(Photos: Daniel Maurer)
Bedford Avenue isn’t just getting a cupcake baker — it’s also getting a maker of cupcake-shaped soaps.
Soap Cherié, which opened its first shop on Grand Street in Williamsburg earlier this year, will pop up in the space that Verb Cafe occupied for 15 years until it closed this summer due to a rent increase. The soapmaker will open at 218 Bedford by the end of the week, according to a manager at the original store.
Workers were busy readying the Bedford Avenue shop today. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
Soap Cherié specializes in ingeniously designed organic soaps, handmade in Bushwick. It’s modeled after a bakery, complete with trays of cupcakes in various colors and scents (they take about five weeks to make), “bath cocktails” that resemble milkshakes and ice cream scoops, bubble bath packaged in champagne-type bottles, and a buffet where customers can make their own bath-salt mix. Oh, and how could we forget the candle — made with soy, grape, and jojoba oils as well as shea and mango butters — that turns into massage oil as it burns. It’s available in varieties like “fantasy” and “date night.”
So, yeah, there’s a lot going on here. And there’ll also be body mitts, salt scoops, and seasonal soaps such as one that’s shaped like a Christmas-tree cupcake.
According to the manager we spoke to, this will be a seasonal pop-up that could become permanent. And if you don’t find the artisanal soaps you’re looking for here, you can just head to the back of the mini mall, where an outpost of Manhattan’s The Market NYC recently replaced the short-lived Idlewild Books (which took over the home of another ejected longtimer, Dijital Fix).