Home Contact Us + Store Locations Events + Fried Pickles Menu Pickled Products + Articles

Popular pickles put Spacey Tracy in new orbit. PHILIP KAMRASS / TIMES UNION YOU CAN MAKE a relish tray with Tracy Krawitt's products to serve alongside crackers or toasts. BY DOUG BLACKBURN Staff writer ----------------- What does a bored bartender do? It depends on the bartender. Tracy Krawitt decided to make pickled eggs during her down time at the bar in Rhinebeck. The customers sampled them. Their reaction was unanimous thumbs up and requests for more. She expanded her repertoire to include peppers and other foodstuffs, experimenting with the magical powers of cider vinegar to create tangy pickled products. A native of Red Hook, Duchess County, Krawitt was familiar with making pickled peppers. She had begun a few years earlier pickling red and green bell peppers in Mason jars for Christmas presents. They had been a hit, too. "That's really how all of this got started. One day, I decided to do something different for Christmas," the 38-year-old Krawitt says. "I wanted to do something from the heart instead of going to the mall." With customers clamoring to her pickles, Krawitt decided to go into business for herself. She spent many of her days in her Rhinebeck kitchen, Canning jar after jar of cucumbers and peppers. In the evening, she tended bar and pickled the occasional hard boiled egg. Her name was Spacey Tracy and that seemed to her as good a name as any for a line of pickles. A few shops in the area agreed to carry her product, and she got a booth at the Sunday Rhinebeck farmers market. Demand quickly outpaced supply and Krawitt found herself; dare we say; in a pickle. Something had to give. She had to choose between bartending and her hobby. The pickles won. This was two years ago. That's when she took Spacey Tracy's Pickles (the logo features a caricature of her atop a cloud, claiming her pickles are "out of this world") out of her kitchen and started having them at Hudson Vally's Foodwork (Continued on next page) PICKLES: A peck of popular products (Continued) in Poughkeepsie. She now has eight pickled products, including green tomatoes, plus a line of jellies (mint-jalapeno and garlic), Her latest creation — fried pickles — may be the one that propels her into a national brand. She tried making this Southern specialty as a lark and took them to the Rosendale Pickle Festival. They won second place. Krawitt is trying to perfect a tempura-style batter, so she can make mass quantities of frozen fried pickles that require only reheating. She is hoping to hook up with Sysco or another major distributor. "My business took off so quick, it kind of scared me a little," Krawitt says. "Now I'm having to hire people, and I'm going to have to get a second truck. "I'm a single woman. I wanted my own business. I'm happy making my own decisions in life, not having a boss or having anybody tell me what to do. That was my main goal before I was 40." ----------------- Spacey Tracy's Pickles are available at stores in the mid-Hudson Valley, including the three Adams Fairacre Market shops. The new gourmet food shop Eats in Stuyvesant Plaza carries four of Krawitt's products. They cost $6.50 per jar.