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<p>WEST PITTSTON &#8212; What started as a vision for iGourmet.com CEO Spencer Chesman became a successful reality.</p><p>Twenty years later, Chesman&#8217;s vision is still forward-looking.</p><p>His company distributes specialty cheeses, fine foods and gift baskets through its website, iGourmet.com.</p><p>The company orders food from sources worldwide; it then is imported to iGourmet.com&#8217;s warehouse in West Pittston. Items that businesses and individuals order online at iGourmet.com are delivered from there.</p><p>Chesman said at least 40 people work for the company year-round, but when the holiday season &#8212; Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year&#8217;s &#8212; rolls around, more than 200 people are working.</p><p>Local businesses that carry iGourmet products include Sabatini&#8217;s Pizza in Exeter, Wild Pennsylvania Beef Jerky &amp; Cheese Shop in Wilkes-Barre, City Market Cafe in Dallas and Wilkes-Barre, Pen-Mart in Dallas, Crossing Vineyards in Plains Township, and Beta Bread Bakery in Clarks Summit.</p><p>Outside of the United States, Chesman said iGourmet.com recently signed a deal with China to distribute products to various businesses that serve the entire country.</p><p>According to Chesman, 47, iGourmet.com has about 7,000 products in its warehouse, including meats, honey, jams and gift baskets. But iGourmet.com probably is best known for its imported cheeses.</p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s how we got started,&#8221; Chesman said. &#8220;It&#8217;s difficult to handle for other shippers because you have to keep it cold for transit. Also, cheeses come in giant wheels, and we have a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture cutting room where we can take the larger wheels and cut them down.&#8221;</p><p>Cheeses are kept in refrigerators inside the iGourmet.com warehouse.</p><p>Bob Schappert, who is in charge of the company&#8217;s inventory control and food safety, said it&#8217;s a challenge to keep inventory on everything that comes in, especially with perishable food and determining expiration dates.</p><p>&#8220;One of our things, weekly, is asking if it&#8217;s too soon of a sell-by date,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We keep everything electronically recorded on our watch, and we&#8217;re constantly swapping out inventory, making sure the customer has the farthest date.&#8221;</p><p>With the large amount of cheese at iGourmet, it would be easy for some to sit for too long and go bad, but Schappert said that generally isn&#8217;t the case.</p><p>&#8220;That doesn&#8217;t happen too often,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We don&#8217;t buy 50 wheels of something. &#8230; (We&#8217;ve) gotten used to knowing what to order and how much. But if something does run bad, we just toss it away.&#8221;</p><p>Schappert, who has worked at iGourmet.com for 11 years, said the company is about more than ordering cheese and food to ship to consumers &#8212; it&#8217;s about family.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just a tight family here,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I like the work, I like the atmosphere. It&#8217;s just a good place to work.&#8221;</p><p>Family is what inspired Chesman to start iGourmet.com; he got the idea from working in his family&#8217;s business, the International Gourmet World of Cheese Club.</p><p>&#8220;My parents closed that business in the &#8217;80s because of the economics of the business at the time, where shipping actually became more expensive than the product itself,&#8221; Chesman said.</p><p>He started iGourmet in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., in 1997 and called it a &#8220;reboot&#8221; of his family business.</p><p>After seven years, company growth required a relocation, and Chesman said after much research, West Pittston was the ideal spot.</p><p>&#8220;We outgrew the building (in New York), and rather than re-invest in a building where rents were very expensive and labor was very expensive, we conducted a search to find an area that was more well-suited to what we&#8217;re doing, but is also close enough to our suppliers where we can conveniently make our pickups,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Our suppliers are in New Jersey, and we settled on this area because the labor pool was very hard-working and efficient.&#8221;</p><p>Chesman also said the West Pittston location makes for easier pickups at various locations in New Jersey, as well as faster deliveries on the ground. He said that delivery extends as far as Missouri, Florida and Maine, and the company delivers to other parts of the country by air.</p><p>&#8220;That map is much more detailed than what we had in New York,&#8221; Chesman said. &#8220;It was very strategic to work here.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">iGourmet.com employee Bob Schappert, Kingston, scans products as he fills out an order for shipment. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_iGourment.com-2-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>iGourmet.com employee Bob Schappert, Kingston, scans products as he fills out an order for shipment. </caption0><photoCredit0>Photos by Tony Callaio | For Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_iGourment.com-3-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Tracy Breymeir, West Pittston, readies iGourmet.com boxes of products to be shipped out for the day. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_iGourment.com-3-1.jpg</photo1><caption1>Tracy Breymeir, West Pittston, readies iGourmet.com boxes of products to be shipped out for the day. </caption1><photoCredit1>Photos by Tony Callaio | For Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_iGourment.com-1-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">iGourmet.com, led by CEO Spencer Chesman, has been in West Pittston for 13 years. The company ships food products worldwide. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/web1_iGourment.com-1-1.jpg</photo2><caption2>iGourmet.com, led by CEO Spencer Chesman, has been in West Pittston for 13 years. The company ships food products worldwide. </caption2><photoCredit2>Photos by Tony Callaio | For Times Leader </photoCredit2></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Jimmy Fisher</p><p>jfisher@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>iGOURMET.COM</strong></p><p>&#8226; <strong>Year Opened:</strong> 1997</p><p>&#8226; <strong>Owner:</strong> Spencer Chesman</p><p>&#8226; <strong>Phone:</strong> 570-602-3800</p><p>&#8226; <strong>Website:</strong> <a href="http://www.igourmet.com/?source=pepperjam&amp;utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_term=igourmet&amp;gclid=CjwKEAjw8OLGBRCklJalqKHzjQ0SJACP4BHrx4ssag8sWPP5HfjsNLjrigTNNqSJICzLuPBeCcOtWBoCBH7w_wcB" target="_blank">www.igourmet.com</a></p><p>&#8226; <strong>Notabl</strong>e: iGourmet.com offers a Cheese of the Month and a Tea of the Month around the holiday season.</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Jimmy Fisher at 570-704-3972 or on Twitter @SD_JimmyFisher</p></shirttailMeta></div>

iGourmet in West Pittston offers plethora of items at the click of a button