On a typical Monday at Fishtown Pickle Project, cucumbers are everywhere: being rinsed, flying through the spear cutter—affectionately named Britney Spears—and getting stuffed into jars with garlic and seasonings. The aroma of vinegar wafts down the hallways of their manufacturing center in the Globe Dye Works building in Frankford, where the staff processes roughly 3,000 pounds of cucumbers each week. Today’s cucumbers will become their Original Sour pickles, says Niki Toscani, co-founder and dietitian at Fishtown Pickle Project.
“We’re still very scrappy,” Toscani says as she squeezes through the narrow corridors of the kitchen, where every table is covered with glass jars and the walls are lined with produce bins and brine tanks.
Toscani co-founded Fishtown Pickle Project with her business and life partner chef Mike Sicinski in 2018. Seven years later, they pride themselves on making small batch, culinary-inspired pickles, where each cucumber is still “touched by hand.”
“A lot of the things that we do are rooted in our value system of sustainability, tradition, wellness, and making bold flavors,” says Toscani.
The couple met through their careers in the food industry, teaching healthy cooking on a budget at a local food bank. Sicinski always had a personal interest in pickling, and occasionally made pickles as gifts for friends and family. When the two got married, Toscani suggested giving out pickles as a wedding favor at their reception.
“People kind of lost their minds and wanted more,” Toscani said.
That first flavor from their wedding reception — Zesty Sweet Garlic —is still in production today.
“That’s the flavor that got us in business,” says Sicinski. “That just was the pickle.”
That fall marked the first annual Pickledelphia festival in Northern Liberties, so the “crazy newlyweds” incorporated as an LLC and joined as a vendor. Fishtown Pickle Project has since grown to eight employees, and their flavor lineup now includes four other core flavors: Original Sour, Philly Dilly Deli, Habanero Dill, and Sweet Onion.
Every six to eight weeks, they also rotate in a new limited batch of pickles. These limited batches are where the “project” part of the business name becomes obvious: they often feature unique seasonal pickled produce, experimental flavor profiles, or collaborations with local farms or small businesses.
“We just released our ginger lemonade pickles, and our friends at Nourish Cold Pressed Juice made a Philly Dilly pickle lemonade,” says Toscani. Both businesses will donate a portion of proceeds from this collaboration to The Attic Youth Center, an organization that works to create opportunities for LGBTQ+ youth in Philadelphia.
Previous limited batches have featured produce like okra, jicama, and asparagus. But highlighting seasonal local produce is not just a culinary goal for Fishtown Pickle Project. Sourcing ingredients as locally and sustainably as possible is central to their mission. For most of the year, cucumbers are not grown locally, but from July through September, FPP partners with Muzzarelli Farms in Vineland, New Jersey to pickle only local cucumbers.
The project is to create joy, connect our people with small businesses, local farmers, and hone in our craft of making a better pickle.”
— Niki Toscani, Fishtown Pickle Project
“The project is to create joy, connect our people with small businesses, local farmers, and hone in our craft of making a better pickle,” Toscani says.
Unlike many other pickles on the market, Fishtown Pickles are acidified or “quick pickled” rather than fermented. This method uses a vinegar-based brine instead of saltwater and is followed by immediate refrigeration, leaving the acid to build flavor and retain crunch.
“That’s how we get big, bold flavors and crunchy pickles,” Toscani says.
Packing their product in glass jars was an important sustainability practice for Fishtown Pickles from the start. “Glass is very hard work. It’s very heavy. It’s expensive. It breaks. It has a lot of challenges, but it also lasts forever,” says Sicinski. They accept empty jars back from customers, and also work with Bottle Underground to collect used jars. “They get sanitized and put right back into production.”
Reducing food waste is another one of their key sustainability initiatives. Any cucumbers that are misshapen or too small get cut into bite-size pieces and added to the tops of each jar. They also compost food scraps with Bennett Compost.
“We’re nearly zero food waste, which is something that we’re very proud of,” says Toscani.
Toscani and Sicinski also host pickling classes in their production kitchen, where they teach customers not only how to make their own pickles, but also how to reuse brine and seasonings for other cooking purposes.
“It’s so refreshing to connect with people face to face and have people say things like, there’s no other pickle like this pickle,” says Toscani. “The process is what makes this product so special.”
Fishtown Pickles are available at all locations of Kimberton Whole Foods. “They are very dear partners of ours.”
