November 28, 2017 – In case you were never quite ready to spring for the Emergency Bloody Mary Kit or the Orange Rosemary Marmalade without trying it first, Happy Girl Kitchen has got your number.
Just in time to create an alternative shopping experience for Black Friday, owners Jordan and Todd Champagne opened their first “tasting room” last week at 171 Central Ave. in Pacific Grove, right next door to their beloved café.
Not only does the new 400-square-foot shop give the Champagnes room to crack the lids on all of their jams and pickles, it is also providing a new home for all of the other retail products they once weaved into the decor of the café.
And that, says Jordan Champagne, provides a more pleasant shopping experience for those looking to peruse the array of items made not just by Happy Girl, but also created by other makers, such as local honey, cookbooks, chocolates, caramels and body products.
But it’s the tastings that are generating most of the excitement.
“Friday was one of the biggest days in Happy Girl history,” Champagne says, noting that offering tastings of pepper jam for the first time was a particular revelation. “We sold more pepper jam in the last three days than we have in the last three years.”
Meanwhile, the relocation of the retail products will allow for more seating at the café, which serves breakfast and lunch and is used at night variously for private events like wedding rehearsal and tour group dinners, as well as Happy Girl’s own roster of classes and special events.
After recovering from a knee injury this year, Champagne says she’s eager to start organizing a new lineup of pop-up dinners, so stay tuned!
Happy Girl Kitchen • 171–173 Central Ave., Pacific Grove • 831.373.4475 • happygirlkitchen.com
About the author
SARAH WOOD—founding editor and publisher of Edible Monterey Bay—has had a life-long passion for food, cooking, people and our planet.
She planted her first organic garden and cared for her first chicken when she was in elementary school in a farming region of Upstate New York.
Wood spent the early part of her career based in Ottawa, Canada, working in international development and international education. After considering culinary school, she opted to pursue her loves for writing, learning about the world and helping make it a better place by obtaining a fellowship and an MA in Journalism from New York University.
While working for a daily newspaper in New Jersey, she wrote stories that helped farmers fend off development and won a state-wide public service award from the New Jersey Press Association for an investigative series of articles about a slumlord who had hoodwinked ratings agencies and investment banks into propping him up with some early commercial mortgage securitizations. The series led Wood to spend several years in financial journalism, most recently, as editor-in-chief of the leading magazine covering the U.S. hedge-fund industry.
Wood now lives with her family in Washington, DC, where she is a freelance writer and manages communications for Samaritan Ministry, an antipoverty and antiracist nonprofit that provides struggling Greater Washington residents with highly personalized and compassionate life counseling and coaching.
