Two Mineola woman have spent their year selling homemade baked goods to residents throughout Nassau County at the Eisenhower Park Farmers Market and Farmingdale Farmers Market.
Sisters Mary and Theresa Dinh, long-time residents of Mineola, founded Trinity Kitchens on April 29th of this year. The company is named after their grandmother, Lan Trinh, who immigrated to the United States in August of 1975 and raised the sisters so their parents could go to work to support their extended family of 8.
“She was raised by Catholic nuns and left when she was 17 years old to work at a rubber plantation where she met and fell in love with our grandfather, and together they opened up a convenience store and barber shop,” Theresa explains. “Our childhood memories are peppered with her home-cooked dishes.”
“Theresa dreamed of selling dumplings and lemonade,” Mary elaborates. “I got tired of us talking about all our food ventures and just said if not now, then when? We weren’t getting any younger and when it’s all said and done, I didn’t want to have any regrets.”
The sisters started selling soup dumplings and lemonade at street fairs and branched out to Vietnamese sandwiches and fried rice.
But the cost of each event’s application and permit fees proved challenging so they pivoted to farmers markets.
After looking for several weeks, they found a home at the Eisenhower Park Farmers Market, run by the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County.
At their first market, they offered Rice Krispies treats, muffins, and pies selling out more than half of their items.
They quickly expanded their offerings to include scones, apple turnovers, and cookies. After a handful of their entries took home awards at the Long Island Fair, they expanded their offerings to include their award-winning items as well as other flavors of jams, fudge, and teas to their top-selling fruit pies and banana bread.
In September, they started selling at the farmers market in Farmingdale.
Mary is awed by how much they’ve learned and adapted to in the last few months. They had to figure out the logistics of creating the business, the insurance needed, what products to offer, their suppliers, the optimal price for each item, product labeling, website search engine optimization, credit card payments and more. Additionally, the sisters wanted to give back to the community, a value instilled in them by their grandmother. It came full circle when they started donating their surplus baked goods to three catholic churches.
The sisters are taking a much-needed break before they start planning for next year’s farmers market season.
Before their break, they will be offering their baked goods at their first winter market at the Great Neck House Indoor Farmers Market on Sunday, Dec. 22nd from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.