Growing up in Oceanside, New York, on Long Island, Scott Kaylin would go to the local Jewish deli with his father every weekend. While he loved the sandwiches, there was something else he also looked forward to: the pickles.
“We’d go to the deli and get appetizers, and while I was waiting for the main course, I’d eat a hot dog with a full sour pickle,” he said. “That memory was burnt into my head.”
Fast forward several decades later, and Kaylin is now a pickle king. He owns Kaylin + Kaylin, a popular pickle bar inside of the Original Farmers Market. There, customers can try the brand’s signature products like the classic dill, jalapeno, honey mustard, spicy garlic spears, sweet heat chips, and bread and butter pickles. The pickles are kosher certified, gluten-free and 100% vegan, and the company ships pickles all around the country.
“We have the classics like kosher dill, but we also have our interesting flavors,” Kaylin said. “A big part of it is the texture and crunch.”
Before establishing Kaylin + Kaylin, he worked in the fashion industry for 30 years, and then he started Champion System, where he made apparel for cyclists.
“I got very embedded in the cycling community for a long time,” Kaylin said. “I drank pickle juice when I was cramping, before it was a fad.”
He started Kaylin + Kaylin in Canada – his wife’s home country – but he couldn’t locate a good pickle in Vancouver, where they were living at the time.
“Sometimes you don’t realize what you’re missing until you don’t have it anymore,” Kaylin said. “For me, that was pickles. I would have four to five jars of pickles in my refrigerator. I’d bring pickles from New York back to Vancouver.”
Kaylin soon decided to attend Picklefest on the Lower East Side of New York, where he talked to different pickle makers. He decided to team up with a third generation pickler and start making his own products.
“I found a place in Vancouver like the Farmers Market,” he said. “I told the owners I wanted to build a pickle bar, and they laughed at me. I told them, ‘If the first Starbucks opened here, you’d be very happy. Think of us as the Starbucks of pickles.’ They said I could do a pop-up table.”
They opened and sold out within six days.
“I knew I had a business,” Kaylin said.
The pickles were in grocery stores and restaurants within just two years, and he started a second location.
Eventually, Kaylin and his wife moved to Los Angeles, which wasn’t known for its pickles, either. In February of 2020, he opened up the pickle bar there.
“We had one of the best openings in the history of the Farmers Market,” he said. “When COVID hit and the shutdowns happened, I was determined to stay open. I went to the health department and told them I ran an essential business, since vegetables are essentials. They said we could stay open, but we couldn’t sample anything.”
Kaylin + Kaylin, with its tagline, “Happiness in every crunch,” stayed open thanks to their loyal customers.
“People would call me up and ask me how many pickles they had to buy that week to make sure we didn’t close,” Kaylin said. “It was really amazing.”
During the pandemic and beyond, the business grew its social media presence, racking up 65,000 followers on Instagram and 167,000 on TikTok. They create videos with influencers and show the various toppings customers can put on their pickles, like smoked salmon with cream cheese and pretzels with chocolate.
“We are the most viral pickle company on these platforms,” Kaylin said. “There are over 50 million views for our brand.”
The entrepreneur credits his success not only to his delicious pickles and his fervent fans, but the fact that he’s also dealing with a food that’s sure to never go out of style.
“There are certain foods that come and go, but the pickle will never go away.”
“There are certain foods that come and go, but the pickle will never go away,” he said. “It’s been around for thousands of years, and it just keeps evolving. Every single ethnic background has pickling in it. It doesn’t matter if you make minimum wage or $100 million per year. Pickles cross every barrier.”
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