This holiday season, Oyster Bay will once again be home to unique, homemade, scrumptious confections from The Chocolate Lady, in the form of a mobile chocolate boutique set up at Buckingham Variety Store on Audrey Avenue. She arrived on Sunday and plans on staying throughout the holidays, and possibly longer.
“I have been developing this concept for the last year and a half and am excited to be coming home to Oyster Bay for this year’s holiday launch,” says Lee Perrotta, aka The Chocolate Lady, who had her shop across the street from Buckingham’s for about five years before she was forced to shut her doors on Christmas Eve in 2012 due to excessive water damage at the rental space.
This pop-up launch features Perrotta herself attending the chocolate boutique where customers can come and select their favorite flavors and have boxes made up just like they did at her shop.
Though she has never stopped making chocolates, she has really missed the customer contact that she had at her chocolaterie.
“I’ve missed the people and Oyster Bay,” says Perrotta, who lives in Bellmore. “What I love about retail is having that time with customers, and I think they miss it, too.”
Perrotta takes great pleasure in helping customers pick the perfect type of chocolate for gifts, and used to have a steady stream of regular customers who knew they could always count on her to get it right. Additionally, she takes pride in helping to customize the packaging of her products to suit individual needs.
Along with the new boutique, she is launching her latest line of “beautifully flavored” truffles, which are made at a facility in Oyster Bay. These eight varieties of royal truffles, in “beautiful twinkly foils,” sport the chocolate centers she has been known for, including raspberry, sweet juicy orange, amaretto, and nuts, plus all the classics.
“It’s the best of all worlds,” says Perrotta. “It’s literally a chocolate shop on wheels, more like a floating palace, complete with a crystal chandelier, gilded gold and adorned with marble.”
She says the entire four-by-two-foot boutique is collapsible and fits in her car. It is a multi-module unit that can be adapted for different functions, from weddings to corporate events to other venues on Long Island.
“It takes the pop-up concept and takes it one step further,” says Perrotta, adding that she had always thought this might be the direction she was heading in anyway, and also believes it is the direction of retail in general.
Founded in 2007, The Chocolate Lady is the original Chocolate Lady of Oyster Bay. The company offers a wide range of truffles and chocolates served up with the amazing branded customer experience. The chocolate palace is also in talks to be popping up at Dodds and Eder in Oyster Bay for Valentine’s Day and Easter, featuring The Chocolate Lady’s preselected line of chocolates. Additional mobile boutiques are planned for 2015 in malls and specialty stores. Visit www.chocolateladyboutique.com.
