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18 RETAILER PROFILE KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW n FEBRUARY 2014 n www.kitchenwarenews.com Retailer Profile Bekah Kate's (Cont. from Page 1) the International Crane Foundation and a train museum. That's a lot of tourists to entertain, and Stelling joins right in with her community in providing the local events and celebrations that help them feel that Baraboo lives up to the demands of being a really nice place to visit. The store's tenth anniversary is coming up later this year, and its celebration is scheduled to coincide with the annual Baraboo Spring Fair on the Square. "I like to think we are an integral part of our community," Stelling says. And of course, as every host knows, having guests is not without its expenses, and Stelling is very involved in raising those funds as well. She does that by working with other downtown merchants on a semi-annual Downtown Baraboo Wine Walk. Bekah Kate's sources the wine to supply a red and a white wine at each stop for the event, which raises the money to support three festivals and two parades a year that are coordinated with the Downtown Baraboo Inc. and the Chamber of Commerce. A portion of the funds raised by each Baraboo Wine Walk also goes to the Baraboo Food Pantry. It took her three years to do it, but Stelling also raised the money to turn a small vacant lot into a pocket park with children's play equipment. Baraboo named the park, at Stelling's request, Nanny Park, in tribute to Stelling's grandmother Annette, who died while Bekah Kate's was in the planning stages and who remains an important inspiration to Stelling both in her business and at home. "I had envisioned my grandmother teaching a cooking class and being part of the business, but she died about a month before the grand opening. She was so excited for us," Stelling recalls. "Her house always smelled like soup and she made the world's best wheat bread." That influence is pervasive inside Bekah Kate's, which is housed in a building that dates from 1886. The two-story structure had been neglected for many years before Stelling and her husband, Mark, and her parents acquired it with the intention of opening the kitchenware store. They gutted the building and rehabilitated it, discovering and restoring a tin ceiling that had been hidden away above a dropped ceiling for 60 or 70 years and restoring the decorative cornice on its exterior to its former beauty. The building's secondfloor has been converted into rental apartments and an office space. Bekah Kate's occupies the ground floor, where merchandise is displayed on and around antiques that Stelling started collecting even before she had the store to house them. "We have always used antiques to display on. I love to create displays out of antiques. Now upcycling is huge. We've been doing that all along," Stelling says. Most of the items come from garage sales and auctions, and they include a collection of vintage stoves as well as Baraboo's very first washing machine, which was donated to the collection by a former owner who said that he just wanted it to continue being used. "It's used to display the soaps," Stelling says. "It's a good fixture and it tells a good story. I like to think we're giving these items a new life." About 3,000 square feet of floor space is devoted to kitchen and home goods. There's also a small cooking school area that seats 18 students – or up to 22, if they're snuggled in cozily. An attached 800 square-foot space is devoted to children's merchandise. "We do a lot of kids' cooking classes as well," Stelling comments. On average, there's a class every other Thursday, with the occasional wine tasting to add to the schedule. Classes are publicized in an annual brochure that lists class dates for the next year, on the store's Facebook page and through its email newsletter, which is sent out on an irregular schedule that reflects what's happening in the store rather than a date on the calendar. The stock includes a range of upscale kitchenware, bakeware and gadgets along with a selection of gourmet foods and wines that's an important contributor to the store's revenues. Altogether, the inventory includes about 17,000 unique items, of which about 50 percent are kitchenware and 25 percent are food items. Stelling purchases her food products carefully, so that she can be sure that nothing is on the shelves long enough to look stale. "When we first opened, we had a little wall of food, but that first weekend, that wall was sold out," "Salts and peppers have been selling well recently, and Stonewall Kitchen jams and Ariston's bulk olive oil are great lines for us, and we also sell Wisconsin cheese in our our small cheese case." Stelling says. "It exploded, and I expanded after that. It has continued to be strong."

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