Ryan Ferester - creator of Lovebeans Chocolate spread and son of Lovebeans owner, Beth Ferester, reminisces on the beginnings of Lovebeans.
832.698.2017
8522 Creekside Forest Dr Suite D-100, The Woodlands, TX 77375
HOURS:
Monday — Friday 7:30am-4pm
Saturday & Sunday 8a—4pm
an organic vegan chocolate spread created by Ryan Ferester in the early 2000’s while running his small Zen Café in Costa Rica. The spread was so popular that he decided to bring it to the American market under the name Lovebean Fudge Spread. We formed the company, with Ryan as our CFO (Chief Fudge Officer), and it was not long before Lovebean was appearing on the shelves of many retailers, including Whole Foods.
Ryan had a great time spreading the love far and wide but, alas, his free-spirited nature prevailed and he decided that growing the company into a big business was not his mission and so he made his way to California to pursue other adventures.
Lovebeans, just “went to sleep” for a couple of years until we could think of something else worthy of bringing it back.
Having been a part of The Woodlands community for 30 years, we have loved living and working in these beautiful surroundings and we treasure the sense of community here. Like The Woodlands, we expanded into Creekside in 2018, opening our offices here in our “upscale steampunk” fashion.
Fast forward to 2019 –
Our real estate company was thriving, and we thought about expanding into a space next door that became available. We really didn’t need more space, so we decided to create a gathering place where friends and neighbors could meet in a casual, friendly setting to share a hug, a story, a bite to eat and a delicious cup of coffee. Along with wanting to create a wonderful synergistic environment for The Woodlands, we also wanted to give-back for all of our blessings in my 40+ years in real estate as a top Houston agent.
Voila - thoughts combined and a bit of a rebirth took place - we decided to call our new venture “Lovebeans Coffeehouse”, concentrating on coffee beans instead of cacao beans. Opening in the fall of 2019, we were faced with the Covid crisis six months later, so we started creating simple, tasty treats that customers could grab and take away. Our chocolate had been produced in an organic facility in California, but we decided we only needed small batches of the chocolate. Ryan tried coming in and making the chocolate by hand for a while, but living in California full-time, it became difficult to have it on hand.
Today, we have a great team with our bakers coming in at 5:30 every morning to prepare our homemade pastries and muffins and create our famous chicken salad and avocado toast, making their own sourdough and focaccia bread for the sandwiches, and, of course, our top-notch Baristas create amazing coffee drinks. We give profits from our merchandise to our charity of the month. We also have a monthly market on the third Saturday of the month featuring local vendors. The entry fees from our vendors also go to our local charity of the month.
We love our little coffeehouse and are so happy to “Spread the Love” throughout our great community! We hope you enjoy it as much as we at Corcoran Ferester Realty enjoy providing it for you.
- Beth Ferester, owner.
