Photos by Doug Schneider
Via Viaggio wants to make medicinal CBD taste more like gourmet candy and less like your typical gummy supplement.
If the pandemic has you feeling a little overwhelmed, a new Westchester business is cooking up products to help with relaxation and wellness.
Via Viaggio, with its business operations based in Dobbs Ferry and production in Brooklyn, is churning out four different varieties of CBD gummies to help with the emotional turmoil of this moment in time.
“When the pandemic hit, I was really stressed out and anxious,” says Via Viaggio’s co-founder Silvana Nardone. This led her to try CBD products and, while they helped to take the edge off, they did not meet the taste standards for the longtime chef, baker, and food writer.
That led Nardone to join with food photographer Doug Schneider (who frequently contributes to Today Media publications, including Westchester Magazine), and Adam Dell, whose background is in marketing and Internet consulting for spirits brands. Together they started Via Viaggio with an eye toward combining the health benefits of CBD and adaptogens with great taste.
Nardone says she told herself, “I’m just going to try to make something that I’d want to eat every day, and not just sort of take it like medicine.”
Next came research on flavor combinations and foods with properties that would interact beneficially with the CBD and adaptogens to enhance health benefits.
Through experimentation and taste testing with Schneider and Dell, Nardone ended up with flavors like pineapple-turmeric to help with immunity and Japanese lime-mint for energy.
The best sellers are the red mandarin-ginger shiso “Tranquillum” for calmness (which Nardone says customers have especially appreciated during this election cycle) and the strawberry-saffron “Verus-Amor,” which is categorized as an aphrodisiac but also is meant to help with confidence and self-love.
The end result is what Schneider describes as an “amazing culinary experience” with “dynamic” flavors in addition to the therapeutic qualities.
Nardone says the company has been pleased with the reaction from its customers, who primarily make purchases through the company’s Instagram and website.
“A lot of us are living day-to-day. We don’t really know what’s up or what’s next,” she says. “It makes us feel good to know that we’re helping people one day at a time.”
