Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Mike Howard talking ....
Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Episode 53: Cam Meyers; Bread & Belonging: A Chef's Journey Home
What happens when a chef decides to break away from the late-night restaurant grind and bring high-quality, seasonal food directly to the people? For Cam Meyers, it meant creating Melrose Cafe, a "parking lot restaurant" that's transforming the Santa Cruz farmers' market scene one focaccia sandwich at a time.
Growing up in Santa Cruz's midtown neighborhood, Cam's culinary journey took her from local restaurant kitchens to the remote wilderness of Alaska, where she spent three years as executive chef at an eco-lodge accessible only by boat. There, faced with limited ingredients, she began perfecting her focaccia recipe – now the foundation of her thriving business back home.
The magic of Melrose Cafe lies in its radical simplicity and unwavering commitment to seasonal eating. Each Wednesday, Cam hand-selects ingredients from local farmers, transforms them into house-made aiolis and pestos on Thursday, mixes up to 150 pounds of dough by hand on Friday night, and rises at 4am to bake everything fresh before market. The result? Sandwiches so good that couples drive from Campbell every weekend just to get them, with lines forming before they're even set up.
Beyond creating delicious food, Cam represents a new generation of food entrepreneurs finding innovative paths between high-end restaurants and fast food. By eliminating the overhead of a brick-and-mortar while maintaining chef-driven quality, she's made truly local, seasonal eating accessible in a way that traditional restaurants often can't. When Cam says "you can buy everything in our sandwich right here at the market," she's not just sharing her sourcing philosophy – she's inviting customers into a more connected food experience.
Experience Melrose Cafe at the West Side Market (Saturdays) and Live Oak Market (Sundays) from 9am-1pm. Just don't ask when the tomato sandwich is coming back – you'll have to wait until they're perfectly in season, and that's exactly as it should be.
Welcome to the Unpacked in Santa Cruz podcast. I'm your host, Michael Howard. This is my seriously silly attempt to celebrate normalcy here in Santa Cruz, California, by sitting with people that I see around me, by sitting with people that I think are wonderful. Anyways, I have the pleasure and privilege of sitting here with Cam Myers. Cam, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you, you're here, yeah, after a week delay, that's okay.
Speaker 1:So I met you through Brennan and his girlfriend, and why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? You know who are you, where are you from? How'd you get here? What's going on? Well, not that part. How'd you get here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was born and raised here, kind of near Seawright, lived here most of my life, going on between 27 and a couple weeks, almost 27 years Just moved back. I guess almost feels like just moved back, but I guess a year, almost like a year and a half ago now.
Speaker 1:Where were you living?
Speaker 2:I was living in Homer Alaska Homer.
Speaker 1:Alaska.
Speaker 2:Seasonally. I was working a job up there kind of six months on, six months off for the last, up until I moved back like three years and then just moved back full time October of last year.
Speaker 1:What were you doing in Alaska?
Speaker 2:I got hired to work at a remote eco lodge up there outside of Homer. I was the executive chef there for three seasons. Um, yeah, mostly, mostly just doing that.
Speaker 1:Do they have food out there? Food Food, yes, yeah, they do. Um a lot of salmon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I cooked, uh, cooked a lot of fish. Um yeah, it's interesting. It's a cool, cool spot. A different food scene than I'm used to growing up here, different access to ingredients, which was a whole different set of challenges than the type of cooking I'd been used to. You know, growing up in such like an agriculturally rich environment that we have here and all of the experiences I've gotten to have working in this town around food, it was a completely different experience, learning about sourcing and all the things that go along with that in a place where there's just not as much access. So challenging, in a different way than what I was used to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a very protein rich culture. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, interesting, because we'd have a different set of clients every week so I could definitely do some repeat situations with stuff that I would make. But, um, homer actually has a really cool farmer's market and there's kind of an expanding agricultural scene there, with a lot of high tunnel farming. So people growing things in high tunnel style greenhouses, which can expand the growing season a little bit, and, um, it's a couple of farms doing really cool things like peak season people growing tomatoes and actually I was finding like tomatillos, things like that that I'm more used to seeing here. So some some creativity with produce and ingredients grown across the Bay in Homer. But, um, and I actually had a greenhouse and a garden on the property as well, so I was able to grow a lot of my own ingredients, which was really cool.
Speaker 1:So what kind of things can you grow in Alaska?
Speaker 2:Yeah, homer. Homer's in more South central Alaska, so it's a little more like temperate. I think, then, kind of what your stereotypical probably are picturing Alaska to look like. Um, so summer's there, you know, a lot of daylight, only really gets dark about 30, 40 minutes at night, so it's kind of like a complete different switch. What I was used to here, but, um, with a greenhouse and outside it's a shorter season, so that's completely different. But pretty much a lot of the things I'm able to grow here would grow a lot of herbs and edible flowers um and I was mostly focusing on growing things that had like a shorter growing time because of how short the season is.
Speaker 2:So I would grow like all my own herbs um edible flowers. You would grow a lot of greens lettuce um chard, spinach, pretty much grow everything you grow here. It's just like a completely different growing season and because of the daylight hours things grow either really fast or almost like too fast, like there's some things you can't grow because they go to seed before they even get like taller than an inch.
Speaker 2:Wow, like arugula, couldn't grow. Yeah, it was really interesting after gardening having gardens here for a long time and working at some farms here to like try to grow things there.
Speaker 1:So did you work on farms here before you moved up there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually right up to leading up to getting hired for that job, I was working at Blue House Farms in Pescadero. Um part, very part-time. Um, I had another restaurant job at the time. That had been like four or five years ago now. But yeah, I was working at Blue House Farm in Pescadero, working on the farm a couple of days a week, working more in wholesale flowers, so harvesting and arranging and packing orders to send to the city to a lot of like supermarkets and floral stuff up there, and then I would do the Saturday West Side Market for Blue House Farms. Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, why don't we reverse just a little bit into a little bit more of your story around Santa Cruz? So you grew up here. What was it like growing up in Santa Cruz? You're midtown, yeah we've had a couple of midtown guys on and you know everything's a thing in Santa Cruz. So you're either you know Eastside midtown, or west side, or south side, or you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think the Tolarat thing has gone away. But for you living midtown, actually, it means something very unique. And what was so that you grew up around the Seabright area, I'm presuming? What was it like growing up midtown, Because that meant that you were going both directions much of the time. Yeah. Because the Midtown crew has a. You know, it's kind of a weird place. Santa Cruz is that, like everything's a thing, and growing up where you grew up, you usually have friends on all sides of the county.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't grow up really surfing or anything so I feel like that wasn't even really something that kind of was on my radar growing up until getting a lot older. Um, I grew up like surfing a little bit with my dad and his sister lived on the west side my whole life on laguna street, right by cowls.
Speaker 2:So we would pretty much only go just kind of like mess around in the water at cowls. If we went anywhere, so I think up until kind of more being an adult, I wasn't even, just didn't really cross my radar, I was just like you know, we're just doing what we're doing this is where we are yeah yeah, well it's.
Speaker 1:it's funny because I mostly look at it. I mean the surf culture is what has made the fingerprint of the behavior. You know, like the surf culture has kind of influenced how people are treated where and you know when you get. You know, I guess in the kind of more uppity perspective, you know, you do have, you know your neighborhoods in Capitola, a neighborhood on the Upper West Side, you know, I don't know that the coastal part of the web west side has the same air that the upper west side has, you know. Then you have the whole south side crew which you know all lives, you know, in and around clubhouse or back in coralitas. But but there's a flavor that midtown had for you. What, what kind of freedom do you feel like you experienced living midtown that maybe was unique compared to the people that were around you, Because it does have a?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I lived midtown when I was 13. And it was where I got introduced to a lot of different people. You know Joe, which you know we'll get into it, you know Garen, Myall, you know there's just this whole crew that was Midtown and they kind of didn't belong anywhere. You know, we all surfed, so we knew what we knew and that was the spots that were. Midtown only broke three months out of the year, so you just kind of were everywhere else except for home and it just added a flavor to the relationships because you almost didn't belong anywhere. And then everybody would come to your place for a couple three months yeah, like the river mouth yeah, yeah, harbor yeah, um, I mean, I just like I love that area.
Speaker 2:Like we grew up, like you know, running through arana gulch before it was all before there were fences and stuff in there um, it's not a whole area of town's really special. I think just kind of how even like the fog affects it in the summer, like it's like the first place to kind of burn off during the day, it's not a whole area of town, that's really special. I think just kind of how even the fog affects it in the summer, it's like the first place to kind of burn off. During the day it's a little bit warmer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an interesting one because I started cooking at restaurants pretty much straight out of high school and I've worked restaurants on Seabright restaurants, on Fair Street, on the West side, socal, kind of all over the County. So I feel like that's actually how I've met the majority of like my friends in town is like working in restaurants and I've kind of worked at all over. So that's been interesting and it's like, yeah, I think I've always been a little bit more involved in kind of like the restaurant culture here more than anything else. So that's where more of the yeah, I think I've always been a little bit more involved in kind of like the restaurant culture here more than anything else, so that's where more of the like. I guess you see different parts of town, but even that has like a lot of crossover, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, the restaurants are the restaurants in town. Yeah so they're either good or they're bad. And yeah, let's, let's not get too deep into that. Yeah, let's not get too deep into that one, but there's that type of crossover but backing up a little bit more into who you are, what you're doing Right now. You just started something new and I want to share with the audience what that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we opened in September, I guess.
Speaker 1:What's the name of it?
Speaker 2:Melrose Cafe.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's a farmer's market pop-up, I like to say parking lot restaurant. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's how we usually describe it. It was an idea that I started thinking about last year when I first moved back from alaska and I was working at a bakery on the west side um, which is how I ended up meeting brennan, actually, um, and then kind of had this like half-formed idea about I've worked for two other companies that do similar, started out in a similar way, doing um, like farmers mark, farmers market style, like pop-up that have like one has turned into a restaurant. One kind of had a bigger company that ended up kind of changing and moving on or whatever, but, um, so yeah, I kind of had this idea after working for several people at the farmers market over the years. I think I've been working for different vendors there since I was 20 or 21.
Speaker 2:So, going on like seven years on and off of working at all the different farmers markets in the county and then also after working going on like eight, nine years in the restaurant industry, feeling pretty burnt out on a lot of the late night hours and everything that goes along with that and kind of some of the more stereotypical parts of the restaurant industry. So I had been speaking with um the farmer's market manager and like administration about, uh, this idea I had for a new kind of food pop-up um at the farmer's market, all focused around farmer's market sourced ingredients, very seasonal menu, but kind of with this format of doing everything as a sandwich on focaccia, which is what I started teaching myself how to make up in Alaska actually, which came back to the kind of sourcing thing that it was like a lot harder to source even just kind of like quality bread and stuff up there. So I started baking everything myself and got to mess with that recipe a lot. So I kind of ran into actually the farmer's market manager just at I was just there shopping on like a saturday morning.
Speaker 2:We kind of looked at each other and he was like, yeah, we have this empty space now do you have any ideas and I was like, well, I kind of have this like half-formed idea I've been like sort of thinking about I don't really know if it would work, I don't really know what I'm doing. And he was like, yeah, sounds great, when do you want to start? And he's very, he's really, really good at taking ideas and making them reality. So we kind of started moving on that process pretty quick, went back and forth on some ideas and then talked about it throughout the year and it ended up being almost a full year before we could kind of figure out what it was going to look like. And then, yeah, now we've been open since September. It's been an interesting process.
Speaker 1:I mean you've been crushing it. So I have a little bit of animus towards Cam, just so you guys are all aware is that I've started eating bread again because of Cam and I'm hooked in it's. You know, to my end I'm a bread snob. It's the best focaccia bread I've ever had, thank you. You know it might just be because I don't eat a lot of bread or you know I'm a companion guy or whatever else, but I've started eating bread again and I can't stop eating your bread, which is really it's cause for trouble on Monday. That's all. Sunday is bread day, but you know that's not to talk too much about me, but the point being that you're coming into the market during a really cool bread scene. You know there's certainly been some bakeries that have done pretty well in the middle of a time where people are not eating bread here in.
Speaker 1:Santa Cruz, and so I mean it's, I guess, for the listeners. I really want to enhance this portion of the conversation because it's relative to a reality, that that for the most part, the clientele here is very selective about what they're putting in their mouth and and you've come with a product that's really really good, that I mean you're selling out most weekends, that I see you by the time we get our lazy asses out of bed and don't show up till 11 on Sunday. But you've really put out a really good product and so you know there's that portion of it. But you know as to experience, to experience and you getting to understand the business a little bit more, did you go to culinary school before this?
Speaker 2:I did not. I did, I think, even less than a full semester of the Cabrillo Culinary Program and very quickly realized it was not for me and did not finish. And then I think I was 19. And very quickly realized it was not for me and did not finish. And then, I think I was 19, I started working at La Posta in Seabright. I worked there for quite a while.
Speaker 1:So did you just work a line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I worked mostly a saute station there and salads cold line Didn't really have any experience, worked with a lot of really nice people who were very helpful and I feel like taught me a lot. Um, a couple of them have gone on to open their own businesses in mexico city and one of the line cooks I worked with is now the head chef there. He's like a good friend of mine and the chef there at the time now owns midway on seabright next to the Rio Theater.
Speaker 2:What style of restaurant is that I'd describe it as very like super highly seasonal farm-to-table small menu, constantly changing. Everything there is delicious, sourced at the farmer's market, fogline farms, you know. Good quality, high quality, interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know. Good quality, high quality, yeah, interesting, yeah, yeah, I mean it's. I mean, for the most part, santa cruz has adequate food it's a good way to put it I wouldn't call it good yeah it's. It's a little weird here, because the best of our produce generally goes to southern california, on the big provider side. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know. So we're relegated a little bit to whatever's left over. But then you do have these restaurant owners now that are really focusing on, I think, taking care of their farmers and, you know, getting into that farm-to-table scene. And you know you wouldn't know this, but you know, wouldn't know this, but you know, my wife's cousin, you know he runs uh, what's the big sky? In montana.
Speaker 1:He, he was one of the original farm to table guys in the in the us yeah you know, just sourcing farmers and good chefs, and so I have a little bit of understanding, you know, about what it's taken to get farm to table. We have Dennis Kinch who was here from Manresa. We've had people around doing this thing at a very, very high end, but we haven't had it at the mid-range yet, and that's what's kind of emerging here, at least that I'm observing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so you're part of that wave of really, really good ingredients. You know, put on good ingredients and, as someone who appreciates that reality in the face of you, know what we call the food scene here. You know, as we're in the middle of foodie week, this is the reason why I'm interviewing you for Santa Cruz Vibes week, not not that this is the reason why I'm, yeah, interviewing you for santa cruz vibes, but, but but you know it, it is important to the consumer in santa cruz. You know, I think a lot of people really are concerned with what they put in their body and you are part of that, that whole scene, which is which is pretty cool, especially at your age thank you so, yeah, that was.
Speaker 2:That was like one of the things I was really hoping to be able to do, because I basically like learned, I feel like what I learned at all. I would say kind of all or most of the restaurants in town that follow that model Phantom Home Restaurant in Soquel are some of the places I worked at over the years where it's like those are still the chefs every Wednesday that I see at the market picking out all their ingredients downtown to go make a menu for the week or whatever, and so it's like those are all places I like to eat. If I'm going to go out, a way to kind of like bring bring that same concept in but make it super accessible to people, which I think has been cool. And it's like a different style of kind of like casual grab and go food that's not as available here, which was kind of the whole idea we were going with. It's like hopefully affordable, as affordable as we can make it um reasonably and still you know, be,
Speaker 1:able to keep doing it. Yeah, pay your employees, yeah yourself yeah, cover.
Speaker 2:I mean, the cost of food right now is just pretty insane. Um, so trying to navigate that and keep everything as affordable as possible and then it also, in a lot of ways, it it. It takes some, some of the work away from having to try really hard to make something taste good, because you're using the ingredients that are in season. You're choosing to use the things that are available and at their peak, and that just takes away from needing to try. You're never trying to cover anything up. You're never like okay, we're going to make this thing and then we're going to put this other thing on it because this isn't as good as it could be right now. Like we have a ton of people come, I mean also all not summer, we only open in september, but september, october.
Speaker 2:Like we have really great late season tomatoes, so like we ran like an heirloom tomato blt on our menu for like two months and then I ran it as long as we could when tomatoes were still going and then, as soon as they're not great anymore, like I don't want to keep running that menu item and using something that's not at it's peak anymore. So we've had so many people ask, like why aren't you running the meal? Like when are you going to bring it back? Why aren't you doing it? I'm like, well, go walk around the market like there's that's not available right now. So I don't want to.
Speaker 2:I have tried to build like a model that has a lot of flexibility to choose ingredients that are like only available right now, which I also think makes them feel a little bit more special when they are available. You know, like you wait all season for tomatoes and peaches and blackberries, right, and then you really appreciate them while they're there and then you move on to the next thing, and so it's like it's cool being able to make menus like that, and then also, most of the things on our menu are things you'd walk around the market and be able to buy at that time, which is what I'm going for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and on the farm-to-table side, as it pertains to shipping all that kind of stuff, you're really talking about a local product at this point. You know, and there's. You know, I think, because at least the American consumer has very huge misunderstanding about all the shipping that goes on with food. You know that that in middle of winter, when you're picking up your end dives, those are coming from South America food. You know that that in middle of winter, when you're picking up your end dives, uh, those are coming from South America. Those are not not coming from your, your, your local producer. You know, because the grocery store business and understandably so, I, you know, I mean it's this kind of commerce is good for the world, despite what our current president thinks.
Speaker 1:Um, the, you know the, the. The point that I'm trying to make is that you are truly trying to make a local product. You know, and, and you know what goes into that for you personally. You know, as you're making decisions about what you're going to plate or put in a sandwich, and why don't we actually talk a little bit about what you actually are doing? You know, because you're basically making sandwiches, and how many farmers markets are you at?
Speaker 2:we're just doing saturday west side right now and sunday live oak. Okay, looking into the future, hoping to be able to do a little bit more something that week yeah, yeah, something midweek, just to spread things out a little bit, because the weekends are pretty yeah intense most of the time, yeah, I mean bread's. Bread's a process, right like it's it's proofing and it's mixing and it's it's like it's an overnight process for us, so it's it's really like starts on friday night.
Speaker 2:I mean it starts on tuesday or wednesday really and there's like wednesday, I go to the downtown santa cruz market and I pretty much pick out all my ingredients by hand and buy everything. Thursdays, I mean, we we kind of make everything for our sandwiches, so down to the even aioli pesto, whatever it is that week that we're doing. Like all of that we're making by hand. So all of olive areoli is, like you know, organic egg yolks and olive oil and lemon juice from my lemon tree in my backyard and like all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:So it's like all of those things take a lot of time to prep which is important to me for like quality and just the type of food I want to be making. But yeah, by friday it's like mixing dough overnight and then an overnight proof and then a 4 am bake, so everything's baked fresh in the morning and then starting at the market open by 9 kind of thing, and then do it all again Saturday night for Sunday and then Sunday day. So it's like it's a process for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know, Kim and I are somewhat familiar with this and you know we can be kind of technical here as technical as I can understand, I'm a little ignorant that way. You know, before COVID we started buying local sourdough from Evan at 26 Avenue Bakery bakery. Uh, he was certainly the first that I knew of on the scene doing what. I forget the name of the place up in san francisco, that that kind of team that's.
Speaker 1:you know he was part of that group in some way and then start started making local sourdough. Unfortunately, covid, whatever that experience was for him is like when he shut down, which was really strange to watch because you know, that's when Manresa showed up, that's when Companion showed up, which again another really good product, but more at a big scale, you know, with what they were doing, with them opening storefronts, these kinds of things, having the restaurants that they could service, all that which accentuates a lot of dollars, you know, and justifies the kind of time it takes to prep something as simple as bread, you know, for you, you know, I, I remember just watching evan kill himself, because it was a 48 hour thing for him, like he was just awake for two days with his process because the nature of utilizing sourdough the right way, it's complicated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very, very complicated. You know it comes from his hands, it doesn't come from you know any kind of outside proofing with yeast or anything like that, so he lived in a very complex spot. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, for you it's a little bit different, but again, you know, it is this reality that when you decide to say go, what does that mean for you in a day? Because I think this is what's interesting People don't realize. Oh yeah, you're selling sandwiches for five hours, but that's not what's happening. There's a lot more that goes into it.
Speaker 2:Well, I have a few people that help me that really make things go a lot. More. That goes into it. Well, I have like a few people that help me that like really make things go a lot smoother. When I very first started in September, it was mostly just me and my sister helping me and that was kind of it. It's like random help here and there and you guys still talk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we do. Yeah, she's actually working at a shop in Capitola Village now, which is like an amazing spot. I love going to Ethos in Capitola, which I love shopping there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know that I've.
Speaker 2:In Capitola Village. It's the like you know it's funny.
Speaker 1:I live right above the village.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I never go down there.
Speaker 2:It's a cool store.
Speaker 1:I just go and see matt and jill at uh at the beach company.
Speaker 2:But like yeah, that's pretty much my only stop. Um, yeah, she's working there now. It's a.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like a sustainable, zero waste yeah, yeah yeah, no, actually that I'm twice a year there yeah kim goes and buys soap yeah and I'm with her sometimes when she does that um, but yeah, so we started in September.
Speaker 2:The commercial kitchen space I've been using is super great, but it is somewhat limited in storage availability and equipment. So I've started out like mixing everything by hand all of our dough, which for us it's not as elaborate as sourdough, because we do just use it's not a sourdough, focaccia, it's uh, I just use yeast and we do like an overnight ferment on the dough. Um, so it's like an overnight process, but it is a lot like quicker and kind of less less particular, less complex than other types of bread, so that in some ways, makes things a lot easier. Um, I'm not really much of a baker actually, so, like I've tried with other types of bread and it's it's not for me at all.
Speaker 1:Um, well, it's, it's funny cause, you know, I I do know bakers and I certainly have taken your product home more than once and I always have this funny conversation with them. You know, oh, focaccia is the easiest one to do. I'm like is it this easy? Yeah, and they're like oh yeah, like, yours is just different in the best of ways. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I kind of settled on it and fixated on it because I didn't like making other things when I was up in Alaska, especially like I played around with sourdough and all different kinds of bread, because we did actually like a sandwich menu up there as well, cause a lot of the the type of business that it was.
Speaker 2:It was like a very small scale all inclusive resort, um, and remote, so boat access only. So I lived on site, so I would just basically be in the kitchen all day and sometimes had less time, sometimes had more time to like experiment, um, but part of what the all inclusive experience was at that business was like excursions during the day, so kayaking or really long hikes, or like going out on a company boat to go see otters and you know, sometimes bears from afar and all that kind of stuff. So I was figuring out how to make a menu where you're cooking for, you know, 16 clients a day and between like eight and 10 staff members a day, mostly, I mean, with help. But the first year I worked there we were rotating kind of like wilderness guide staff in and out of the kitchen every day as help, which was really interesting. So it was a lot of kind of like explaining and teaching while also trying to cook for like 26 people in a day, three meals a day?
Speaker 1:Were they prepping, doing those kinds of things?
Speaker 2:or just yeah, all kinds of stuff, because it teaches them how to cut the right way different.
Speaker 2:yeah, it's like we would make a lot of handmade pasta. That's one of my favorite things to make. So, like every friday, whoever was working in the kitchen that day, I'd be like, okay, this is how you know, we're gonna make pasta dough, roll pasta dough, shape it, whatever we a you know King crab tortellini and like smoked tomato broth with whatever kind of stuff, and I'd be like they've never, they've never made that before, right? So it's like explaining all the, the steps and everything.
Speaker 2:And that place was like you know, three meals a day. So I'd get up at five to make breakfast and do that whole thing and then pretty much right after that I'd be prepping. But one of the more challenging parts was trying to come up with like a menu for lunch that could be like packed and taken and eaten later and still be good. So that's when I kind of started really experimenting with like focaccia and making sandwich menus that it's like the same clients for five days. So you're trying to make something that's different every single day but that can be like packed and taken with on an outing and not can sit for a few hours and then try to accommodate a lot of dietary restrictions and vegetarian.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly um which uh, yeah vegetarian in Vegetarian in uh in Alaska's uh interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Perspective.
Speaker 2:Yes, um. So yeah, just definitely a lot of exercise and being creative. And then we would do three course dinner every night and kind of like hors d'oeuvres, so it was a pretty full, full on every day. And then the last two seasons I worked there. Um, they ended up hiring a friend of mine, actually from here, to come up and work with me as kind of like I don't even like saying chef, but like sous chef, you know, um, so that changed things a lot and gave us a lot more time in a day to just be able to accomplish everything. Um, and that's when I really started like experimenting with that recipe.
Speaker 2:But coming back to the main point of that was yeah, I'm not really much of a baker like never have been. I've pretty much exclusively worked as a line cook, almost always working saute stations at restaurants. So that was different. But I did think once I played with it a lot, I was like this is a product I'm really happy with. That. I think there's a market for here. I think it'll do well here. I think it's versatile and flexible. I'm, I'm happy with it, I'm. I think it turns out well, it's consistent, it's somewhat easy to execute in a certain amount of time, and I think it's something that's not widely available here, which is kind of the whole idea I started with, and I think there's potential to do different things with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let's stay a little technical here, because yeah. I used to feed 250 people every weekend. Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:And I had Costco as a resource. You know, my job was very simple $2 and 50 cents on a plate. What can I do? Refrigeration is always the big deal. You know, like, like you know, whatever sauces, whatever stuff that has to stay in a fridge, you're losing money Every moment's in the fridge. So my metrics are very basic, you know, they're just. You know, know, lead up, prep, all that kind of stuff, all simple, everything came in plastic. I don't want to pretend to do what you do, but when we think about things like time frames like you're talking about proofing bread, like what, what is a process like proofing bread to getting it actually baked? Like what is a time frame okay for something like that?
Speaker 1:like the actual breakdown well, it I didn't even it wasn't like I was even thinking to ask these questions but, you know now kind of you know person who's cooked for people I wouldn't call myself a chef in any way, but someone who's had to perform, you know, on a weekly basis. I know the line, I know the pressure, I know the time frame. I had 25 minutes to get 250 people in line eating out the door like that kind of fast pace which is very different than what we're talking about with you. But people have no idea the kind of work that goes into that. I knew how to do it because I knew how to organize time. What does organizing time mean for you?
Speaker 1:You know, because like this is, you know, not to get too technical, but this is where the margins are, you know, this is where the love for the humans that are eating the food, where you're not making money, you know, and people, you know, on the consumption side are eating the food where you're not making money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and people you know on the consumption side are looking at what's happening. You know maybe an hour, two hours, before you know any any time frame of when they eat. You know they can understand. But there's what tastes good and what tastes like love given to you. I think are two different things. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, and there's a certain amount of love that's put into food and you are someone who clearly loves people because of eating your food. You know it's not that you're like, you're a very kind person, you're a very quiet person. You know it's. I don't know if shy is the right word, but there's. There's a thing that you're doing for people that they don't know for you to get that thing, that takes 10 minutes for it to get warm and stuck between a sliced piece of bread that just appears like a sandwich.
Speaker 1:but it's like no, that's like a bundle of love that is put into a bag for you to go eat.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So starting Wednesday, I go buy all our ingredients, organize everything, put it away. Thursday morning is like starting at like 630. Usually is when we do all of the prep that's non bread related prep, like the sauce we use on our breakfast sandwich. It's sometimes upwards of like 40 bunches of parsley that need to get like cleaned and processed Scallions. It's usually like 40 lemons worth of lemon zest, and then we like hand juice all the lemons, mix everything with olive oil, garlic. Just thinking about, like you know the amount of time it takes to kind of do those things at home, doing that on a on that scale, on an average day we usually sell over a hundred breakfast sandwiches. I think on some of our busiest days, like we easily do, over 200 sandwiches in a market.
Speaker 2:And oftentimes that's under. It's under four hours for like a lot of the time. Sometimes we sell out and we're like three hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm praying it doesn't rain for four hours. Yeah, the weather's a big thing when you're always working outside. Um, that's another part of just the thought process that goes into it. It's like working at a restaurant. It's like, okay, yeah, the weather might affect how busy you are, but it's not gonna be like night and day like for us it's. It's pretty drastic, so always trying to, before wednesday, predict how busy we're gonna be over the weekend based on the weather, because that also affects product waste for us there's not like a ton of carryover, because we only do service two days a week, on the weekends.
Speaker 2:So you know, whatever you don't sell, you don't sell yeah in a week.
Speaker 2:it's not like a restaurant where you sell it the next day. Um, so it's like a really interesting game of always trying to guess how busy you're going to be, what you're going to sell, how much of it you're going to sell, how much of each thing you're going to sell, depending on the weather, and is the wharf to wharf happening that day? Is that going to make us more busy? Less busy? Capital art and wine Is that going to make us more busy? Less busy? Capital art and wine is that going to make us more? Busy or less?
Speaker 2:busy and it's just always kind of a gamble, right. So there's a lot of thought that goes into just random factors like that as well. When you do farmer's markets, yeah, and then. So then Thursday is all of that kind of prep, even down to like the grains we use and stuff. Almost all of that's from the farmer's market. So if we're getting, if we're using butter, lettuce on a blt, we're getting all that from blue heron farm and coralitos, and we're gonna have to take all that back, wash it, dry, it, process, it, pack it for the weekend.
Speaker 2:Um, there's just a lot of time and energy that goes into all of the little pieces.
Speaker 2:Um, we've been doing this like roasted carrot sandwich that was really really popular for a couple of months and all of that's like peeling. You know I don't know how many pounds, probably sometimes I can't even guess. You know, I'm thinking like I had like three crates full of carrots like peeling and roasting and processing and then making like a pistachio pesto and that's like we're toasting all the pistachios and parsley and again like lemons and juicing like just all of those little parts. When you're using a ton of like produce like that, it's like there is time that goes into processing all of that um. So then come friday that's usually when I like do all of the things we didn't have time to do on Thursday Um, running around figuring things out, remembering like oh yeah, we ran out of takeaway boxes so you got to get more of those. And then, um, we've been renting a van from independent rental on the West side every Friday through Sunday, because the very first, the first like two weeks we did markets.
Speaker 2:we thought we'd be able to run everything out of the back of my Tacoma, and that only lasted like a week before our numbers started doubling every weekend. So it was very quickly clear that I was not going to be able to do the amount of volume we were immediately doing out of the back of my pickup truck. So there's a lot of running around that goes into it too, just driving back and forth across town and figuring things out as we go.
Speaker 2:Um, and then friday night is when we make all the bread dough, um, that I usually have one or two other people help with, because for a while we were doing, I want to say, close to like 150 pounds of bread dough by hand. That's a lot of mixing, yeah, and I don't have any commercial mixing equipment.
Speaker 2:You don't have big commercial mixers yeah, yeah, we're considering looking at a new facility that has access to all of that, so that'll be actually a really big game changer. Especially now that we've been doing it all by hand for so long. I feel like I have a really good idea about how to scale it up, using equipment that can help us maintain the scale without like losing quality.
Speaker 2:Um is what I'm hoping for. I'm not interested in growing something that grows big enough that you can't have a hand in everything you're doing to make sure the quality is where you want it to be it's never been something that I'm interested in, but figuring out ways to make it so I don't necessarily have to work like back-to-back 15-hour days every weekend because it's not super sustainable.
Speaker 2:So somewhere in the middle of those things is what I'm hoping we're going to move into in the summer. Yeah, so Friday night, and then we shape everything onto sheet trays and proof every do a cold proof overnight, and then I usually start.
Speaker 1:How many trays is that usually?
Speaker 2:Uh, busiest season was close to 40. Lately it's more like 25. Depends on the type of menu we're doing. Um, this past weekend was the first time we've kind of tried doing something a little bit different. We did like a scaled the salt down in our dough recipe and did like a focaccia French toast, um, with like roasted local strawberries and whipped ricotta, that kind of stuff, and so that actually gives me a little bit more flexibility too, because that you can bake you want to bake it ahead of time, so it actually has a couple of days to sit.
Speaker 2:So, it like holds up to being like processed more. But other than that, it's like super important to me that all the bread is baked in the morning day of and that's also a new customer too.
Speaker 1:That's the sweet tooth customer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're trying to just I mean just for my own like brain also. It's like I don't want to say I get bored quickly, but I in some ways get bored quickly. So I like trying to figure out new things that I can do that will continue to keep me interested, because I do tend to. I just like need change and I think it also is important for customers. It's like maintain a certain amount of comfortability that they know what they're getting when they come, but that there's also something new that they can try, which is a balance I've been trying to find.
Speaker 1:Going to seem a little different here, but you know there there's an energy to you that you know there's an energy to you that you know it's fun to be in the presence of who you are as a person. You know, just because we. You know the first little party. You know where I tasted your bread. You know I forgot Was it someone's birthday, cass's birthday. Cass's birthday right.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh, you know. Then I heard the rumor, oh, she's going to start a pop-up. I'm like, oh, you know. Then I heard the rumor, oh, she's, she's going to start a pop-up. I'm like, oh man, like she's going to smoke it. It's just, it's going to be good. But you know the kid that grew up here who saw town a particular way to now, the adult who now traverses in the car making all the little errands how much has Santa Cruz changed to you in the last year on just how you see the place? You grew up here. It had a flavor. There's certainly been a lot of money that's moved in here the last few years. Yeah.
Speaker 1:With that, the farmer's market's changed. I think in the last year. You're definitely seeing a bigger audience here big changes coming too, yeah yeah, but but you know, with the changes, something good's happening and, and you know, being a part of that rise, you know, but it's unique, right? You don't know how it's going to end. You know the, the, the, the fear of getting in the car now, like, you know what's the outcome. You know, as an entrepreneur in town, driving through town, seeing it differently, what's that been like for you.
Speaker 2:I think it's like it's it's been interesting. It's like I think I I mean myself included it's like I think people you kind of alluded to earlier there's just not a lot of options for food here. It's not super available, so I think it's been really interesting to see, just like how it's received, that there's something available that is somewhat accessible. You know, it's like paper boxes at the farmer's market. It's not. It's like I always. It's like at the end of the day, we're just like making things in a parking lot like it's not anything fancy or crazy or like anything like that.
Speaker 2:it's just like it's nice for me to feel like I can see well one. It's really right, like it's really kind of like an intimate experience, like people are like ordering, they're kind of standing there. It's like the most open kitchen I've ever worked in.
Speaker 2:You know someone standing right there like watching everything that you're doing and, um, a lot of times you'll like see like people will go sit down five feet away and be like eating their thing or they'll be like it's just it's very like. It's like a very personal experience with kind of what we've been doing. So that's like interesting and stressful in some ways. And then I mean like the downtown farmers market I've been going to since I was a little kid and so it's it's like cool to see it shifting in some ways. I think, not to say like it's gotten to a point where people are like I don't want to say like frustrated is even the right word, but like there people are really like looking for something new you know, especially with food and with how expensive things are.
Speaker 2:It's like not everyone has the opportunity to go out to restaurants all the time to go eat at those types of restaurants that are doing that type of food.
Speaker 2:It's not always yeah, it's 50 bucks plus a person, it's not accessible to everybody yeah so I don't know not to say that like, oh, I'm doing something like revolutionary, important, anything like that, but it's just like it's. I'm enjoying getting to like, experience that process, and I think that some of that does have to do with how everything's been changing here. I mean, my mom has a business a block away from the downtown farmer's market, a shop that she's had for 10 years now, I think going on 10 years, and so she's seen like everything changed down there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's downtown is such a hot mess right now. Yeah, and downtown much of my life has been a mess in some way.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean the cultural mess that it was at the beginning was the uniqueness of it. That's what was so adorable about going downtown. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But, it's changed it's changed, and it's changed in a really bad way and and you know I'll speak for myself here as someone who's very amenable to the mental health issues that that do arrive here in town the lack of real funding for the problems that the city and the county are trying to approach has definitely, definitely altered the course of downtown for a long time, you know, because businesses are just vacating yeah you know what used to what we waited for so long after the earthquake to have it come back, to have it come back then to have it get lost on idealism.
Speaker 1:You, a certain segment of people that you know. It's not that they bring nothing to it, it's just that we are not the size of community that can afford to fund the type of problem that we have. Yeah. So it's really changing the culture down there. It's gotten worse in the last couple three years. Yeah. You know, and but also then, because of that, people are looking elsewhere. You know there's the give and take, which is really hard. Yeah, you know it's like you know, the downtown farmers markets is still flourishing.
Speaker 2:There's some big changes coming up with it and I think it actually just got approved and went public a few days ago. I've been talking with the farmers market manager, I mean I've just we've chatted about it over time. I think Lookout just posted an article about it. It's going to be moving, which has been in the works for a long time with the library project, but it's happening really soon. Actually it's going to be, I think, in May or June. It's moving down the street and temporarily it's going to be like a street block on the corner of, is it Church Street and Cedar Street. Okay, right, kind of where, like birkino tasting room is, um, the back parking lot of the library, and then I think with plans to kind of create more infrastructure in that whole area for like a bigger farmer's market gotcha um so with the idea of expansion, not, not, not trying to cut back expansion, and I think it's like really positive expansion.
Speaker 2:It's like multi-use facilities, it's um, I think it's a lot more opportunity for people to do the type of like business that we've been doing, like food trucks, pop-ups, things like that, that's like it's like a lot more opportunity for people to try things out and create a product without the same amount of overhead you'd experience trying to like open a location yeah um, which I think is like a really cool opportunity for just more of a food scene, especially a food scene like super directly tied to agriculture.
Speaker 2:Here. It's like you know we'll be like, oh yeah, we bought those radishes from right there and we bought this from bigger that here and this was from right there and we bought this from bigger that here. And this was from right there and, like you know, it's cool to be able to walk around and like. Try whenever possible to like put that on our menu but you can only write so much on a chalkboard.
Speaker 2:But, um, I think that's cool and like a lot of. It is like about developing relationships between product use and like farmers and consumption, and I think it's a really cool opportunity for an expansion on that in kind of a kind of a new way. It's like a new take on this thing we've had down there for so long, this like Wednesday downtown farmer's market. Um, I think it's just going to provide like a lot more opportunity for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. Yeah. So I'm going to provide, like, a lot more opportunity for that. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm going to ask the horrible question Do you feel like you're an artist? No, not at all. Just make buzzwords Like just make sandwiches in the parking lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, can we sit there for a little bit?
Speaker 1:You know, cause this is something I'm working on for myself. You know, like I have a consumer product it's hair. I was good at it when I was 16. I was great at it when I was 25. It's easy for me. You know, like, like this intuitive thing that I think that people like you, people like me, fall into. Like, actually, this is the easy part. You know it's still work. You know we lose a little bit of what's actually happening. And I want to go back to what you were sharing. You know that this watching someone sit down because you're starting to move away from the table a little bit yeah, you know, starting to from the table a little bit you know, starting to roam the market a little bit more.
Speaker 1:You know I, I watch you disappear in the best of ways. That that's a sign of success to me. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know that you have your crew doing what. What they're doing, you know, getting the product out the way that you want it delivered, which is what business is. You know that that's what it's supposed to look like. You can't do everything yourself forever, no, no. And you know a lot of people refuse to, not, you know. Leave, you know. Leave the space in front, you know, from the stove, you know, because they can't let go. So that ability to let go is an art in and of itself. Also, what's it like to be judged?
Speaker 1:oh yeah you know like I mean, do you watch people's faces as they're eating like is? Is there joy that you receive in watching the process? You know it's like when someone come, you know when they leave the shop. You know we're in my shop right now. You know I it you leave. Oh, I love my hair and I'm like, okay, you just paid me a bunch of money to make your hair look right. Of course you love your hair. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, what was I supposed to do here? Yeah, you know like there's had to be ways for me to remain creative outside of actually hair itself. You know, as you're entering this phase of really allowing yourself to see people consuming who you are in a product that's in a box, what's that process like for you? Because you know, I was never asked this question, you know, so I didn't think to look for it.
Speaker 2:You know, what is that like to have your heart being ingested in someone's mouth, you know, and consumed. I think it's like it's one of those things that's like not everyone is always gonna like what you do. I will say not in like a I've. We've had a few like negative responses and I definitely fixate on them. You know, it's like hard. Like I think the only real overall like comment we get is that like people think I cook with too much salt, which I'm like yeah, that's definitely like I can see that. I'm like I can also say like okay, there's ways we can like tone that back. And then also there's, like you were saying earlier, it's it's a town where, like a lot of people don't eat bread, yeah, and people ask me a lot. They're like when are you gonna do like a gluten-free version? And it's like there's a lot of people in town that bake really amazing gluten-free things. Like I'm not one of them. I don't think I will be one of them.
Speaker 2:It's like I I like to stick to the things that I think that I do well and I want to continue to make a product that I like believe in, rather than trying to make something else to make someone happy, because that's where I think you start to lose sort of like creative interest and like the motivation of caring about what you're doing, not to be like I'm going to make whatever I want, people can take it or leave it, like that's not what I'm trying to say, but it's just like like I'm going to make whatever I want People can take it or leave it, like that's not what I'm trying to say, but it's just like the product I'm making isn't always going to be for everyone.
Speaker 2:It's for enough people that it's working for us, but like you're not going to be able to make everybody happy all the time. So I think, just kind of like being okay with the fact that like somebody might it might not be for them and they can go somewhere else and that's okay, yeah, and then you know we have like I had taken a couple weekends of not being actually at the market, um, and doing other prep offsite or whatever. And then this weekend I was pretty short staff, so I worked both Saturday and Sunday markets and we had somebody come on Sunday and he was like yeah, my wife and I drive over from Campbell every weekend to come get this. He's like, yeah, my wife and I drive over from Campbell every weekend to come get this. I was like, wow, that's really.
Speaker 2:He's like, this is like, and came back and told us like how happy he was with everything and how he's like, yeah, I mean like we like sort of come here to bring our dog to the beach, but like it's, we come here to like get this from Campbell like every weekend. And I was like, wow, that's like that hadn't worked a market in a long time. I guess to like or felt like a long time, you know, after doing it every weekend for so long. So I got people be like really happy about it and kind of like doing new menu items that people are like, oh I'm really excited to try this because it's like different than what you've been doing. That sort of like keeps me interested in doing it, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I'm going to go a little bit deeper in the paint here. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Mostly. Yeah, well, I'm gonna go a little bit deeper in the paint here. Yeah, mostly to be an encouragement to you um, when I was at peak you know this this is you know we had a shop in la one up here in the zone of whatever is cool about santa cruz and and doing the thing you, you know, at least for me I took on this kind of silly persona of just being a dick. You know it's like you just got what you got. You don't like it. There's 35 other hairdressers here. Go to one of them, don't care, you know, but you have nothing to say because it's my head. You know that was the persona.
Speaker 1:You know I didn't like it necessarily, but when I was cutting my teeth, there was a guy named Yosh up in the city. He had a shop in Palo Alto up there, a Japanese guy, and I don't think anybody knew that he spoke English. He just didn't talk and just did his work. And I remember being on a show I was doing prep for him and he spoke very clear English and it was a cue to me because I was pretty young at the time as to what I felt he was up to, which is just, I do what I do and I'm good at what I do. You don't like what I do? Just go elsewhere.
Speaker 1:And it was that shop that got me legs, that allowed me to be who I decided to be in those times when it's look, I have my art, I do what I do. You don't like it. I actually didn't ask you to come. I didn't hand you a card. You heard from someone else. Whatever your group of friends decided, you're the one person that got talked into trying this thing out and you don't like it because you're the person that doesn't like bread. So why eating bread? Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:And like with that, it's like I also like fully under. Like you know, people come. They're like I don't eat bread. I'm like great, I can make you everything that's like in this sandwich. Just like, yeah, on greens or whatever. If you want that like, I'm happy to be super accommodating. It's just like I'm not gonna change what I do I think to like accommodate people, it's like within the parameters of what we're already doing. It's like, absolutely, you have an allergy to this thing.
Speaker 2:We will all wash our hands and clean the board off and make it on a separate paper, whatever, like to the best of our ability to accommodate people and like make people happy, but there's just like only so far you can go within that without like getting to the point where you're like sacrificing what you want to be doing or changing or like trying to do too many things, and it's like I'm just like more interested in kind of like focusing in on keeping it small, to the things that I feel like are working.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and keeping it to yourself. Yeah, and who you are as a person, you know. I want to keep encouraging you to do that, because you know customer service is a misnomer and the customer is almost never right. I mean, that's just the reality. They come to you for your expertise and you're either providing them with what they want or you're not. You know, but there's, there's others. You know, there's other places to go. You know, I, I, you know, at least when I trained my stylist, it was like look, you have your customer, that that's what you're searching for.
Speaker 1:Like don't worry about the other customers there's there's.
Speaker 2:There's somewhere else. Yeah, there's somewhere else. Yeah, there's a lot of other hairdressers, and it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1:What matters is you provide your customers for what they want, and that's by being who you are and not having to be someone else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think part of it too is like you. It's hard not to get frustrated sometimes when people are like like I would say, for the most part we try to keep like our wait times on stuff not super long, but sometimes there's just like only so much you can do. I mean, our whole thing is like one plastic folding table and four burner, like four portable burners with a flat top, like that's only so much space we're using like catering coolers with ice packs in them. That's our refrigeration. Like like again, like I just always like we're in a tent and parking lot, like there's only so much you can do. So when people are like, oh, 15 to 20 minute wait, like that seems, I'm like I'm not hiding anything from you. I'm like you can see how many, or like there's just 30 orders in front of you. Like there's nothing, there's nothing I can do beyond that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, other than tell you the wait time, I'm putting out two a minute.
Speaker 2:Other than kind of like tell you the wait time and you can choose yes or no. But it's like I just. It's like those kinds of things where you can't really let that affect you too much or you'll feel frustrated by it because there's only so much you can do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not a line, you know, it's not not the same kind of atmosphere.
Speaker 2:It's totally different and I didn't really want to work in those environments anymore.
Speaker 3:So it's like okay, so you're eating camping. Yeah, I'm just like I'm not going to bring that mentality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even, though most of the people we have working like also come from those backgrounds and bring that kind of like intensity and like a good way, like you know, kind of a little bit of perfectionism and that like fast paced environment, like all of that executing things really well, really fat, like used to that environment.
Speaker 2:It's like I don't want to, I don't do that anymore for a reason, and like I don't really we're not going to just like create that here, because it's like I could just go back to line cooking if I wanted to, but I don't really want to, so it's like trying to figure out a way to not have that environment just recreated somewhere else, cause it's there's no point. You know.
Speaker 1:So last question. Yeah. What drives you Like, like, like when you look to the future. You know, as I expressed before we interviewed there are a lot of young female entrepreneurs that are certainly coming to this side of 41st. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love watching this. You know, it really reminds me of a time back when I had hopes and dreams and wanted to do things. You know when you, when you wake up in the morning, you know what's the thing that gets you up. When you know what, what, what, what, what in the future do you go? Yeah, you know what I'm targeting for this.
Speaker 2:This might not be like the best answer, but I I am like so bad at planning anything. Like when I got that job in Alaska, it was because I had a really good friend I had met here and she and her partner were managing the lodge that I worked at and we were just texting and she was like, oh yeah, someone just quit, and I was like joking and I was like, oh, I want to come up there. She was like, oh yeah, someone just quit and I was like joking and I was like, oh, I want to come up there. She was like, do you actually? Because if you do, the chef's here is like looking to retire and this is like your foot in the door, but you need to be up here by Sunday.
Speaker 2:And that was like a Wednesday, I think. I think I was at the downtown farmer's market and I had three jobs at the time here, um, and I very much not like me but ended up putting in notice for all of those jobs and I think I was up in Alaska by Saturday night. So like three days or something to decide if I wanted to go work up there or not on kind of a trial basis, and then, I think like a few weeks into working there, they offered me the executive chef job for the following season, but then coming back here.
Speaker 2:I worked up there all the way through October and then I came back here for like six or seven days and then ended up living in Mexico for six months on my off season Bartending at a hotel there for like not not any money really but, just like cause, I wanted to go live somewhere else in Mexico, in Southern Mexico I lived there for like five or six months and then came back up here and then went back to Alaska, and then every season it's on a contract renewal basis.
Speaker 2:So it was just kind of like whether or not I would sign to work again, and I just never had a plan beyond that Up until my last season. I left, I drove up there actually and left a car there, left a surfboard there left some other stuff there, didn't know it's still there. Actually Ended up selling my car, buying a truck here.
Speaker 2:Might leave the surfboard maybe I'll leave this there. So I think with that, I just I didn't really have a plan for this starting it and I don't really have a plan. It's just kind of like seeing what opportunities come from the connections you make and the people you know and the things that you're interested in seeing where that goes yeah, well, it's really good to watch.
Speaker 1:You know it's like, look, all my best executed ideas failed, you know, and they were good executions. They just were what they were and market didn't match at the moment that we executed. And you know, so much of life is just, you know, flying by the seat of your pants in a lot of ways, and it's certainly been a joy to watch just this thing just happen, you know, as an idea. But to watch you be part of this groove that is happening, that I'm noticing emerging amongst your age group, amongst your gender, it's just really been a joy to watch you and watch them do this thing. So it's really good.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that's my point. Yeah, thanks so much.
Speaker 1:So why don't you share with the audience who you are, where you're at what days? How they can find you Okay.
Speaker 2:I was like wait for what? What days for the market, yeah, okay, I was like wait for what? Yeah, for the market. Um, we are doing melrose cafe at the santa cruz farmers markets. Um saturday west side sunday live oak from nine to one every weekend.
Speaker 2:For the most part, um we try to post on instagram if we're ever not going to be at a market but, I'm really bad at social media, so we don't always do that and we're hoping to add a third market going into the summer and we'll figure that hopefully in the next couple of months. Do you have a?
Speaker 1:website or anything like that. We don't have a website, not yet.
Speaker 2:Just the Instagram page and yeah, that's been it so far.
Speaker 1:Well, that's fantastic, kim. So hey, thanks so much for coming on the show. Appreciate you sitting down with me and for all of you, I want to thank Santa Cruz vibes magazine for hosting this program. You can find the magazine at various stores. Go to the website. You'll find a bunch of other stuff, including my podcast, but you already listened to it so you know where it's at. I also want to thank Pointside Beach Shack. Thanks for everybody. Love you all. Bye.