HAVERHILL — For years, Carolyn Grieco ran her food business out of her home, selling her own specialty baked goods, jams and baking mixes at the Haverhill Farmers Market, at local farm stands and to customers through home delivery.
Now, after experiencing tremendous growth for her products, Grieco, 58, has opened a retail store and commercial kitchen at 800 Broadway.
The Stoneham native, a 1990 culinary arts graduate from Newbury College in Brookline, said food has always been a passion since childhood when she became obsessed with her Easy-Bake Oven.
"Upon graduating from culinary school, I was fortunate to have unique opportunities in the industry from being a personal chef and running a private café for a Boston law firm, to teaching adult cooking workshops and owning my own start-up bakery in Middleton," she said.
"Somewhere along the way I became really connected with local farm food and seasonal-inspired baking and ended up working at several family farms in the state running their farm kitchens and developing retail products using the fruits and veggies from their fields and orchards."
And that is how Carolyn’s Farm Kitchen was born, she said.
"We're now producing a line of original farm baking mixes made from seasonal recipes developed over the years and sold retail and wholesale to farm stands and specialty shops throughout the state. In addition to our baking mixes, we also produce handmade jams and preserves, granola, and tons of fresh baked goods using our baking mix recipes."
Grieco has operated her cottage business from a second - licensed and city and state-inspected - kitchen in her Haverhill home for the past 12 years, selling her products at the retail and wholesale level.
As the business grew she was selling up to 500 scones and 100 loaves of breads a week at the Haverhill Farmers Market, never mind her other products. And she is known throughout the area for her cooking classes.
Grieco said she prides herself in creating "clean" baking mixes tailored to the seasons. Her easy, one-bowl premium mixes of her own creation ask customers to add fresh ingredients such as eggs, milk, apple cider, vegetable oil, vanilla, butter, pumpkin, apples, cranberries and other fruits paired to the New England growing season that make her mixes stand out from commercial mixes that might contain processed, dried or dehydrated fruits or other ingredients.
"It's important for people to know that I only use premium ingredients such as aluminum-free baking powder and stone ground cornmeal," she said.
The varieties seem endless. There's zucchini bread and spice loaf mixes, blueberry muffin and crumble mixes, shortcake biscuit and garden herb biscuit mixes, various scone mixes, fruit buckle coffeecake mix, maple cornbread mix, as well as gluten free mixes including fruit bread and muffin mix and many more. There's also a cider donut baking mix and baking kit. It's one of her most popular mixes when fall comes to New England.
"It's old fashioned baking where people just add a few fresh ingredients," she said. "All you need is a bowl, a whisk and a spatula and our mixes are ready to pop into the oven in five minutes."
Her jams are also made of premium products such as locally grown apples, wild blueberries from Maine and rhubarb from Willow Spring Vineyards in Haverhill and Pleasant Valley Farms in Methuen.
"All the farms I work with follow good practices," she said, adding that she endeavors to use non-GMO ingredients.
Deliveries in Haverhill are always free with a $25 minimum purchase, she said, adding there is a small fee for area communities.
"We are thrilled to stay in Haverhill and expand the business into a larger commercial space which will allow us to grow both retail and wholesale operations as well as continued community engagement in the form of cooking demos, pop-up events, and more," she said. "Though this will not be a bakery, we will always offer fresh baked treats in some capacity throughout the year."
She anticipates her retail shop being open during production hours initially and will continue participating at the Haverhill Farmers Market and doing her Red Buggy deliveries. She also plans to host cooking classes and holding cooking demonstrations.
"I always say, ‘we have the best customers ever,’ and it’s because of their support and the support of this community that we have been able to grow and go forward,'" she said.
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