Like many New Yorkers, Sherema Fleming learned to bake from scratch during the Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike many, she did it while working as a nurse and keeping afloat a nonprofit dance company she founded.
At the time, the Bronxite was craving delicious, healthy snacks to satisfy her sweet tooth. She was also on a health journey, and as a nurse, she had observed the health benefits of a vegan diet in her patients. But nothing in the vegan bakery section of supermarkets passed her personal taste test. So Fleming decided to start making vegan snacks herself. It was a straight path to her vegan cookie business, The Cocoa Vegan Pastries.
Nursing a sweet spot for chocolate
Fleming wanted to have chocolate treats that “tasted like [they] came from someone’s kitchen,” she says. Unsurprisingly, her favorite cookie to make — and her best-seller — is chocolate chip. Initially, she struggled with the right balance of ingredients, like substituting coconut oil for butter and cashew milk for eggs. And finding organic, vegan chocolate chips was difficult and expensive.
When she baked her first batches of chocolate chip cookies, there were a lot of tears.
“I remember crying [because] … I wanted [it] to be something that you taste and are like ‘I have to have this again,’” Fleming said. Yet the consistency was off: she wanted a thick, rich cookie without using dairy. There was a lot of trial and error. She also tried making red velvet cookies with beet juice instead of food coloring, but they turned pink, not red.
She researched alternative ingredients, focusing on basic ones like coconut oil, which people often have in their pantry. “I feel like anything that you put on your body and you put on your skin, you should be able to eat,” Fleming said. (She uses coconut oil not just for cooking but as a hair moisturizer and for toothpaste.) She also learned to be mindful of nut allergies, something she hadn’t given much thought while substituting dairy with almond milk.
A second-time entrepreneur
Almost from the start, she knew it would become a small business. An entrepreneur at heart, Fleming had founded her dance nonprofit because of a long-ago unmet need. As a young girl whose parents couldn’t afford to pay for her dance classes, the closure of a community dance program meant her formal dance training was over. She was forced to be self-taught. Years later, in 2009, she started Cultured Movement to offer low-cost classes to youths and women.
Fleming believes everyone has the innate ability to turn anything into an enterprise if they pay enough attention to it. “I think it’s so amazing that people can take their thoughts and make a business out of it, make profit, help people,” she said. “I’ll meet people and I’ll be like, ‘hey, have you thought about turning this into business?’ … I will get you to sell your talent.”
Selling her talent for vegan cookies
When non-vegan family and friends started trying her vegan cookies and asking for more, Fleming took that as a cue to start selling them — and she brought another talented woman along with her. A friend who baked cakes for her son had impressed her with her next-level baking skills. Fleming suggested they do a pop-up shop, inviting other entrepreneurs to join them.
Their first pop-up shop took place in 2021 at a boxing gym owned by a friend she had met while working at a hospital. There, she connected with a juice maker, who in turn led her to the farmers market at the James Baldwin Outdoor Learning Center in the Bronx. She has been selling her cookies there — in the company of other Bronx-based Black and Latino entrepreneurs — for the past three years.
“I [knew] that I was going to make it a great cookie, and I was going to be able to make it as a business,” Fleming said. “I just had that confidence [that] whatever I touch, if I want to grow, it’s going to grow.”
Balancing time and access
Fleming credits her experience as a nurse for the people skills she says are key to entrepreneurship. “I’ve worked in some of the busiest E.R.s in New York, so I had a chance to really connect with people; they enjoy comfort, kindness,” Fleming said. “The connection part of [nursing] is what helps in business, and I still do both.”
Doing both reflects her biggest challenge: time management. It helps that she works only part-time as a nurse. She spends about three days a week ensuring she has all the necessary ingredients and preparing the dough. On the next day off, she bakes the cookies.
Time management is on her mind as she prepares for the crowds at Vegandale at Citifield in September. As a first-time vendor there, her workload will expand far beyond the usual. She has been training to gradually increase her batches.
After Vegandale, Fleming will head back to her regular Saturday programming at the James Baldwin Outdoor Learning Center. One of her favorite moments is watching non-vegan people, including kids, eating her wholesome cookies.
“A lot of times we think we have to go to Midtown to get good stuff, whereas we can just get it right in the Bronx,” Fleming said. “I’m proud to give access to great pastries that are organic, vegan.”
Order online here.
Follow on Instagram at CocoaVeganPastries.
Look out for The Cocoa Vegan Pastries at Vegandale on Sept. 14.
Visit The Cocoa Vegan Pastries at the James Baldwin Outdoor Learning Center Farmers Market on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to3 p.m. (after Vegandale, the stand will be there through the end of October).
