The original-recipe chicken salad from Shy’s Eats includes only chicken breast, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, salt and pepper.
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Shahila “Shy” Abbasi, left, and her wife, Jessica Lennon Abbasi, work a table at a September product launch at a Clifton Park Market 32 store for chicken salad from Abbasi’s company, Shy’s Eats.
Provided by by Shahila Abbasi/Shy’s Eats
Six Market 32 stores carry egg salad from Shy’s Eats, as well as five versions of its chicken salad, including, from left, original, Buffalo, cranberry-walnut, dill pickle and curry.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
Original-recipe chicken salad from Shy’s Eats, left, and curry with sundried cranberries.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
The Price Chopper/Market 32 homegrown selection of regional products includes many sauces, marinades, dressings and other shelf-stable items, as well as eggs, cheese and produce, but at present it has only three lines of locally made prepared foods, with Shy’s Eats chicken salad and egg salad the most recent additions.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
Available on the prepared-foods shelves near Market 32’s deli counters, Shy’s Eats chicken salad is $11.99 for a 1-pound tub, or $1 more than the store brand.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
In this case, the chicken came before the egg.
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Longtime Albany chef Shahila “Shy” Abbasi turned chicken salad, the most popular item from her Shy’s Eats meal-prep company, into a product available at six Price Chopper/Market 32 locations. Rolled out over the summer, five types of chicken salad, as well as Shy’s Eats egg salad, are being formally announced by the supermarket chain on Monday, and Abbasi will host tastings at two stores in October.
“Never in a million years did I, a little girl growing up in the South End of Albany and walking down the aisles of Price Chopper with my mom, ever think something I created would be on a shelf there,” Abbasi said. “You don’t dream that big.”
She started Shy’s Eats almost three years ago to sell prepared meals. As the menu grew to encompass what are now 58 products, the company’s chicken, egg and tuna salads, originally offered as add-on items, became increasingly popular with customers.
“People were just going crazy for the chicken salad,” Abbasi said. Especially interested were fellow gymgoers whom Abbasi got to know during a workout-and-weight-loss journey begun a few years ago. The simplicity of the original chicken salad — nothing more than finely minced chicken breast, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, salt and pepper — appealed to those focused on maximizing protein intake with minimal kitchen effort.
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Additional flavors eventually followed, including curry, because curried chicken salad had long been a popular special when Abbasi was executive chef of McGeary’s Pub in Albany, as well as top-selling dill pickle, Buffalo (with heat from Frank’s RedHot, naturally) and cranberry-walnut.
While shopping at a Price Chopper/Market 32, Abbasi noticed the chain’s homegrown selection of locally made products and began asking about how to get her chicken salad to be among them. Over the summer, after 18 months of negotiations, testing and many more of the factors involved in scaling up, Shy’s Eats chicken salad and egg salad began appearing.
“There’s something special about seeing a local entrepreneur’s vision make its way onto our shelves,” Blaine Bringhurst, president of Market 32 and Price Chopper, said in a statement. “We’re proud to support local businesses like Shy’s Eats while giving our customers more opportunities to enjoy high-quality products made right here in the communities we live and work in.”
Priced at $11.99 per pound, $1 more than the Price Chopper/Market 32 house brands, Shy’s Eats chicken salad and egg salad are sold at six Market 32s: 1018 Route 146, Clifton Park; 15 Park Ave., Clifton Park; 1706 Western Ave., Guilderland; routes 20 and 155, Guilderland; One Kendall Way, Malta; and 1395 New Scotland Ave., Slingerlands. Abbasi will host tastings from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on two Saturdays: Oct. 3 in Malta and Oct. 17 at the store at routes 20 and 155 in Guilderland.
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She makes and packages all of the chicken and egg salads herself in a commercial kitchen and delivers the tubs — currently, about 200 pounds weekly of the chicken salad, less for egg salad — to the six stores, rotating the stock according to handwritten “best by” date stickers. (The products are good for up to 10 days.)
Currently, Shy’s Eats is one of only three local companies with prepared foods sold by Price Chopper/Market 32, alongside Ally B’s Mac & Cheese from Albany restaurateur Kizzy Williams and pulled pork and ribs with Smith’s Smokeshack & Kitchen barbecue sauce, created by chef Tim Smith and introduced in stores in August. Price Chopper/Market 32 spokesman Solomon Sayed said the company is “actively exploring opportunities to expand the homegrown mix” of prepared foods. Shy’s Eats chicken and egg salads are being sold on an open-ended agreement rather than on a trial basis, he said.
Abbasi’s wife, Jessica Lennon Abbasi, is her biggest cheerleader and all-around helper with Shy’s Eats, Abbasi said, but Jessica prefers to avoid hands-on kitchen duty. She loathes mayonnaise.
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“How do you hate mayonnaise?” Abbasi said. “When she helps me weigh it out — the drama! The drama of having to touch it, that it might get on her! So I just do it.”
Dining and Cooking