I Started Selling Popsicles at Seven

Carmen owns Fosetter, our Canadian ginseng and dried-goods shop in Montreal's Chinatown. In her own words, here is how it started.

I started selling popsicles when I was seven. Ice cream bars, popsicles, I was already selling them back then.

The old recipe

This one is our red bean popsicle. We stew red dates and red beans, and once they're done we add brown sugar, and that's how it's made. The milk ice bar is the same, made by hand. It's the old recipe.

These four kinds of sweets are our very own. So when they're sold out, there's no more. Is there any left in the shop right now? Sold out. Sold out. Sold out, OK. Maybe this one still has some. But it's probably sold out too.

I just like making money

I never had any big ambitions. I like selling things. I like making money.

But I don't want the kind of work that's too hard, where you spend all your strength and don't even know what you're doing anymore. I'm a bit of a romantic, I have a bit of heart for things. So I like doing business, and I want to be a businesswoman with heart.

When there was something I wanted to do, my mother never really pushed her opinion on me. I raise my own two kids the same way. I don't pressure them to become this or that. I let them do their own thing.

I came to Montreal in 2001. Before the restaurants, I opened a noodle shop. In 2006 I bought my first restaurant. In 2009 we opened a dessert shop in the same building, and in 2012 we took over another restaurant, so that made three. Restaurants are really hard work. The pressure was big and I had kids to look after, so I rented the dessert shop to two or three partners.

In 2015 they said they didn't want to continue. And I said, don't waste this location, just give it back to me. I was already selling American ginseng wholesale out of a small condo, so I went from wholesale to a shop.

Opening the window

The window came when we were developing our American ginseng tea. Then I thought of Cantonese herbal tea. Back in Guangdong there used to be more herbal tea shops than rice shops, so Cantonese herbal tea is quite famous.

In the first year, nobody knew if it could make money, or if we could keep going. So I told my daughter, let's just do it. Do it well first, then invest more.

That first year there was no window here. It was one big pane of glass. Later we made a little bit of money, I'd say, and then we opened up this window. It has been open for two summers now.

The first summer, my daughter and a young man helped us sell herbal tea and American ginseng tea right out on the street. That was pretty tiring, out in the wind and the sun.

Want to know if the popsicles are still in stock? Come by Fosetter at 78 Rue De La Gauchetière Ouest and ask Carmen.