Bordentown’s annual Cranberry Festival attracts thousands of visitors each year, as well as dozens of arts, crafts and food vendors. Some five years ago, one of those food vendors was 1892 Chocolates, a family-owned, South Jersey-based importer of Ecuadorian dark chocolate.
After a few years selling his chocolates at New Jersey wineries and community fairs like the Cranberry Festival, Jose Alban decided to set up a permanent shop called The Candy Jar in Collingswood. When it came to expand the bricks-and-mortar business, he remembered his positive times in Bordentown, and made Farnsworth Avenue the home of his second shop in 2020.
This year, Alban and his business partners expanded their footprint in Bordentown with a second shop: The Ice Cream Boutique, which opened in March a few blocks down from The Candy Jar.
“Here in Bordentown, people are so nice,” Alban says. “Somebody told us that the ice cream place was open for lease, and we thought about it, because we have experience with ice cream in Collingswood. In summer we have a case of ice cream there. So we basically said let’s take the opportunity and let’s open the store.”
The Ice Cream Boutique gets its artisanal ice cream from a purveyor in Virginia. The purveyor, a native of Peru, worked with Jose and family to come up with the shop’s signature flavors.
“We wanted him to make special kind of flavors but also the traditional flavors that you have here in America,” Alban says. “We have chocolate chip, we have birthday cake. But we also have mango, we have a passion fruit, we have a strawberry. And those are all vegan and very fruit based, which gives it a very nice touch. We have dulce de leche made with caramel — it’s a very common sweet in Latin America, and we are trying to introduce new flavors like that here.”
The Ice Cream Boutique has gourmet ice pops from The Hyppo, based in Florida, as well as milkshakes, “fruity floats” (fruit ice cream plus fruit soda) and ice cream sandwiches. There is also a variety of savory snacks, like beef jerky, flavored popcorn and peanuts, and potato chips.
Aware that ice cream shops can be subject to seasonal swings, Alban has looked to incorporate a few other offerings on the menu, including fresh brewed coffee as well as baked empanadas, which he sources from his aunt’s Hatboro, Pennsylvania-based business, Hungry Moon.
“Our aunt makes great empanadas, kind of Argentinean based,” Alban says. “But she took a step forward and she made them for American tastes, so we have classic flavors like beef and chicken, but we also have cheesesteak, pulled pork and buffalo chicken empanadas. She takes those flavors and mixes them up in the empanadas and people seem to really like it.”
Alban operates the stores along with his wife, Tina Fiallo, and sister Paula Alban. The family is originally from Quito, in Ecuador, but all have now settled in the U.S.
The family started 1892 Chocolates around five years ago, with Jose’s father running the business in the States. Jose remained in Ecuador, where he was responsible for picking out the cacao they used for their chocolates.
“I went to the farms, got the cacao, brought it to a factory, kind of like the ‘bean-to-bar’ process that everybody does right now,” says Alban, who lives in Marlton.
The 1892 Chocolates are made with cacao fino de aroma, a kind of cacao found only in Ecuador. “It’s kind of like a fruity kind of taste of cacao, it makes the chocolate not that bitter. It’s not your typical cacao that everybody uses, it’s a very specific kind from a very specific region of Ecuador, Puerto Quito — you can say it grows in the rainforest.”
When their father became ill with cancer, Jose moved to the U.S. to help with the business stateside.
“I began to offer our bars to wineries, and that worked really well, and I went to a lot of wine festivals and markets, and that went really well. Then Covid hit,” Alban says. “But even if Covid wasn’t there, The Candy Jar (in Collingswood) started to grow, grow, grow as a business, so we decided to push all our energy to opening the new store in Bordentown, and that has led us now to the Ice Cream Boutique.”
The Candy Jar specializes in vintage candy as well as trendy candy, cotton candy and bulk chocolates, including chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate truffles and chocolate caramels.
In winter, hot cocoa made with chocolate bombs has become popular, and Alban now has them available at all the shops.
The Ice Cream Boutique, 216 Farnsworth Ave., Bordentown. Open Tuesday through Sunday from noon to 8 p.m. (open until 9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday). Phone: (609) 400-5222.
The Candy Jar, 144 Farnsworth Ave., Bordentown. Open Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Phone: (609) 400-5528.
Tina Fiallo, Jose Alban and Paula Alban at the Ice Cream Boutique by 1892 Chocolates, which opened on Farnsworth Avenue in March 2023.,
