Magazine article
Below I’ve attached an article someone asked us to write for their online magazine which as of now hasn’t manifested itself. I’ll leave it unedited from when I submitted so it can maintain the vibe. It was written at the height of covid during the summer of 2020.
APEM. The point is to bloom.
The following is the APEM story “in our words” and as a warning we speak Jersey. Clutch those pearls and watch those britches.
APEM is a gelato and sorbet company founded by Alex Saneski and Jennifer Ko. APEM is about Alex’s desire to just “spin that shit” meaning to just freestyle the gelato making to our desires and make customers feel amazing. It is also a means of celebrating being back in New Jersey after so many years away. And APEM is rooted in a spiritual outlook to bloom is the point of life.
The story of APEM starts with its predecessor, Cremeux Ex Machina which was our previous business in California. Whereas one focused on form the other tries to capture the essence of a gelato store. I like to think of them as opposites or mirror images, but that is not true. Cremeux Ex Machina exists within APEM just like how my own reserved stoic personality exists within my uncouth side and vice versa.
Jennifer and I moved to California to start our own gelato company, Cremeux Ex Machina. Jennifer is the classic SoCal girl. She goes to the mall, hangs at the beach, loves to cruise around, worked at In & Out, and food is sushi and tacos. For her it’s home. My own desire to be in California was fueled by an idea to create the ideal gelato company. Upon arriving we had no real idea where to open up. We looked around SoCal and the Bay Area. At some point along the way we decided to focus on finding good milk. I became very specific to Jersey Cow milk due to its higher fat content and the chill persona of the cows themselves. We called up and down the state to dairy farms and you know how many positive responses we got? One. A dairy farmer from the Northern California town Petaluma along the Sonoma-Marin border was game.
Cremeux Ex Machina was a methodical project. Before we founded it I spent time making gelato for someone else and grew to the point where I wasn’t free. As Cremeux Ex Machina we focused on sourcing the best possible ingredients across the board. We bought strawberries, peaches, and citrus from some of the best farms in California. As Cremeux Ex Machina we did things according to the seasons and focused on a certain purity in our flavors. I now had the ability to make my ideal gelato company. But I fell into a trap and happened to be in the worst place for it.
Ideology is something that forms the fabric of our modern society, but never have I seen it so strong as in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s suffocating. Yet we conformed to it. It being the LOS: Local, Organic, and Sustainable as we like to phrase it. In a way its a refreshing ideology if you drink a bit of it here and there. But a full dose in a place like California is certifiable. The only truly free people there are the vagabonds. It’s not that I don’t agree with the ideas, but when you discover that in a modern mass society those ideas are impossible then what else is there to be but jaded? We had amazing customers there, but the whole scene was too much. We just couldn’t flower.
Cremeux Ex Machina was an intellectual pursuit, and APEM is more about an abandonment of that. As Cremeux Ex Machina we were big on sourcing the very best milk possible, and as APEM I know I can make amazing gelato with milk bought at a random 7/11 (though that’s not the case lol). If anything I now see myself as a DJ and people are calling in making requests. Sometimes I’m like “hell yeah son let’s blast that shit”. And other sometimes I’m like “what are you talking about dude that song is bombed out”.
To bloom into something where people can feel amazing and let themselves go is the core goal of APEM. Actually I don’t even want amazing. When people eat our gelato I want them to feel like gods where everything dissolves away. It’s crazy to think that way and its not possible but that’s the emotion we put into it.
I finally came back to New Jersey after nearly 8 years rotting away in California. Jennifer and I were determined to continue making gelato. Being from New Jersey saved my life. Or rather being from Passaic did. If I wasn’t I’d surely be dead by now. The little world it provided for me growing up exposed me to so many things good and bad. This is also a place where everyone’s from somewhere else and provides us with the opportunity to travel through the flavors. For some it will remind them of home in their new home. So a core focus of APEM has been about being here in New Jersey. I don’t mean in a cliche kind of way, but rather you just shut up, go, and everyone’s part of the party. What’s more Jersey than that?
APEM can’t be creative, fun, interesting, or achieve its goal unless it’s rooted in a spiritual element. And I’m not referring to some new age kind. I mean the kind where you take joy in doing the same thing over and over again as if it was part of your soul. This is because in order to really bloom your roots have had to get strong and break through the concrete of this society. I’ve been mentioning the importance of blooming, but APEM isn’t a flower. It’s a weed. Many won’t even know we exist, some may dismiss us, a few may hate us, but at the end of it we will thrive and bloom in spite of it all for however long possible. And all we need is a crack whereas most need fancy soil with balanced PH.
Lastly, we also don’t see APEM as a forever project. At some point it’s going to need to go away. Partly this is my own spiritual sense, but I also think that most businesses that last for too long become stale and the customers become worn out. The whole thing becomes a routine. I suppose maybe that’s the goal of businesses today, but very few of them achieve a consistency to their original story. The only way I envision APEM lasting beyond 8 years is if it’s all like a giant gelato party. Imagine open only on the weekends but we go hard where you get lost in the chocolate gelato, the saffron creamsicle gelato tastes like some fierce Andalusian woman dancing flamenco, and the tropical punch sorbet just wants to make you strip naked and dump yellow paint all over yourself and run around town. None of this will ever happen, but it’s the emotion behind APEM. Besides the ending is the usually the best part.
My last point is that life is dirty, chaotic, unpredictable, and most of the time disappointing. But that doesn’t mean to give up doing your own thing. In fact, your life should be partially about waving a giant middle finger to all the wankers. As Cremeux Ex Machina we wanted to create an environment where we could bloom into a wondrously beautiful planned out flower. But at some point we realized not only was that uncontrollable it wasn’t desirable. Life’s a sidewalk crack and bloom like the craziest weed you’ve ever seen. Just go with it and see where it takes you.
