Michael Spicer

YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR TAKES CEDARVALE MAPLE SYRUP COMPANY TO NEW HEIGHTS

Emma Vallelunga

The flavor of maple can be tasted on more than just pancakes, and the celebration of maple sugar in Central New York can be experienced in more months than just March. It’s a clear marketing strategy that 22-year-old Michael Spicer has excelled at as he prepares for a new chapter in both his small business and his bright future.

Spicer is the owner of Cedarvale Maple Syrup Company, a small maple sugar farm in Onondaga County that dates back to 1977. His passion for maple syrup began when he was 11 after a fifth-grade field trip. He started tapping the trees and boiling their sap in his own backyard, producing enough syrup to sell at local farmers markets by the time he was 18.

When the original Cedarvale owner Karl Wiles was ready to retire and sell his property in 2017, Spicer was interested. He knew Wiles well and had prior experience from not only selling his own product but also working for other maple sugar farms in the area. As the two discussed future plans, Spicer wound up buying the business in 2019 — all while being a sophomore athlete studying economics at Hamilton College.

Since then, Cedarvale has only grown. The business expanded its product line to sell more than just syrup, items like maple creams, coffee, ice cream, candies, barbeque sauces, hot sauces, mustards, dog treats and more. Spicer also improved the company’s website, allowing for online ordering and sharing maple-inspired recipes for people to try at home, like maple sweet potato casserole and bourbon maple pecan pie.

Now in his third year operating Cedarvale, Spicer just finished his last semester of college. He’s driven to grow the business even more, especially during the pandemic. When COVID-19 shut down a lot of small businesses in March of last year, maple sugar season was still at its peak, so Spicer said Cedarvale kept producing, but they did have to cancel their 2020 Maple Weekend, which is usually where a third of their annual sales come from.

“At that point, it was a little scary,” he said. “You’d watch the news, and you had this eerie feeling, you didn’t know where anything was going to go, but we quickly transitioned our energy into the business right away.”

At their store, Spicer said they continued to maintain safety protocols, allowing a limited number of people inside at a time, mandating masks, providing contactless pickup for orders placed online and offering free delivery within the Syracuse area. Social media was also something Spicer revamped during the pandemic. With the help of his sister, who was also a student at Hamilton, they began posting on the company’s Facebook and Instagram to share updates with their followers when they couldn’t do it as easily during Maple Weekend. “People were going to need entertainment, so we figured why not,” he said. “We were right in the heart of maple season, let’s give people some content to look at. We were going to put out as much content as we possibly could. At that point, we really were not using Facebook or Instagram that much at all, not even close to how we use it today.”

This March, Spicer said Cedarvale produced about 400 gallons of syrup to sell both during Maple Weekend and the rest of the year. And more new customers have visited Cedarvale this season than any other. The response to the changes he’s made, like posting on social media, has been incredibly good for business.

“We realized we can post [something], whether it’s a recipe or just a fun demonstration video, and it’s likely that we’ll get someone

to come down to the shop that day,” he said. “The amount of new people that we’ve had come into the shop has been absolutely inspiring in itself, just because these people will come in and say, ‘I’ve lived ten minutes away my entire life, and I’ve never been here. What a cool place.’”

Community events are another aspect Spicer has focused on establishing at Cedarvale. Through April and May, Spicer partnered with Syracuse businesses like Limp Lizard BBQ, Blueberries and Lace, Toss & Fire Wood-Fired Pizza and Birdsong Cafe to host socially-distanced gatherings at Cedarvale with maple-inspired barbeque, homemade pastries, breakfast items and other local foods. Spicer has more events planned for the summer in hopes of both increasing community outreach and keeping people thinking about maple all-year-round.

“We can bring in a food truck, and our community outreach will go through the roof,” he said. “We’ll have so many new customers, we get to put so many smiles on people’s faces and give them an awesome experience, and it wouldn’t be possible if all these other Syracuse businesses didn’t have the opportunity to come together, so through those partnerships, it’s actually turned out to be the best year in Cedarvale history.”

Like most students, Spicer had to study from home this past year, but he opted to continue virtual learning during his last semester so he could spend more time running the business every day. He graduated last month, and he’s been fully vaccinated, but he decided not to attend the college’s commencement in person.

For his own future, Spicer isn’t exactly sure what he wants right now. He hopes to stay with Cedarvale, possibly looking for opportunities to go into retail with a few products, but he said he wouldn’t be opposed to markets outside of maple syrup with his degree.

“It’s been a very slow process,” he said. “I haven’t been able to allocate any time to [job searching], being in the heart of maple season and then finishing up school, but hopefully one day I can be a full-time entrepreneur.”

As a small business owner, Spicer said something the pandemic has taught him so far was to use your resources and develop your network so your community can support you when you need it most.

“We would not have been able to combat the changes alone,” he said. “Not that we necessarily experienced extreme hardships, but there’s no way we would be where we are today without going through those local partnerships and building those local relationships with people. If you help those in the community, they’re going to help you, and everybody’s going to come out of this a lot stronger.” SWM