THE pepernoten king (click for website) in America is named Paul Zaal, originally from Wierden, Twente. “December was very busy,” he says, from Wausau, Wisconsin where he owns The Chocolate Shop. He sells chocolate-covered Dutch pepernoten all year round, partly through Amazon, “which has boosted sales.” In twenty different flavors, “Lemon cheesecake, Irish cream, apple pie, you name it.”
His customers are all over America, “from Florida to California to Oregon to Maine.” Remarkably, “over half of the customers have a recognizable Dutch last name.” They often just buy one bag of pepernoten at a time. Paul imports the delicacy from Friesland, at first by the pallet, now one container at a time: “One container is 20 pallets, so that’s about 35,000 lbs.”
He is about to also open a chocolate café in Wausau. Both establishments are a result of the Covid pandemic when people stopped going to shopping malls for a while. Paul used to supply candy to some thirty candy kiosks in malls, where customers could purchase fill-‘em-yourself bags, but suddenly that business virtually stopped. Hence the store around the corner now, in Wisconsin.
