Gretchen Maser, known to many as Christina Maser, didn’t set out to create Christina Maser Co. — a successful small-batch food and home goods business. She just wanted to make something her son, Neil, who at a young age suffered from extreme food allergies, could eat and enjoy. This was in the ’90s, when most grocery stores didn’t stock allergen-free food products on their shelves.
So, Gretchen Maser made her own wholesome, natural and healthy strawberry jam. That one strawberry jam was the start of Christina Maser Co., supplier of award-winning culinary, home care and bath and body products with five employees and a storefront on East Madison Street in Lancaster.
These days Neil Maser, who has since outgrown his allergies, prefers opening a jar of his mom’s Summer Salsa, a recipe that earned Gretchen Maser a first-place honor at the 2020 Spicy Flave Awards and another first-place win at the 2021 International Flavor Artisan Flave Awards.
If you have the recipe, the right ingredients and the equipment, you can preserve foods that will last a long time and still taste as fresh, vibrant and wholesome as they did when you put them in the jar. It’s almost like freezing time.
It doesn’t work that way with people. You can’t really freeze time.
Three weeks after entering the hospital with pneumonia, Gretchen Christina Hoffmayer Maser died May 11 from an aggressive form of lung cancer. She was 63.
Gretchen Maser is survived by her husband, Robert Maser, son Neil Maser, daughter-in-law Sarah Maser, daughter Nora Maser and grandson Greyson.
“She did everything she could to battle it,” says Neil Maser, 31, of Lancaster. “It wasn’t something any of us were expecting. It came out of the blue.”
Even as Gretchen Maser was battling cancer, she still showed up to work.
Gretchen Christina Maser died May 11 after a battle with lung cancer. She was 63.
“The day she got home from the hospital, she was right back at work,” Nora Maser says. “She walked right in with the same attitude she always had, like she’s got stuff to do and she’s going to do it.”
For Neil and Nora Maser, the best they can do is preserve their mother’s legacy by continuing to run her business the way she would’ve run it — by valuing people over profits.
“There is a massive legacy she created, not just within her business, but who she was and what she was able to do in her community,” Neil Maser says. “So I think that we kind of owe it to her to (run the business) the way that she would want it done.”
Nora Maser, 29, says even just as recently as two weeks before her mother died, she couldn’t imagine wanting to run the company, despite working with her mom full time for the past six years and helping out since she was 6 or 7 years old.
“The moment that we walked out of the hospital, I was like, ‘I don’t want to sell it. I want to do it,’ ” Nora Maser says. “Because I know nobody else would be able to fulfill her vision for it. Neil didn’t hesitate either. He was like ‘OK, let’s do this.’ ”
Neil Maser, who owns and operates Urban Werks, a Lancaster-based automotive detailing shop, says his mother taught him some important, if unconventional, lessons about running a business.
“She taught me to not always treat everything as business and relationships mean more than money,” Neil Maser says. “She always wanted her products to be as natural as possible. She would spend a few dollars more for those raw local ingredients, and she was also providing business to local farmers. In her eyes, it was a full circle. She could have made a couple extra bucks here and there but that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to create a product she thought was the best.”
Trish Haverstick, owner of the Lemon Street Market and friend of Gretchen Maser, says the woman’s legacy will be preserved in her food and other products.
“I hope the food keeps continuing on and more and more people get to enjoy it,” Haverstick says. “Because it’s amazing, and they are trying to do it the right way.”
Neil Maser says he and his sister are planning on continuing all their mom’s brand’s staple products, while adding a few more offerings like natural beard care products for men, and are hoping to scale up production and increase expansion across the country.
“I’m hoping that me and my sister taking over this business can provide some sort of silver lining,” Neil Maser says. “Just to showcase this business that my mom has been working her life on.”
Nora and Neil Maser, children of Gretchen Christina Maser, will continue their mother's legacy by continuing her brand of culinary items and home goods.
‘The Martha Stewart of Lancaster’
Gretchen Maser and her husband raised their children in a neighborhood located near D.F. Buchmiller County Park known as Old Linden.
“All the neighbors would refer to my mom as ‘the Martha Stewart of Linden,’ ” Neil Maser says. “Because she was so crafty and was someone you could rely on to have the answer about anything to do with cooking or within the home.”
As her business and reach grew, Gretchen Maser would be known as “the Martha Stewart of Lancaster.” Years after starting her business, some of Gretchen Maser’s jams were featured in Martha Stewart Living magazine.
“It was kind of a full-circle moment,” Neil Maser says. “That definitely meant a lot to her.”
Gretchen Maser also won numerous national Good Food awards and Flave awards, and her products were even featured in a swag bag for the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Haverstick said she’d never heard Gretchen Maser referred to as “The Martha Stewart of Lancaster,” until she read it in her obituary.
“I was like, ‘Oh, that’s actually a really great description,’ because she was always coming up with creative new products,” Haverstick says. “That was probably the part she loved more than anything.”
Gretchen Maser's berry jam is fresh from the oven. Her products were mentioned in several prominent magazines.
Culinary visionary
Char Nolan, a Drexel Hill-based plant-based chef, culinary instructor and food writer, was friends with Gretchen Maser for 15 years. Nolan was an employee at a Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia when they first met.
“I and a few of my colleagues kind of discovered her because we loved her products and their culinary value,” Nolan says. “Gretchen did things 15 to 16 years ago that no one was doing then but everyone is doing today. She was creating healthy dry soup mixes that weren’t loaded with sodium and preservatives but contained locally sourced ingredients like dehydrated vegetables and mushrooms. If you chose one of her mixes, it was the next best thing to being homemade. I always thought of her as being a culinary visionary.”
Another way Gretchen Maser was a visionary according to Nolan was her dedication to eliminating food waste.
“Gretchen never wasted anything,” Nolan says. “She would take a white vinegar and put strawberry pieces in it that weren’t good enough to make jam but she didn’t want to waste them. So she was always reusing food to cut down costs to and to save the environment and be a better environmental steward and things like that. She did that before it was popular. She was always ahead of the curve.”
Nolan says she and Gretchen Maser met for coffee about once a week.
“One of the most interesting things about Gretchen as a business owner is that she made her own deliveries. She would drive from Lancaster once a week to Philadelphia and deliver her goods, whether it was a jam or a pasta sauce or a candle or whatever,” Nolan says. “She wanted people to know she was the face behind the product. Personal relationships were very important to her. Gretchen was kind, caring and showed so much respect to everyone she encountered.”
For Nolan and for Neil Maser — and many others — Gretchen Maser’s way with people is a big part of her legacy.
“She would always have the answers. She would always be ahead of the curve. She would always be a shoulder to lean on,” Neil Maser says. “At a young age, you take it for granted, having somebody like that in your life, but as you grow older, you realize it’s such a powerful thing to be so wholesome and to be so caring with other people.”
MARY ELLEN WRIGHT | Staff Writer
