Merenda Box brings Brazilian pastries and snacks to Conshohocken

Daniela de Souza was riding high in early 2020 with ’feine, her coffeeshop with three locations in Montgomery County. As the pandemic hit, she was forced to close her shop inside a Bridgeport business complex. When she had trouble sourcing pastries for the other two, in Conshohocken and Skippack, she turned Bridgeport into a commissary bakery.

De Souza baked the usual coffeeshop items, plus an occasional snack she had grown up eating in her native Brazil, starting with the corn cookies her father loved. Sausage rolls (pão com chouriço) and pasteis de nata, the famous Portuguese custard tarts, came later.

“I found that any time that I shared a special connection or a special story about the pastry that I was serving, people really responded,” she said. “People were like, ‘What is this delicious thing?’ That encouraged me. When go into the coffeeshop business, it’s really because you want to connect with people.”

De Souza’s Brazilian pastries and savory snacks are the focus of Merenda Box, a shop she opened last weekend in the former Pete’s Deli in Conshohocken; she bought the building at Hector and Righter Streets a year and a half ago. “Merenda” is a snack break in Brazil between lunch and dinner.

Merenda Box has joined a collection of recent shops selling Portuguese (Gilda, in Fishtown) and Brazilian (Kouklet, in South Philadelphia) foods, outside of the more established shops in the Brazilian enclaves of Northeast Philadelphia.

Merenda Box’s line includes Brazilian sweets alongside sandwiches, ’feine’s coffees, and drinks.

Clearly, de Souza has a following. In her first few days, the lines started at 7 a.m., and although posted hours end at 4 p.m. every day but Monday, the shop has been selling out by 1:30 p.m.

De Souza, 44, grew up in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. At age 15, she and her family moved to Houston and she later settled in Memphis, managing retail stores. When her brother relocated to suburban Philadelphia area for work, she visited and caught a vibe. “While I was here, I got a job interview and within a month I had moved here,” she said. She was living in an East Falls loft and working in King of Prussia when she started house-hunting.

Her Realtor suggested Conshohocken, a former mill town on the Schuylkill bustling with families. “I had never actually even heard of Conshohocken,” she said. “People would talk about the Conshohocken exit [off I-76.] I didn’t even know how to pronounce that.” She bought a house there 13 years ago, “and there was no going back.”

Eleven years ago, she opened her first ‘feine, as a cafe and roastery. Then came what she calls her “little Hallmark fairy tale.” One of her customers was a software engineer named Mark Allen. “I would see him every morning and be like, ‘Hey, there’s that Americano coming in,’” she said. “I didn’t think anything of it.”

Five years ago, they met more formally at one of her friends’ holiday bar crawls. “Then we went out on a date and then that was it,” she said. They were married last summer at a castle in Portugal. Most of the 60 guests were their friends from Conshohocken — a town she has embraced and vice versa.

Retail has its appeal, but serving customers at a coffeeshop suits her in a different way. “It’s such a big exchange of energy,” she said. “They’re giving you money, but you’re giving them coffee or food and you’re sending them off for their day.” Retail is “very different from coffee and food because people are coming to see you when they’re happy.”