Graze Dat, Elizabeth Choto
Written by: Emily Meyer
Graze Dat is a charcuterie opened in August of 2020 in New Orleans and run by Elizabeth Choto. Liz makes traditional and non-traditional charcuterie boards and boxes available for pick up or delivery. I met Liz over the phone for this interview back in December and she is an absolute delight to talk to. Her joy and passion are contagious and I hope you can feel that reading this interview.
How does ordering work?
All ordering is done online and the evolution to that has been relatively quick and super-necessary. I started out taking orders by hand and soon found out that was so impractical. So I teamed up with a company that creates online ordering systems for catering companies and now my customers can go there to select what they want, customize their order, and book in one seamless experience. I currently don’t take same day orders because of space and storage concerns so pretty much all orders have a cut off time which is 7pm the night before orders are to be made. You can order pretty much anything off the menu and if I don’t have something in stock then I do my best to get in touch so we can talk about possible substitutions. There are a variety of items that customers can pick from so together, we custom build orders that can be delivered or picked up.
You started in the midst of the pandemic, was this something you had been plotting before or was this an idea born from the pandemic?
It was one of those so amazing, lightning-may-strike-type opportunities that just came up from nowhere. So my background is actually in K-12 education. I was laid off from my job, a job I loved. I decided that I was done with education; I was burnt out and frustrated and I decided to go to business school to work on an MBA. I asked myself what are some things I love and why can’t I open a business doing that. I love craft beer so to make a long story short, I opened a brewery tour at the beginning of August 2019. We were starting to do really well before the pandemic hit. We had groups of people coming to town and we would go to 3 different breweries during each tour where we would share the history of beer with them including the history of women in brewing culture. There are some really interesting tales to be told… We would do some beer tasting and some food pairings and people enjoyed it. In my mind, I was like: “This is gonna be great! I’m actually doing something I love!” And for a good chunk of time, it was and then the pandemic happened…
What was that business called?
It was called Big Easy Beer Tours. I’m a transplant so in everything I’ve done here I’ve wanted to give a not to this city. I think, like everyone who moves here, you get this sense of “Someone built a city just for me!” So Big Easy Beer Tours and now Graze Dat.
We had to shut down the brewery tours because of the pandemic and my sister and I were thinking through ways to take the tour virtual. So we started doing virtual beer tastings around the Black is Beautiful global brewing collaboration that happened last year. (If you’ve not heard about BIB, you should definitely do some digging and check out local breweries that participated and how they used the collaboration to benefit local programs in your area). Anyhow, I’d get groups of people together virtually and we’d chat with brewers and other people who had collaborated in creating different local versions of the beer. We probably did like 3 or 4 of the virtual beer tastings before the idea of charcuterie popped up. It was at one of those tasting my sister was like we need food. People need to put something in their bellies while they’re drinking their beer otherwise this is gonna be a hot mess. So I tried out one box for myself and people were more fascinated in what I was eating than what I was drinking. So the next week, I put together a couple of boxes for people to try and things just grew from there.
Since your background is in education, how did the transition to beer and food tastings come about? Did you have to take any classes?
I did have a little beer and wine experience. Last year I started the process of becoming a Cicerone and completed the first level of testing on the road to becoming a beer expert. That process isn’t cheap, it takes time… trying and tasting all sorts of beer while developing a mental catalog from which you can identify different types of beer using sensory details. Anyhow, I took that and what I’ve learned over the years of teaching and learning and built a basic beer tour that I think a lot of people found value in. I wanted to create an experience where people would learn something that would really help them appreciate beer so much more and open them up to craft beer and the myriad of options available. I incorporated things like samples of malt so tour guests could see, smell and taste the different malts and use that experience as a jumping-off point for talking about the basic ingredients in beer, the brewing process, and also building an appreciation for the tastes, textures, and smells they got once we actually started tasting the beer. For a 3 hour experience, we covered a lot and had a lot of fun with it too!
What is a learning curve you’ve experienced since opening your business?
It’s been pretty quick. I’ve been learning a lot about running a business in B-school so I’m grateful for that, but I guess the biggest thing I’m learning that in everything I do I have to have limits. When I initially started doing this my favorite word was “yes.” I could make every order. Give me a thousand orders and I’d could make them (LOL!!!). I learned pretty quickly that I can’t do that. Even with help, there was a situation where I thought I had found a team member who could help me sort something for an event. However, with us both being new to things and with not enough communication, time, and planning, even the best intentions were challenging. So very quickly I started turning things into what can I do (and working on perfecting and building efficacy there) and what can’t I do right now (while thinking long-range about growth and if those things are worth diving into)
Where do you look for inspiration?
My mom and dad used to cook a lot and so I draw inspiration from some of the things they used to have in the house for us during my childhood. When I first started my business I did some initial research on what to include but a lot of the inspiration comes from thinking about, (and this is going to sound weird) a bag of Skittles. The idea of eating the rainbow has always been stuck in my head. I get a lot of inspiration from the colors of the rainbow and just the way nature lays things out. So taste and texture are really important to me but eating with your eyes, and the presentation of things is just as important.
I am self-taught and there’s something liberating in not being bound to rules. I’ve had some people say this isn’t charcuterie and I’m ok with that. I’m not gonna argue anyone down. You have your definition of charcuterie but what’s always worked may not work for everyone anymore. So I love seeing things like vegan charcuterie where people are taking basic concepts and making them their own by making “meat” out of beets .or using other innovative approaches that work for them. My boards include things like Cajun turkey or teriyaki chicken and I’m flexible with bending the rules and making what I’m doing my own.
I know your business is still really new but do you have any plans or visions for where you want the business to go in the future?
A brick and mortar would be nice... some sort of space where people can come and not have that restraint of ordering 24 hours in advance. They could walk in, order their board and watch their board be made, have some wine available so they can go into a nice space and be outside with good food and good company. Right now my priority is making these boards and boxes for as long as I can and enjoying the process.
Outside of Graze Dat and outside of food. Let’s dream really big, reality doesn’t exist, what would be your big dream?
One of my big things is learning. I would love to travel and experience more of the things I can do and can put on these boards. Being stuck in the middle of a pandemic so we’re kind of limited in the meats and cheeses that we can get. But being able to travel through parts of Europe and experience new and different tastes and textures and coming back and sharing them. That would be a dream right there!
You can keep up with Graze Dat on Facebook, Instagram, or visit their website to place an order!
About the Author: You can follow Emily’s work at her website: https://emilymakesstuff.com/
