Hello! Welcome to The Gourmet Cupboard! Our history is rather interesting, and we would like to share our story with you. The company is owned by me, Melissa Holmes, and my mom, Judy Baker. We are a Christian based company, and we consider The Gourmet Cupboard a blessing to us in many ways.
After teaching elementary school for 6 years, I decided to quit and stay at home with our first, soon to be born, son. Kaden was born in August of 2001. School was already back in session, and I began to look around for a hobby to take up. My mom, Judy Baker, and I started making "homemade" gifts for all of our friends. We mixed up the dry ingredients to some of our favorite family recipes, packaged them in Ziploc bags, typed up the directions and what 1-2 other ingredients to add to the mix, and sent them out for Christmas, wedding, and baby gifts. We had a great response from everyone who tasted them, and then we started experimenting with other recipes. My mom and I have both always loved to be in the kitchen, baking, cooking, and experimenting. So, we really had fun with this!! We started to give away other mixes, and the popularity of it all began. We decided to spruce up our packaging a little and see if we could sell our mixes. After our first craft show, we knew immediately that we had a good thing going, and there could definitely be a future in this! For the next 5 years, we operated out of a specially designed building built by my husband, Shannon, and was located adjacent to our home. Its convenient location allowed me to stay at home with Kaden and Kale, who was born in December of 2003. We have recently built a new, larger facility at a better retail location. We still experiment all the time, sometimes finding exciting new mixes to put together and sometimes throwing out our concoctions, but that is the fun of it all!! Some of our original mixes included Heavenly Chocolate Pie, a recipe from my great grandmother, Mexican Meatloaf, a recipe that has been in the family for years, Spinach Dip, and Key Lime Pie. We offer many Cajun mixes as well. Many of our Northern distributors have not heard of some of Cajun dishes, such as etoufee. They don't realize that people really do eat crawfish here in the South!! Even with our business spreading out all over the country, we truly try to keep the warm family atmosphere here in the shop. And in keeping with the family feel, there's no heavy machinery. No mixing vats or assembly lines. All the mixes are mixed by hand. The new shop also proudly displays messages from our distributors all over the country. They sent us prayers, scriptures, blessings and notes to put on the wall. Mom and I work very hard at making our business a truly great one. We take lots of pride in our mixes, in the way we run our company, our quality service, our wonderful employees, and all the friendships we've made with our distributors and retail customers all over the world.
After teaching elementary school for 6 years, I decided to quit and stay at home with our first, soon to be born, son. Kaden was born in August of 2001. School was already back in session, and I began to look around for a hobby to take up. My mom, Judy Baker, and I started making "homemade" gifts for all of our friends. We mixed up the dry ingredients to some of our favorite family recipes, packaged them in Ziploc bags, typed up the directions and what 1-2 other ingredients to add to the mix, and sent them out for Christmas, wedding, and baby gifts. We had a great response from everyone who tasted them, and then we started experimenting with other recipes. My mom and I have both always loved to be in the kitchen, baking, cooking, and experimenting. So, we really had fun with this!! We started to give away other mixes, and the popularity of it all began. We decided to spruce up our packaging a little and see if we could sell our mixes. After our first craft show, we knew immediately that we had a good thing going, and there could definitely be a future in this! For the next 5 years, we operated out of a specially designed building built by my husband, Shannon, and was located adjacent to our home. Its convenient location allowed me to stay at home with Kaden and Kale, who was born in December of 2003. We have recently built a new, larger facility at a better retail location. We still experiment all the time, sometimes finding exciting new mixes to put together and sometimes throwing out our concoctions, but that is the fun of it all!! Some of our original mixes included Heavenly Chocolate Pie, a recipe from my great grandmother, Mexican Meatloaf, a recipe that has been in the family for years, Spinach Dip, and Key Lime Pie. We offer many Cajun mixes as well. Many of our Northern distributors have not heard of some of Cajun dishes, such as etoufee. They don't realize that people really do eat crawfish here in the South!! Even with our business spreading out all over the country, we truly try to keep the warm family atmosphere here in the shop. And in keeping with the family feel, there's no heavy machinery. No mixing vats or assembly lines. All the mixes are mixed by hand. The new shop also proudly displays messages from our distributors all over the country. They sent us prayers, scriptures, blessings and notes to put on the wall. Mom and I work very hard at making our business a truly great one. We take lots of pride in our mixes, in the way we run our company, our quality service, our wonderful employees, and all the friendships we've made with our distributors and retail customers all over the world.
Melissa Holmes and Judy Baker
Owners
