Recipe for unique prep kitchen partnership includes community love + mutual admiration

August 5, 2023  |  By Cheryl Casey  |  Correspondent 

Stowe Street Cafe owner Nicole Grenier with Paprika Catering owners Jacqueline de Achaval and Jen McCabe. Photo by Gordon Miller

What is the secret for small business success? For local businesses Stowe Street Cafe and Paprika Catering Company, their recipe calls for a large dose of out-of-the-box thinking, no small measure of hard work, and a few handfuls of community love, topped off with a sprinkling of friendship.

Earlier this summer, Stowe Street Cafe owner Nicole Grenier announced that renovations had been completed on the cafe’s shiny new community prep kitchen and the space would be shared with empanada makers Paprika Catering, owned by Jen McCabe and Jacqueline de Achaval. The partnership is unlike any found in Vermont, with the cafe being the first food business to rent its kitchen to another food business. 

The arrangement is mutually beneficial rather than competitive for a couple of reasons. “When we started the cafe in 2015, our intent was to have it be a community hub for local farmers,” Grenier explained. 

Using the building as more than a cafe in order to support local food growers, chefs, and entrepreneurs had always been a part of the plan, she said. 

McCabe and de Achaval fit that bill with their unique take on empanadas made with a variety of locally-sourced ingredients. 

“It’s a symbiotic relationship,” McCabe said.

The three women were already acquainted with each other. McCabe had worked at the cafe for a time, and when McCabe and de Achaval founded Paprika Catering Company in October 2021, Grenier offered the cafe as a space to hold their first Wednesday night pop-up event. The empanadas had also become a popular feature at the weekly Waterbury Farmers Market. Before long, both the catering side and the pop-up sales were taking off and “people started asking for empanadas for home to cook at their leisure,” de Achaval said.  

The inspiration for Paprika's empanadas comes from Jacqueline de Achaval, a native of Argentina. Photo by Gordon Miller

Originally from Argentina, de Achaval recognized how Paprika’s empanadas could fill a gap in Waterbury’s local food offerings. “I couldn’t find empanadas here, so I needed to start making them,” de Achaval laughed. 

Both de Achaval and McCabe have extensive experience in the food industry. McCabe trained in the Classic French Style at Atlantic Culinary School and then worked in a variety of hospitality settings, both front and back of house. Her resume includes a stint with the late celebrity chef Kerry Simon while in Telluride, Colorado. 

De Achaval’s culinary credits run deep, too. She worked in catering in Colorado before relocating to Vermont and landing a job at Cabot Creamery’s production plant in Cabot, becoming one of only two women cheesemakers in Cabot’s history. 

“I loved that job,” confessed de Achaval. “I learned so many things at Cabot that became so important later” for Paprika. 

A daunting challenge 

Empanadas. Photo by Gordon Miller

The empanada makers, however, faced one big hurdle to expanding their business, specifically if they wanted to include meat and poultry in their empanada selections: compliance with U.S. Department of Agriculture and Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets requirements. 

A look at their menu finds 10 varieties of empanadas with meat and chicken featured prominently in several. Part of the attraction for customers at the farmers market tent or on pop-up nights is the variety of fillings matched with several dipping sauces. 

Vendors of meat and poultry products are subject to strict licensing requirements and regulations by both federal and state codes. To apply for a license, McCabe and de Achaval first had to find a kitchen that met all of the specifications for a meat processing facility—including a walk-in cooler or freezer, washable walls and floors, a dedicated hand-washing sink, and appropriate separation from other kinds of spaces, according to the state’s Meat Inspection Service guidance documents. 

No such facility existed in Waterbury, where McCabe and de Achaval, partners both personally and professionally, live and raise their family. A search throughout the state for an appropriately sized kitchen that fit the bill—without breaking the bank—similarly turned up empty. Most options were meant to accommodate a full staff and a much larger scale of production. 

Their nascent catering company just wasn’t there yet.

Around the same time, Grenier went from leasing the Stowe Street Cafe space to purchasing the building with her husband, John. McCabe, de Achaval, and Grenier admitted that they can’t quite remember how the idea came about, but the three soon began scheming to turn the cafe’s basement kitchen into just the kind of prep kitchen Paprika Catering needed in the place they most wanted to be.

“We work in this community, we live in this community, we’re raising our children here. We wanted to be in Waterbury,” said McCabe. 

De Achaval added, “Stowe Street Cafe is the perfect spot.”

‘Intense, really specific, and highly supervised’

While Grenier attended to the kitchen renovations, McCabe and de Achaval set to work on the licensing application and documentation. Grenier recalled that when representatives from the state Agency of Agriculture came for an initial inspection, they expressed skepticism that a very old basement in a very old building (constructed c.1885) could be successfully brought into compliance. Nevertheless, they continued to check in on the renovations and offered advice along the way. “They were amazing people,” said de Achaval.

De Achaval also worked closely with food consultant Tyler Cook to understand the government requirements. Cook, whose food consulting business is based in South Burlington, has worked exclusively in the meat industry since 2011 and became a Master Meat Crafter in 2018 at the University of Wisconsin. 

In an email to Waterbury Roundabout, Cook explained that “Making delicious food comes naturally to talented people like Jacqueline, but navigating the governmental requirements does not.” 

Cook examined Paprika’s process and translated that into a working plan that would satisfy state and federal regulators. That helped close the gap between de Achaval and McCabe’s professional knowledge and regulators’ expectations.

State and federal regulations are so specific that they actually help organize the business, according to Grenier. “It’s intense, really specific, and highly supervised. Everything requires documentation—from changes in delivery drivers to the regular testing of product,” she said.

For example, if Stowe Street Cafe staff use—or even enter—the kitchen while Paprika Catering is in operation, the latter’s regulations take precedence. 

“Paprika has a license where the product will reach more people, so avoiding cross-contamination is so important,” de Achaval explained.

To that end, Grenier added that the cafe is intentionally not doing any meat prep in the downstairs kitchen to avoid any questions.

After all of the planning and attention to detail, the new kitchen passed its final inspection in March. “They were pretty blown away that we pulled this off,” Grenier laughed, referring to the various inspectors. “Paprika has set the bar, putting the Agency of Agriculture, Health Department, and USDA back on their heels.” 

All of this has taken place very much behind—or below—the scenes at the cafe. To customers stopping in for coffee and a scone or lingering at a table over lunch, the prep kitchen space and activity is invisible. While the cafe’s open kitchen hums with activity and staff chat with patrons at the counter, it’s very possible that McCabe and de Achaval are downstairs turning out empanadas by the dozen.

Cook acknowledged that he is very impressed with the use of space below the cafe. “It seems like Paprika and Stowe Street Cafe found a good balance of needs that allowed them to develop unused space and support multiple local businesses,” he said. “They listened to exactly what the USDA told them was necessary and designed a tight, efficient space.”

New kitchen just in time

Jen McCabe and Jacqueline de Achaval are Paprika Catering with Stowe Street Cafe owner Nicole Grenier in the new commercial kitchen below the cafe. Photo by Gordon Miller

In the wake of the devastating flooding that occurred in Waterbury on July 10-11, Stowe Street Cafe and Paprika Catering mobilized their combined resources to come to the aid of their community. 

According to Grenier, the renovations to the prep kitchen resolved past flooding issues, ensuring it “thankfully remained clean, dry, and operational” during the storm. 

As the flood response began, both the cafe staff and Paprika used the new kitchen space to prepare meals for those in need of food. They worked with the Waterbury Rotary, the Waterbury Area Food Shelf, and World Central Kitchen assisting with feeding those whose homes were impacted by the flooding and those helping with cleanup.

Stowe Street Cafe’s Pay It Forward program also collected over $20,000 in donations. Grenier gave $5,000 each to Waterbury Rotary and the Good Neighbor Fund to support their flood relief efforts, and is directing remaining funds to help feed people in need through the local food shelf, just recently renamed the Waterbury Common Market.

The flood response didn’t stop there. The business-friendship-community connection continued when the cafe building’s upstairs short-term rental unit came in handy as McCabe and de Achaval’s Elm Street home was flooded. They have since been able to return home.

Now that the kitchen is up and running, Grenier’s staff and Paprika Catering have established a staggered schedule to split the weekly kitchen time. That schedule, however, makes additional access to the community prep kitchen limited for now, Grenier said. 

Grenier said she envisions McCabe and de Achaval’s business outgrowing the space and she looks forward to developing relationships with other small food businesses and organizations to establish the kitchen as a resource for the community. 

Cook encourages that approach as a way to support other fledgling food operations. “Local markets and vendors are often the easiest way into the [food] business” in places like Vermont, he said, calling arrangements such as this between Stowe Street Cafe and Paprika Catering “mini business incubators” that utilize underused space. 

“This allows people who might not be able to begin their business as a full-time endeavor to grow it slowly and steadily.  Such ‘food hub’ agreements are an incredible asset in communities like Waterbury,” he added.

For now, the arrangement is working and the friends and owners of these two complimentary operations say they are excited for their respective businesses to succeed. And they’re eager to see how their partnership might inspire and support other small food businesses. 

“As business owners, being able to support locals and their ability to thrive, to love each other,” is the key, said de Achaval. “When one of us shines, all of us shine.”

Waterbury Center resident Cheryl Casey is a professor of communication at Champlain College and president of the Waterbury Historical Society.