For Richard Mast, throwing in the towel was never an option. Even after a 2023 blaze leveled his bustling factory, café, and grocer in Mount Kisco, a bright future never seemed that far off. “The fire was such a traumatic experience, but luckily nobody was hurt. That was the most important thing to us,” says Mast. “There was certainly a tearful period over the next couple of days, but I remember quickly gathering the team together and saying, ‘Look, we’re going to think about a moment, maybe two years from now, where we all say, you know what, maybe that crazy, devastating fire was the best thing that could have happened to us.’”
These inspiring words certainly seem to have been prophetic with the November 1 grand opening of Mast Market’s new location at 1 Court Road in Bedford. The new venture exceeds the original with more expansive offerings of fresh foods, organic pantry staples, and local meats, cheeses, and produce—not to mention an on-site bakery and coffee bar brewing house-roasted beans. While the shop’s footprint is roughly the same size as its prior iteration, Mast notes that the new store carries more products, from jams and nut butters to fine pastries—and of course the chocolate bars for which Mast first became famous.
“Shortly after the fire we were essentially homeless and in desperate need of a chocolate factory. Our friends Alex Whitmore and his wife Kathleen came to the rescue on the chocolate front and were able to accommodate our particular methods of chocolate production in their certified organic, artisan chocolate factory located in Somerville, Massachusetts,” says Mast. “We spent several weeks coordinating our favorite organic cocoa beans from Kokoa Kamili in Tanzania to arrive there, working out our recipes, coordinating production schedules, training teams, and creating beautiful new packaging.”
Since Richard and his family live in Bedford, as does his brother Michael, the town was an obvious choice for the new locale. “A guy named John Ubaldo ran a market called John Boy’s Outpost in this location, and he is a full-time farmer as well,” says Richard, who serves as CEO of the company, while Michael is CFO. “John wanted to spend more time with his son and more time farming, and he knew that we were trying to figure out what our next chapter was going to be. He said, ‘Look, I’d love to pass the baton on to you guys,’ and I was just so grateful that he trusted us with that legacy.”
Richard describes his new Mast Market as “very much an everyday market. It has milk and eggs, but you can also get breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We’ve hired an amazing executive chef, Joshua Capone. His wife, Sarah Capone, is our pastry chef. Josh has an unbelievable background—he was chef de cuisine at Daniel Boulud’s restaurant Daniel for many years and helped open Micheline in Scarsdale. They’re making pastries, sandwiches, soups, and stews using all local ingredients from the market.”
The concept has connected with customers. “I think we’ve been so successful because people are hungry— pun intended—for community, for real-life experiences, for really understanding where their food comes from. It is a nourishing place in more ways than one, and I am building something that I know I would want in my community.”
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