This aging body doesn’t absorb sugar the way it used to. The heady days of rushes and highs are behind me. Whether it’s disguised in pastries, swimming in scoops of ice cream or layered in cake, sugar now seeps into the bloodstream like a slow-acting poison. But sugar cravings are as hard to shake off as the need for any other drug. I recently walked into Berkeley Bowl to really and truly only buy some berries. On the way to the checkout stand, I happened to drift by refrigerators filled with frozen treats.
My eye was drawn not to the usual bars and pints, but to a pretty and unfamiliar package design. A cameo-like stamp of a young woman’s profile was printed above a “Green Girl Bakeshop” logo. In the center of a banner, two lines of copy in an old-fashioned serif font spelled out, “Vanilla Bean with Chocolate Chip Cookie.” Underneath that the copy continued, “Plant-Based Superfood Icebox Sandwich Sweetened with Maple Syrup.”
Black-and-white illustrations of a maple leaf, vanilla beans, halved coconuts and an ice cream scoop floated in the background. In an even smaller font, a vertical descending banner announced that the confection was dairy-free, gluten-free, grain-free, soy-free and paleo. When I unwrapped the icebox sandwich at home, I noticed a San Leandro business address and decided to find out more.
When we spoke on the phone, Lisa Stoy, East Bay resident and Green Girl’s CEO and founder, let me know that all of Green Girl’s products are actually made nearby in Benicia. Stoy started to make ice cream sandwiches in 2011 shortly after she got married. Later that winter, Green Girl sold products at the Montclair Village Farmers’ Market.
“I remember the manager said, ‘If you can make it through winter, you can make it through anything,’” Stoy said. A decade later, in 2021, the company introduced ice cream pints. “We had stores requesting it,” she said. “They were saying customers were requesting it, so we brought that on as an afterthought in a lot of ways.”
From the start, Green Girl produced gluten- and dairy-free products. Stoy recalled that, at the time, similar products contained cheap filler ingredients and lacked any “artisanal flair.” The farmers’ market provided Stoy with an opportunity to gauge the public’s interest. “We were pleasantly surprised,” she said. “We had a lot of loyal customers, and we stayed there for quite some time.”
Green Girl’s loyal customer base encouraged Stoy to look for a brick-and-mortar space, but she couldn’t find one that made for a good fit. When they set up a stand one year at the Solano Avenue Stroll, the buyer from The Natural Grocery Company approached her with an offer. He’d heard about the brand from a customer. The buyer asked Stoy if she would be willing to consider distributing Green Girl through the store.
“Up until that point we had no plan to do grocery. We said, ‘Sure, why not?’ because we couldn’t find a store,” Stoy said. Now, when one clicks on the “Store Locator” tab on Green Girl’s website, the distribution range extends to 700 stores as far north as Washington and as far east as Brooklyn.
Green Girl started out using ingredients such as coconut sugar and maple syrup as sweeteners. “We’re actually technically top nine allergen-free because coconut has been taken off the list for nuts,” Stoy said. “We’ve brought on date sugar. It’s something that we’re working with in our salted caramel. We’re always trying to evolve.” In 2016 the company decided to go grain-free as well.
Stoy’s interest in plant-based products developed because of her own food allergies and after she was diagnosed with a severe heart condition. “I couldn’t eat a lot of the things I had been eating before,” she said. “When I was in my 20s, I started to be lax and ate more junk food.”
After the diagnosis, she had trouble finding desserts that weren’t loaded with cane sugar or hydrogenated oils. “I really wanted to create something that would be really nutrient dense, with clean, simple ingredients,” she added. “That’s something that we started with, and it’s never changed.”
Green Girl Bakeshop, distributed locally at Berkeley Bowl, The Natural Grocery Company and via UPS. greengirlbakeshop.com
