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HELPING JEWISH FAMILIES GROW -
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Diane Baldwin AppleTree Staff Writer
oe Kolender and Bryana Dorfman are two lucky lit-
tle girls. Of course, at 8 months and 1 1 months,
they don't realize it yet. But when their moms go to
work, they get to come along. And, they get to eat all the
rice pudding they want — so
long as it bears the label of
Sweet Elyse.
Named for the owner,
Elyse Kolender, Sweet Elyse
Ltd. is a Beverly Hills, home-
based business that distributes
a family created and genera-
tion-tested rice pudding mix.
A graphic artist by profes-
sion, Kolender was looking
for a way she could work at
home when she had chil-
dren. The idea of marketing
her family's coveted rice pud-
ding recipe came to mind.
"I always wanted the pud-
ding to be on the market, so I
took a risk," she said.
The risk involved leaving the
graphic arts field to do research and development to con-
vert the family's rice pudding recipe into a product she
could market. Kolender's mother, Eleanor Aronovitz is
known for her rice pudding. She prepares it for every holi-
day, function or event.
"Mom, I'm gonna market this," Kolender told her mother,
who didn't believe her.
"She sure does now," Kolender says, smiling.
Two years after the initial idea, Sweet Elyse Rice Pudding
is for sale in many specialized food stores in the metro
Detroit area, and the owners expect it will soon be avail-
able nationwide.
Kolender originally began
putting her dream into action
with the help of her mother
— but Mom had other priori-
ties that prevented her from
committing long term to the
project. Enter business part-
ner Julie Dorfman.
"We like to say we're life-
long friends," Kolender said,
"but we're not."
As Kolender came to know
Dorfman, she became con-
vinced her new friend would
be the right person to join in
her venture.
"I knew she would be fun to
work with," Kolender said.
When Dorfman became
pregnant, she divided her time between her private psy-
chologist practice and Sweet Elyse, Ltd. Both women fondly
recall the many hours they spent together, pregnant, in the
kitchen, cooking batch after batch of rice pudding.
"Our challenge was to try to convert a wet recipe into a
dry one," Kolender said. This entailed consulting with man-
ufacturers to develop a recipe that would work for con-
sumers.
After numerous less-than-successful tries — tasters even
How -wo women found
- success in the business
and the mommy worlds.
Diane Baldwin is a Clarkston-based freelance writer
and mother Of 19-month-old Nicholas.
THE BIG STORY on page 83
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