(upbeat music) - Welcome to You Oughta Know.

I'm Shirley Min, and I am here at the Christmas Village.

The vibe is so cozy.

Surrounded by lights, unique vendor, and their delicious smells just wafting all around me.

It just creates such a beautiful magical holiday experience.

And the food?

Do not get me started on the food.

- [Vendor] You want some snacks?

- Yes, please.

- (speaks German) - Oh, danke.

- Bitte.

- I couldn't resist getting a snack.

(speaks German) That is German for German sweets, or candied roasted almonds.

You can sample some of the food here for yourself or you could even grab a gift for that foodie on your list.

(upbeat music) - I had a psychology degree from Temple with just like a general business minor and was working my full-time job but wanting to have my own business kind of welled up inside of me, and a friend of mine, Caleb Torrice, another Caleb from Tabor Farms out in Chalfont recommended, "Hey, what about natural peanut butters?"

He actually would let me come to his store after hours and used their grinding equipment and experiment and play around.

A lot of our initial recipes, and even still to this day are just the nuts.

Stacey back here is making some pistachio butter.

It is just pistachios and sea salt.

It tastes delicious and it's nutritious on its own.

And then when we mix in some flavor, we don't go too heavy with it.

We keep them light to keep them low in sugar and high in protein.

In 2012, it started out just me at the Lansdale Farmer's Market, and then in 2015 it became a full-time thing.

Picked up some more farmer's markets and started wholesaling just a little bit to certain stores.

In 2017 we moved here to Popcorn Works.

I grew up in this area.

I drove by all the time.

We've taken over more and more chunks of this building until where we are now, which I think we might have more of the building at this point than Popcorn Works.

We've added people and we have 30 total employees.

I love being able to employ local people from the community and it's obviously such a team effort to be able to produce the product, sell the product at events and stores, and I'm just super grateful to have the best employees anywhere.

(upbeat music) Peanuts are actually not a nut at all.

They are a legume.

They grow in the ground.

They're not really a nut, but they have a lot of the same characteristics.

Where we are now is the tree nut department.

So here we make our almond butters, cashew, pistachio, and our white chocolate walnut butter.

Down on the other side of the building is our peanut department, and so peanuts and tree nuts are two different allergens.

I have a nephew that's severely allergic to peanuts, but I got really serious about the peanuts and the tree nuts are not going to touch each other.

They're not going to be made on the same equipment, because I care about this little guy and I care about obviously all of our other customers, so they don't cross paths.

It's no shared equipment between peanuts and tree nuts, and I feel good about that.

We make a classic peanut butter that's peanuts and salt and it's 50% of our whole business.

We make more of that than anything.

With our flavor profiles, I want to be nutty first and I want them to taste good, but even like our dark chocolate almond butter or our cappuccino peanut butter, you'll taste a little bit of the flavoring, but you're mostly going to taste nuts.

I think maybe five or six years ago we added a habanero honey peanut butter, which is my personal favorite to this day.

It's got a little bit of a kick, it's not crazy hot, and a little bit of sweetness too from the honey.

And another thing that we like to do these days is make some limited edition flavors.

The one we have going right now is a wild espresso peanut butter made with Backyard Beans coffee.

It is delicious.

We are up to 18 consistent flavors now.

I want to keep getting better.

I want to keep trying new flavors.

We are a local business.

It's who we are.

My motto is kind of Philly first, so we want to be the Philly area nut butter.

I love this area and the people that we employ, the people that work here, the stores that we sell to, it's all local.

I've had my eye on the Christmas Village for a long time.

This was a big deal for us.

First year we're doing it.

It's 50 days in a row.

We're thrilled to be there.

So I'm enjoying the journey, wherever it takes me.

(upbeat music) (jingly Christmas music) - The Christmas Village is a huge draw for visitors, especially here at the Kathe Wohlfahrt tent, the place for handcrafted authentic German ornaments.

Take a look at this, it's exquisite.

I come to the Christmas Village every year on my birthday and I pick out a new ornament for myself right here.

Let's go meet someone who's going to tell us about how the Christmas Village got started.

(music continues) Claire Kunovic with the Market joins me now.

Claire, thank you so much for having us here.

I just found out that you live in Germany, but you come to Philly every year just for the Christmas Village?

- Correct.

Well, actually our whole organizing team, so the whole core management team is from Germany and we come here every year to make it as authentic as possible.

- I love that.

So how did this whole Christmas Village, this tradition get started here in Philadelphia?

- It's actually a super interesting story.

So our CEO and President Thomas Bauer, he came here 16 years ago to visit his now wife.

She was an au pair back then in Chicago, and they strolled around the Christmas market in Chicago and he thought, "Wow, how beautiful is it to have a piece of home here in the United States?"

because Christmas markets are just essentially the German thing, If you really think about it.

- It really gets you in the spirit.

- Yeah, and then he noticed that Pennsylvania has a really large German population and a lot of people with a German background, German omas and opas, or grandmas and grandpas, how you would say, and he thought Philadelphia would be the perfect spot to have a authentic German Christmas market.

- 2008 was the first year for the market.

So how has it changed and grown over the years?

- The Christmas Village has gotten bigger and better every year.

It's so exciting.

Every year we come up with something new that's never been done before.

Like this year for instance, we have a Festival of Trees, because we believe the holidays are all about giving back.

So it's a charity basically where people can vote for their favorite trees, and the trees were decorated by a lot of local Philly businesses, and then all the funds go to CHOP, so the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

- I love the idea of giving back.

There are tons of family-friendly events as well.

Can you tell me about some of those?

- Yes, we have a cooperation with the Free Library of Philadelphia, and they come out every Tuesday around noon to read to children.

So it's a little story time.

It's so cute to see the kids enjoy Christmas stories.

Then we also have a Make-A-Wish wall where people can buy little hearts and all the funds go to Make-A-Wish Foundation, and then families can write their wishes on the hearts and post them on the wall.

It's beautiful.

- Oh Claire, thank you so much, and we'll catch up with you later.

There is still so much more to this Philly holiday experience, but first let's check out the handcrafted gifts at Maker Missya, and the glass-blown ornaments at Antolini Glass Company.

(laid-back acoustic music) - My business originally started as a hobby, and I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to create a full-time business around it.

Medusa is an ridiculously powerful image and woman, Medusa is an ridiculously powerful image and woman, so I really wanted to use her feminine energy to create my logo, and she turns things into stone, so I wanted to embrace that because I turn things into stone, and now it's stone pieces for the stone-cold at heart.

I create all of my pieces out of cement, and I create all the color within the cement from different pigments that I've created my own recipes for.

And so all the color that you see in the pieces is not painted on afterwards, it's all within the piece.

I outsource a majority of my molds from smaller businesses from all over the world.

My style's a little bit more, a little touch of gothic, a little dash of medical, and I like to do things with Greek mythology, with different anatomy pieces, women empowerment, with different anatomy pieces, women empowerment, or sometimes just classic, simple styles of different planters that people really enjoy for their household.

With cement, there's no guidebook.

So each component within cement changes the chemistry, and you want a very durable piece, especially.

You know, when people think cement, they think durability.

So that's what I intended for this, was the durability of cement, but the look of porcelain with a nice gloss on the outside.

After we're done pouring, we then have to de-mold, and then from de-molding we then go and we do a little bit of sanding, fine detailing.

And then after that we seal it and make it plant-safe or fire-safe for whatever it is that you're using it for.

One of the things that I want people to experience is a lot of inclusivity, where if they see it, they feel like they're included within the art, whether it be the LGBT community, which I'm a part of.

Really it's about bringing something beautiful into your home and into your life that brings you joy when you look at it.

So I really wanted to emphasize that everyone is welcome within my pieces and you can always find a little piece of yourself.

People look at the skulls, some people get a little grossed out, but some people really enjoy them.

Especially with the double skulls, they think that it looks like two lives coming into one, so they give it as a wedding present.

One of my main pieces that I do are called my sprinkle jawns.

When I level off the cement, I have a lot of chips that fall onto the table and rather than throw them away, I try to repurpose as much as possible.

So they go back into other pieces and they create these sprinkle jawns with little beveled edges that each tell a story from a previous pour or a previous piece that I was using.

One of my newest pieces is the 20 minute meditation kits.

So I make all the little cement holders, and each of the candles are made by a candle maker in Oregon.

Each one of the candles lasts exactly 20 minutes, so there's a clean burn, there's no wax buildup, and it gives you that timer to really reset and get back to that center that you need to be.

Everyone has embraced it and it's been a really awesome experience and really great community.

- [Gemma] We are really proud to be a local Philadelphia business.

It's been really nice to kind of become rooted in this area, especially in this building.

There's a lot of local businesses and local artisans here that we've gotten to know in the past year, and so being able to sell the ornaments that we make two miles away from where we make them feels really good and really important.

(light-hearted music) The two of us met at a glassblowing workshop in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

We had a mutual friend who was like, "Oh, you two should blow glass together."

So we partnered up and we started blowing glass together.

We were just a good fit.

It's not always when you work with somebody that you can be so in sync, especially when you're doing things that rely on a lot of really subtle cues.

Glass blowing is a challenge.

It's something that you can spend your entire life studying and trying to get better at.

I think that glass blowing, it's artistic, but it's really physical and athletic and challenging, and it's also really mesmerizing.

Our process kind of begins hours before we even sit at the bench.

All of our glass begins as little discs of clear glass called cullet that we then melt in our furnace to about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and then from there we gather the clear glass out on a blow pipe, add colors, and shape it.

When we're done shaping it, we put it in our kiln, and it cools for about 12 hours.

So the actual act of making a strawberry or a blueberry takes about three minutes.

- The process of making our ornaments happens so quickly that we have to be in sync with each other.

And so you'll notice in the process, one person will be gathering while the other person is taking the ornament off the pipe and putting it away.

And so the moment that that piece gets in the kiln, the next one has the color already melted on and the bubble already popped.

And so with this efficient process that we've learned from the Venetian glass blowing method, we're able to create ornaments at a fast pace and at an affordable price.

- [Gemma] But the entire process of making it takes about two days.

Two.

Done.

- [Tate] Nice.

So we have glass acorn ornaments, glass strawberry ornaments.

We have blueberries, pickles, pineapples.

We're going to have Christmas trees and snowmen too.

Those are all very unique ornaments Those are all very unique ornaments that you can't really find anywhere else in the world.

(upbeat music) All right.

The acorn ornament, the way we apply the hook to the ornament is actually by pulling it out of the the top.

Same thing with the strawberry.

We actually, instead of adding a glass hook on top of it, we actually grab the glass melted in that area and twirl it around to make its own loop.

And that's just a technique that hasn't really been seen anywhere else and that we've been working hard to develop.

- [Gemma] Something handmade really has a story behind it.

Every single move that we make in the hot shop going from molten glass towards a final product, that story is told within each piece, be it the colors or even little cut marks or little details.

I think it's just, having something that's made by hand is so different is so different because you can picture the person who made it.

You can imagine the way it's made.

And I think glass is such a mystery.

There's just something really magical and special about glass specifically, and that you can pull a molten blob out of the furnace and then the possibilities are endless for what it's going to end up looking like.

(jingly Christmas music) - Claire, we just watched some stories featuring vendors that you can find here at the Made in Philly Market, which is at Dilworth Park over by City Hall.

Tell me what's so special about this market?

- The Made in Philadelphia Market, as the name already says, it is just local vendors from Philadelphia and the Tri-state area, and they all offer handcrafted things, so it's pretty awesome.

- And so why did you decide to expand the village in this way?

- One thing that everyone who comes to Philly notices right away is that the people of Philadelphia love Philly, and we agree and we wanted to give local small businesses a chance to have a place where they can offer their things made in Philly.

- I love that.

Claire, what are some of the activities we can do on this side of the market?

- We have an ice skating rink, so ice skating is a big one.

We have a huge Ferris wheel over on the North Rock section and we have a double decker carousel in the courtyard.

- [Shirley] Double decker?

- [Claire] Yeah, it's double the fun.

- Claire, thank you so much.

- [Claire] Thank you.

- Well, if you are looking for a gift that captures the essence of Philadelphia, then stop by the Philly Duo Booth.

(jingly Christmas music) - Hi there, I'm Alicia Levantini with Art by Alicia.

- And I'm Tonya Mason with Mason Made.

- And together we're Philly Duo.

- Welcome to our booth.

I create pen and ink illustrations of Philly.

I do specific landmarks, really cool houses, bars and restaurants, and just iconic Philly spots here and right beyond the city as well.

- [Tonya] And I work with locally-foraged sycamore and London plane from in and around the Philly area to make one-of-a-kind holiday goodies for everyone to enjoy.

We thought that our work really complimented each other because we both have a very solid Philly theme behind our work.

- This is all local.

So this is like really the heartbeat of Philadelphia, is our small businesses, Philly love.

- [Tonya] There's a lot of people that live in this city that this is where they do their holiday shopping.

In this day and age, it's really important to support small businesses, and it's really important to shop local and you can get things here that you cannot find at the big box stores.

- [Alicia] It creates a connection with the small business.

You're looking at the artist, you're looking at the creator who spent hours and love on this product.

It's a really unique experience.

(light-hearted music) Stoops of Fairmount was my first ever creation.

It was a love letter to the neighborhood and a love letter to the city.

I created a poster called Stoops of Philly, and I always describe it as taking a long walk through Philadelphia.

It has houses from all different neighborhoods of the city and I've turned my hand drawn pen and ink illustrations into so many different products, stickers, magnets, greeting cards, prints, posters, and I have so many different locations that I've done.

Super iconic Philly locations, landmarks, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Elfreth's Alley, City Hall, these beautiful historic landmarks that I've always admired, and how I feel like I have such an intimate connection with them.

And it's just been a really cool way to further connect with Philadelphia.

- [Tonya] Mason Made makes ornaments.

We also make one-of-a-kind holiday dioramas.

It's easy to show you, but it would be a lot easier to explain if you just came with me to my workshop.

(jingly Christmas music) This is where all the magic happens.

(light-hearted music) I'm going to take you through the process of building one of our fanatic dioramas for the holidays.

We are surrounded by a ton of wood, and this magical wood is sycamore and London plane.

That's all we use.

It's a very stately, well-known tree here in Philly.

This is the start of a diorama.

This is the base.

The reason I make these is because I get to create a magical little world on this piece of sycamore with trees and figurines, and it gives me this element of escapism to kind of go into this little world.

The next step from here is I go over and sand it to get it all nice and smooth.

This is our staging area.

All of these slices of sycamore have been cut and dried.

We have anything from the bigger diorama bases to the typical size.

to the typical size.

We also do tea light candles.

The next step is in the studio space, and that's where all the real magic happens.

This is like my little Santa's workshop.

During the early season, we do a lot of things with live plants and fresh flowers.

And then during the holiday season, right about September, we transition into doing everything holiday.

So we do our ornaments and our holiday dioramas.

I like to source vintage trees.

The more vintage the better.

So I get a lot of my stuff from resellers.

I have all of my garland to decorate the trees, all of my candles, my figures, all of my candles, my figures, more Christmas stuff than probably one person needs, but I love it and I use it all.

These guys do great at the Made in Philadelphia Holiday Market.

Everything just exudes Philly, from the wood to the fanatic.

These are also extraordinarily vintage at this point.

There's an element of recognition that people have with it, and what's more Philly than the Philly fanatic?

So it works out great, tying in Christmas and such a strong element of Philly together, and really making people smile is what I like to do.

Every Christmas tree needs a little star to finish it off.

(magical music) And there we go.

The Philly fanatic diorama.

(jingly Christmas music) - We are back at the Christmas Village and we are warming up with something called gluhwein here from Mazza Wine.

I'm here with my friend, Greg.

- Hello.

- Greg, tell me about gluhwein.

It's delicious.

- It is delicious.

Gluhwein is a German traditional wine.

It's a mulled wine served warm.

It actually dates back to the 1400s in Germany.

It translates roughly to "glow wine," which is how you feel when you drink it.

- I definitely feel glowy.

- Absolutely.

It's very glowy.

What comes through in the drink is cinnamon, clove, vanilla, a little bit of sugar.

It's deliciously tart, but also has a bit of citrus at the end that I think gives it its real glow.

- And tell me about Mazza wines itself.

- Absolutely.

So Mazza, this is their first year partnering with the Christmas Village, which is really exciting.

But Mazza has been around for a long time.

They've been producing wine for over 50 years in Pennsylvania.

They're actually the largest producer of wine in Pennsylvania.

- I didn't know that.

- They are.

They're based out of Erie County, but they have bottles and operations across the entire state, including at Reading Terminal Market nearby.

They have been making the Victorian holiday wine for many decades, which serves as the base for this particular wine that we're having here.

And they're also serving other wines around the village.

- I love the spices.

This is so... - It's delicious.

- So good.

- Yes, absolutely.

It goes down pretty easy.

- A little too easy.

(laughs) Greg, thank you so much.

Cheers.

- Absolutely, cheers.

- This would pair so nicely with so many food options here.

Like Raclette, the ooey gooey Swiss cheese sandwich, or a classic bratwurst topped with all the fixings or an authentic German pretzel.

From gluhwein to beer.

this is the Christmas kolsch.

Brewery Techne brews it, And the small local brewery supplies this German-style beer to the village on tap.

- [Stew] Welcome to Bar Hygge and Brewery Techne right here in Spring Garden, Philadelphia.

(relaxing piano music) - [Shirley] Let's talk about first, what does hygge mean?

- [Stew] So hygge means...

The real definition is recreating the warm feeling you get when you spend time with friends and family.

So most people translate that to cozy, but it's more than that.

So we built out a restaurant where we wanted people to connect with each other.

It's a Danish word, and in Denmark they have cold long winters.

So instead of you and I saying, "Hey, let's go have a beer" or "Let's go have a glass of wine," we would say, "Let's go have some hygge."

- I like it.

Brewery Techne is the brewery inside Bar Hygge.

It's a small brewery and their beers gravitate towards the German style, making it a great fit for the German-inspired Christmas village.

How did that relationship start?

- I learned later, Thomas was looking for a local brewery, you know, he wants to do all things local in the Christmas Village, so- - Thomas the organizer.

- Thomas the organizer of the Christmas Village.

I said, "We might be that brewery."

So we met and got together and it seemed like a perfect fit, because the Christmas Village has that same kind of hygge vibe a little bit.

So we're a small brewery and we said, "We can do this, but we can't do it alone."

So we collaborate with another brewery called Mainstay Independent.

- [Shirley] This was back around 2017.

And Brewery Techniques has been supplying beer to the Christmas Village ever since.

The beer's on draft at the Village?

- Beer's on draft at the Village.

There's four styles.

The Christmas Village Kolsch, the Poplar Pils, and our Lemon Meringue IPA.

- Mmm, that sounds like it might be one of my favorites.

- You'll have to try that, you'll have to try some.

- Oh, don't you worry about it.

I will try it.

Brewer Duffy Lonergan pours me a couple beers to try.

(light-hearted music) - The Christmas Village Kolsch is something that we make specifically for the Christmas Village.

It's a German-style recipe, so it's a hybrid ale.

It's going to be clean, it's crisp, it's really refreshing, it's an easy-drinking beer, and it has really subtle fruity notes if you're really trying to pay attention.

The Lemon Meringue is our house IPA.

We brew that beer year round.

We always have that here.

We brew that.

It's a pale IPA.

We put in some Citra hops and we brew it with a little bit of lemon zest.

So it is citrus forward.

It's not too lemony, but it is very, very drinkable.

We collaborate with Mainstay Independent and they do some beers for their own as well.

One of them is a Bock, it's a little bit darker.

It's also a German-style beer and they make a Pilsner, the Poplar Pils, which they brew year-round for their brewery as well, and that's going to be like a traditional pilsner.

- [Stew] It's really fun to be able to see our beer out there in the Christmas Village.

There's a lot of hard work that goes into it to prepare for it, especially as a smaller brewery, but with a partner like Mainstay and the people that we have working for us and the people at Christmas Village, it's just something that we weren't sure whether it was going to work out initially, and now we can't do without it.

So it's really been a great thing for all of us.

(jingly Christmas music) - What's not to love about the Christmas Village and Made in Philly?

So you have to come check it out.

Thanks so much for watching You Oughta Know.

We will see you next week.

Goodnight.

(jingly Christmas music)