup.
With a name inspired by her husband’s hockey number, Gill started in 2021 by selling to people out of the back of her car around Brockville and Rideau Lakes. When summer came, she set up a tent at the Brockville Farmers’ Market. By pounding the pavement, she was able to break into the wholesale market, selling her cookies at Mrs. McGarrigle’s Fine Food Shop in Merrickville, Kelly’s Flowers in Perth, Scheuermann Vineyard & Winery in Westport, Barriefield Market, Tara Foods, Thousand Islands Playhouse and Magnolia Flowers in Gananoque.
She has continued to sell at farmers’ markets through the holiday season and every summer. But in June 2025, a storefront on Brock Street, fittingly in Market Square, became available and Gill took the plunge to open her own brick-and-mortar shop.
At 23 & Co.’s store, there are 30 rotating flavours, with 8 to 10 available at any given time. The original chocolate chip and sea-salted caramel are always in the mix. They are complemented by classic “grandma-style cookies” such as frosted sugar cookies, molasses, ginger, peanut butter, Nutella, haystacks and dark chocolate walnut.
“I lean toward classic flavours,” Gill says. “We like it when people come into the shop and say that a cookie reminds them of one their grandmother used to make.”
To focus on the shop, Krista is stepping back from farmers’ markets for now. She is hoping her loyal customer base and steady tourism traffic can make up for the 75 six-packs she sold at the markets each week.
“We’re a small-batch bakery, selling hundreds of cookies each week, not thousands,” Gill says. “At any location, I love being able to talk about cookies with people.”
23 & Co.
60 Brock Street, Kingston
23andco.ca | 613.544.2344 | @23and_co
Blooming with possibilities
While Plumb is just getting started, Brown is fully integrated into the farmers’ markets and Krista is starting to phase them out; all three credit the markets with kick- starting their success.
“It’s the farmers’ markets that allowed me to connect with the community,” Plumb says. “Through that, I can ask for help and engage with other business owners and people in the community to support me. It’s helped me to scale, while connecting and contributing to the people around me.”
