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Can a store devoted only to spices succeed in these hard economic times? The people at Penzeys Spices, which opened in November in downtown Menlo Park, think so. After all, even in the worst of times, people have to eat. And if they’re not dining out as often, cooks become more creative at home.
Those creative juices start flowing when you visit Penzeys Spices, located in a new building at 771 Santa Cruz Ave. First of all, it smells good. Open a “smelling jar” and there’s the scent of cinnamon. Not just your everyday supermarket cinnamon. There’s Chinese cassia cinnamon, Vietnamese cassia cinnamon, Korintje cinnamon, and Ceylon cinnamon. Penzeys’ sales people are glad to explain the difference.
The specialty spice company offers more than 250 spices, herbs and seasonings.
Jars and packets are attractively displayed on rustic wooden crates. As you wander from display to display, the “smelling jars” invite you to open and smell, but no tasting is allowed. “If you like the smell, you’ll like the taste,” says company spokeswoman Margie Gibbon, who came to Menlo Park for the store opening.
She was happy to learn that Menlo Park’s farmers’ market is open every Sunday of the year in the parking lot adjacent to the store. “We’re getting a lot of walk-in traffic. Back in the Midwest our farmers’ markets are only open from June to September.”
Penzeys Spices, headquartered near Milwaukee, has 40 stores nationwide. This is the second store to open in California; the first is located in Southern California.
How does the company decide where to open a store? “We look to where we already have a high concentration of mail-order customers,” says Ms. Gibbon.
Bill Penzey, 45, started his company as a mail-order business. He grew up in the food business, working for his father, who ran a coffee and tea delivery service in Milwaukee. He opened his first retail store in a 300,000-square-foot facility just outside Milwaukee.
The store has a down home Midwestern charm. There are recipes on the shelves for customers wondering how to use certain spices. “Grandma’s Kitchen” is a homey section furnished in 1930s style with a refrigerator, a sink and a cupboard. Shelves are brimming with cocoa, vanilla, and sweet-smelling spices.
“Grandma” would also appreciate the store’s range of prices. Tiny 1/4-cup jars are inexpensive and a good way to try unfamiliar spices. A 1/4-cup jar of Bavarian Seasoning, for example, is $2.59. It is a blend of herbs and spices — crushed brown mustard, rosemary, garlic, thyme, bay leaf and sage — used for a Penzey family’s favorite Sunday dinner recipe of veal, pork, potatoes, onions and carrots “all roasted to a golden brown in the same pan.”
Many products reflect their Milwaukee heritage. There’s a Galena Street rib rub, a Brady Street cheese sprinkle and a Fox Point seasoning, all noting Milwaukee locales.
Chili peppers get a lot of attention at Penzeys. They range in flavor from rich and sweet to fiery hot. A combination of both sweet (ancho) and hot (chipotle and jalapeno) chili peppers are used in Mexican cooking, while tien tsin peppers are the most common for Chinese cooking.
The mildest chili is ground ancho, at 3,000 units on the pepper heat scale. The hottest is tien tsin, with 60,000 heat units.
The store offers gift packages of all sizes in small wooden crates and boxes. Eight-jar boxes, from a bakers assortment to a wedding gift box, are mostly in the $40 range.
After all the holiday hoopla, most of us will turn to fixing simple comfort food for winter night dinners.
“If there is a silver lining to our economic clouds, it is that this year cooking is coming back home and more people are finding ways to be able to sit down and share food with people they care about. … Spices can make that food something very special,” Bill Penzey writes in the detailed catalogue available at the store.
INFORMATION: Penzeys Spices is at 771 Santa Cruz Ave. in downtown Menlo Park. For information, call 853-1785.
