Harvest represents another opportunity for Cherry Republic to try new things as the cherry local business continues to add to its long list of products from its Glen Arbor store, along with five others outside the county.
Cherry Republic is preparing for its seasonal harvest jam that goes from cherry trees to jars within 24 hours.
“As soon as the tarts are ready for us to do that, we’ll be making our new jam that we do every summer. They harvest the cherries and drop them off to us and we have them into jars for jam and delivered to the stores within 24 hours,” Cherry Republic VP of Marketing Sara Harding said.
All of Cherry Republic’s products use tart cherries versus sweet cherries.
The jam comes in limited quantities and represents the best of Cherry Republic, according to Harding.
“If you go to the Glen Arbor store, the jars are still warm. They haven’t even cooled all the way down yet,” Sarah said. “We get them out to all the other locations and sometimes it’s even some of our team members driving them in the back of their cars to get them there within 24 hours. We get them to all six locations, including our southern ones, Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids.”
Harding says timing of the jam is all dependent when they start harvesting the tart cherries, which they anticipate will be available sometime in midto-late July.
“We did launch two new products this summer. We have an amazing cherry bacon barbecue sauce that is flying off the shelves and we have these amazing unbelievably good salted caramel, chocolate covered cherries,” Harding said.
Cherry Republic gets most of its cherries from Leelanau County. Harding says the cherry crop this year is doing well in northern Michigan compared to the southern Michigan crop that has damage from weather conditions.
Harding also provides an update on the pub in Glen Arbor.
“All of our stores are having a really solid summer season, so we’re really grateful and thankful,” she said.
