Chapter 15 Hazel
HAZEL
My first two days of being thirty are a blur.
Emma, Gloria, and I have been working around the clock preparing for a last-minute pop-up collaboration with New York City’s hottest ice cream shop, Worldly Scoops, and a travel company, The Cheshire, that owns luxury hotels around the world. Fittingly, the theme is Going Places.
When the small business providing chocolate, caramel, and butterscotch sauces dropped out earlier this week, Worldly Scoops immediately reached out to Emma. They wouldn’t have sauces to drizzle over ice cream, but they could have candy.
Worldly Scoops spent months securing the permits for the two-day pop-up at Grand Central Terminal, an iconic train station and landmark on the east side of Manhattan.
It’s bustling with people who have come far and wide to shop, eat, and admire its awe-inspiring architecture and jade-hued celestial ceiling with gold-leaf constellations.
We’ll be in one of The Cheshire’s luxury train cars that’s been rolled into the expansive main terminal.
The Cheshire’s latest rail-travel venture launches this month across England, Wales, and Scotland, so they want to give a peek at what to expect with their redesigned train cars.
Apparently, a famous movie director with a well-known visual style worked with them on the revamping.
“Doesn’t everything about this go against that old saying about never getting into vans with strangers offering candy?
” Gloria says as she sets out scoops next to the jars on the bar where we’ve set up shop at one end of the train car.
Next to us, the Worldly Scoops founders, Cole and Jonathan, are arranging their tubs of ice cream.
Emma stashes an empty box under the bar. “What about any of this”—she motions around the interior of the car that has splashes of bright colors and a mix of textures and patterns—“reminds you of a van?”
Gloria looks out a window draped with the same high-quality cornflower blue fabric that the dining chairs are upholstered with. Through the glass, I notice that people have already started to line up, waiting for us to open. “The wheels?” she says.
Emma and I share an amused look. “Ooh, I’m nervous,” Emma says, shaking out her shoulders. “You know how many influencers and reporters will be here? Like, dozens. If this hits, it could be a game changer for us.”
“Interior design and travel magazine photographers will be here, too,” Gloria says, waving to the customers in line. “It’s going to be fabulous, darling. We caught a lucky break to get this level of exposure.”
Emma nods. “I can’t believe we pulled it together in time.”
Honestly, me neither. Emma almost passed on it.
There wasn’t enough time to order new batches of candy for the pop-up, so we took our supply from the shop.
While Emma took care of event logistics and coordinated schedules for her two other employees to cover for us at the shop while we’re here, Gloria managed the marketing and updated the website and social media.
I was in charge of acquiring more jars and bags for customers, though I did have another idea that I went ahead and ran with.
“Emma, got a sec?” I hold up a small box.
Emma shakes a bag of French nougats into one of the jars. “Of course, what’s up?”
I remove the lid and take a postcard-size paper out.
I found a print shop near Washington Square Park that was able to get this printing done in under twenty-four hours.
“I wanted to show you these passports I had made. Well, passcards,” I say, hearing my voice reflect my internal excitement about them.
“Every customer gets one. For each candy and ice cream flavor they try, they get a stamp in one of the boxes. And for the ones they don’t try, they can come back to our shops and keep filling out their passcard. ”
“What happens when every box has been stamped?” Gloria asks, peeking over my shoulder.
“I was thinking they’d get ten percent off their next purchase,” I say, only now realizing that in the rush of getting everything together, I forgot to ask Emma for the green light on this detail.
“Hazel…” Emma shakes her head.
“I’m really sorry I didn’t run it by you first,” I rush out. “I wanted to be helpful since you were so busy. I already took care of talking to Cole and Jonathan. They’re onboard with it.”
“Oh my god, no, I’m not mad,” Emma says with wide eyes. “I love it. It’s so creative.”
“It’s also backed by numbers,” I share. “Based on the zip codes of our store customers, eighty-nine percent of Midtown residents are the ones buying candy like the mixed fruit Turkish delight and Aero peppermint bars. We brought some of our top sellers, but I also snuck in some of the candy many people in this area tend to love.” I pull a box from a large tote and grab one of the individually wrapped bubbly chocolate bars.
“I figured, since they’re always coming to us, I wanted to show that we’re paying attention when we come to them. ”
Emma lets out an amused sound. “I didn’t realize we were such a destination.”
“Several times a month, actually,” I say.
“Which told me that, if people are willing to go all that way for international candy, there’s a strong chance they’d be willing to hop around to Worldly Scoops’ stores, too.
Hopefully, this passcard will inspire them to keep coming back to try new candy. And they’ll get rewarded for it.”
“Wow, you went above and beyond what you needed to do,” Emma says. “This passcard, looking through the data… that must’ve taken you a lot of time.”
“Honestly, I find this kind of thing fun.”
Dissecting purchasing patterns of customers and thinking through how to attain optimal inventory levels have already been more interesting to me than the type of data I worked with in health care.
And Sweet Escape’s data is something I can personally act on instead of just building reports to hand off to someone else.
“That makes”—Gloria points at Emma, then herself, and then me—“one of us,” she says. “Where have you been all of Emma’s shop life?”
“Oh, I’ve been there, just consuming most of her inventory,” I half joke.
Emma laughs. “That’s true. You’ve been right here with us from the beginning.” She gives me a side hug. “I’m so thankful for you.”
I breathe out a slow exhale of relief. “Please, I’m the thankful one,” I say. For the job, yes, but also for their kindness they’ve consistently shown me.
“No, seriously,” Emma says, “I’ve had enough wading through legalese in my life that trying to decipher reports is just… Well, it’s not why I went into the candy business. This is great. Thank you, Hazel.” She lifts one of the passcards and admires it. “When you’ve got more ideas, I’m all ears.”
I don’t try to contain my happiness. At my last job, my manager acted like encouragement and being open to new ideas were above his pay grade. We did things his way, and he did things the way they had always been done.
“Okay, yes, thank you,” I say, grinning so widely that my cheeks start to ache.
I get to work breaking up the Aero bars into smaller pieces.
Once the candy jars are ready to go, I set the passcards in a neat pile on the far end of the bar closest to Worldly Scoops, where customers will start off.
The first few people start trickling in, ordering ice cream flavors like ricotta with crushed pistachio, oolong tea with ribbons of mango jam, and baklava with layers of crisp phyllo dough and a trio of nuts.
Jonathan had explained during setup that these flavors were inspired by their travels to Sicily, Taiwan, and Greece.
As Cole presses a mini spoon-shaped stamp onto one of the passcard boxes, a pang of longing thrums through me.
It suddenly hits me, standing here in this luxury train with all its possibilities of where it can travel, that I want to be the passenger.
The desire only solidifies being next to tubs of worldly flavors I’ve never experienced in person and serving candy that Emma’s picked out on her own adventures.
I want to taste mangos in Taiwan and pistachios in Sicily for myself.
I want to see the Greek Islands with my own eyes.
This urge is unfamiliar but strong. I rub my knuckles across my chest, the ache only slightly lessening.
The next stop on the customers’ journey is to our candy buffet, where they can top their ice cream with gummies and chocolates.
I pull myself out of my thoughts and answer questions about where we source our candy and if the banana marshmallow candy really tastes like banana. (It doesn’t not taste like banana.)
The booths and dining chairs fill up fast. Everyone has their phones out, snapping their sweet treats from various angles. Some have small clip-on ring lights on their phones for a more flattering image. I assume those are the influencers Emma was talking about.
A brunette with tight curls steps up to our section of the bar, holding bright purple ice cream. “Which of these would go best with ube, do you think?” she asks.
I reach for the coconut-coated licorice candy. “I’d recommend—”
“You’re here! Hi!” Emma singsongs beside me.
“Hazel, this is Chelsea Rogers. She’s a writer at Out of Office.
” I must look like I’m drawing a blank because Emma adds, “It’s one of the most popular online travel magazines in the country.
And Chels, this is Hazel Yen. She’s our newest hire and data queen.
I’ll introduce you to Gloria in a second. ”
Chelsea does a double take. “Hazel Yen?” She looks at me for a few long seconds. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else for a second.”
Someone else like Older Hazel Yen by chance?
“Oh, no worries,” I say, busying myself by wiping sugar off the counter.
“Who’d you think she was?” Emma unhelpfully asks.
Chelsea taps her polished finger against her bowl before addressing me again. “Did you know you share a name with someone who just won the lottery?”