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V O L U M E 1 9 , N U M B E R 1 0 News ..............................................3 Ad Index .......................................22 www.kitchenwarenews.com VOLUME 22, NUMBER 4 APRIL 2016 n $7.00 BY LORRIE BAUMANN The tulips are blooming as Epicure, a small kitchenware store in Anacortes, Washington, celebrates its ninth anniversary this month. The county's tulip festival is an annual event eagerly awaited by local residents and the yachtsmen who take the spring that brings the tulips as their cue to take their boats out into the Puget Sound for a sail to the San Juan Islands. Anacortes is a town of around 16,000 people located on Fidalgo Spring is in the Air at Epicure in Anacortes Continued on PAGE 19 Continued on PAGE 9 Continued on PAGE 10 Continued on PAGE 17 Island, and in 2007, successful real estate broker Cheryl Frazier was looking for an investment. She took a look around her community and took note of the absence of the "darling little kitchen store" that had gone out of business a year earlier. Her husband, D uncan Frazier, a financial adviser, had been urging her to get a hobby, and when she told him that she'd realized that her hobby was that she enjoyed cooking and was thinking about opening a shop for other people who enjoy cooking, he suggested that she start by drawing up a business plan. "Cooking reality BY LORRIE BAUMANN Merchandising your store's brand as well as your products can go a long way towards making your store a destination, according to Beekman 1802 Founders Dr. Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer- Purcell. The duo operates a retail store in their hometown of Sharon Springs, New York, as well as an online store, seasonal popup stores and the farm that supplies nearly everything they eat as well as ingredients for some of the products in their Beekman 1802 line of food, personal care and home décor Pro Quality Pastry Tools from an Unexpected Source products. The Beekman 1802 line has been called the fastest- growing lifestyle brand in the country, with food products in Williams-Sonoma and Anthropologie and home décor products in stores around the country. "A lot of lifestyle brands say they're storytellers. Our brand is actually our life," Kilmer- Purcell said in January during a presentation at the Las Vegas Winter Market. The pair started their business as a way to pay off a million- dollar mortgage on the farm they bought in 2006, just before losing their New York jobs during the Recession. Beekman 1802 was originally just going to be an online business, but when business grew to the point at which they could no longer package and ship all their orders in the hallway at their house, they found an abandoned hotel building in Sharon Springs to use as a warehouse. It had an 8-foot by 12-foot room in it that they thought they could use as a retail shop. "That's how our very first shop, 1802 Mercantile, happened," Ridge said. "In a town of 547 people three and a half hours BY LORRIE BAUMANN Dave Benson and Anthony Ciardelli are the kind of men who don't like to see things go to waste. That – and a little bit of serendipity – help to account for how a couple of guys who made their living building skate parks came to own a company best known for making cutting boards. The two of them had a company called TruRide that they'd started in 1997, and over the course of 10 years, they built around 400 skate parks for municipal parks and recreation authorities across the U.S. In 2002 and 2003, they were building one of those big skate parks during the holiday season when they looked around them and saw a lot of scrap pieces of RichLite, a wood fiber composite that they used to make the decking for skateboard ramps. They knew that the material had been used for 75 years to make surfaces for the foodser vice industry, so it was safe to use in contact with food, and it occurred to them that they could use those scraps to solve some of their Christmas gift-giving needs. "We made cutting boards for our family and f riends, and they loved them," says Dave Benson, today the Chief Financial Officer and Co-Owner of Epicurean, a company best known as a manufacturer of American-made cutting boards. The company is adding to its product line this year with pastry stands, coasters, magnetic knife holders and hexagonal ser ving boards designed to dress up a table or buffet with both style and the durability of an Epicurean cutting board. The boards are still made in the U.S. f rom that same material, which is manufactured in Tacoma, Washington by a company with RETAILER PROFILE n Epicure 10 SMALL ELECTRICS n Popcorn Makers 16 GOURMET GOODIES n Condiments 20 - 21 THE KNIFE RACK n Epicurean 17 STAINLESS STEEL COOKWARE n Product Previews 11 TRADESHOW CALENDAR n Tradeshow Calendar 22 UPDATE : LE PARFAIT SEE PAGE 9 GADGET OF THE MONTH: PEUGEOT ZANZIBAR PEPPER MILL SEE PAGE 22 BUYERS GUIDE: SALAD TOOLS SEE PAGE 14 H o u s e w a r e s R e v i e w KITCHENWARE NEWS S E R V I N G K I T C H E N W A R E, H O M E D E C O R A N D G I F T W A R E M A R K E T S An Epicurean Evolution Merchandising Your Store's Brand the Beekman 1802 Way BY LORRIE BAUMANN In an unexpected move for a company best known for its Chop & Scoop cutting boards and recently for its Snack-DuO dual chamber and H-D uO single chamber hydration bottles, Dexas is launching a new line of professional-quality baking and pastr y prep gadgets under the imprimatur of Italian pastr y master Chef Iginio Massari. Massari has won more than 300 competitions, awards and national as well as international recognitions since 1964, including a 2007 gold medal for Best Italian Sweet in a Naples contest, a 2011 gold medal for his tiramisu and 2003 recognition as Italian Pastr y Chef of the Decade 1993 to 2003. Chef has coached medal-winning teams in numerous pastr y competitions over the years, and the tool collection in his La Pasticceria di Precisione line includes more than 20 tools that will put his signature tools and gadgets into the hands of American home bakers this year. "The great chefs of Italy have provided all of us with vivid food memories and sensor y experiences," said Jeff Logan, Dexas' Director of Marketing.

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