This Valentine’s Day, treat your sweetie to handmade chocolates and treats from Sweet Gilead.
Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2 pm - 6 pm
Thursday, Feb. 13, 1 pm - 7 pm
Friday, Feb. 14, 12 pm - 8 pm
Back in 2016, Bethel got its first taste of Sweet Gilead Confections during Better Block. That memorable event gave Maritza Martinez-Correa and Lisa Sacks Warhol the motivation they needed to pull together the initial iteration of their handmade candy business, as well as the receptive, welcoming, appreciative audience they’d dreamed of. Sweet Gilead has been popping up at the Arnold Block ever since, to the delight of the residents of Bethel and surrounding towns.
In 2016, Maritza, a culinary school–trained French pastry chef, had been making candy for one of New Orleans’s most popular confectioners for eight years when she decided it was time to leave the Big Easy and head back east. She wasn’t going back to New York City, where she’d grown up, though, but to rural Vermont, a place she’d always enjoyed, where her old friend Kristen Judkins lived. In 2016, Lisa had been living in Bethel Gilead — next door to Kristen — for several years, dabbling in baking and candy-making and working with Bethel Revitalization Initiative on Bethel University and on a grant from AARP to stage a weekend reimagining of Bethel’s downtown with the Dallas, TX, nonprofit Team Better Block. The short story: Maritza met Lisa, BRI won the Better Block grant, and in October, Sweet Gilead was born.
That first shop was held in the Blossom Block along with the Made in Bethel gallery, several shops, and a kids’ play space. Better Block was a huge hit, and folks started asking whether Sweet Gilead might be around again, maybe for Christmas? How about Valentine’s Day? And Sweet Gilead started to gain momentum. It has popped up again and again to cover the holidays in chocolatey goodness.
This time Sweet Gilead will be open from Wednesday, February 12, through Friday, February 14, to give you ample time to come by and select some delicious homemade chocolate and other goodies for your sweetheart or yourself. If you’ve come to one of our pop-ups before, you know that we always have lots of yummy samples too, so you can taste (and taste, and taste!) before you commit to our truffles, bonbons, caramels, and more.
We hope to see you at the Arnold Block this week for some deliciousness for you and all your sweeties from Sweet Gilead!