Kitchen specialty shop expands

A Tubac shop is flourishing and expanding in the midst of the national economic downturn. The owners of Tumacookery, Tubac’s kitchen specialty shop, completed an expansion in February that nearly doubled the size of their business in the La Entrada Plaza near the village entrance.

The added square footage gives a more spacious feel for shoppers and also provides a large counter for food sampling and gadget demonstrations.

How did it come about that the store, which opened in June 2005, is growing, since there’s a national slowdown in consumer spending?

Randy Wade said, “A lot of people appreciate that we’ve got something to offer that usually you have to drive to Tucson to find.” Wade and his wife, Karin Rosenquist, own the shop along with Randy’s mother, Kate Wade.

“We’ve had good turnout, locals and tourists, that’s allowed us to expand,” he said. “We got to the point where we wanted to bring in more things, and things were so tight. The opportunity arose, so it all sort of fell together.”

When the shop next door, “Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” moved to another location in the plaza, it opened the opportunity for a connected space.

Sales are strong, he said. “Partly because we’re a young business, but our sales have increased, even lately. I think it has a lot to do with what we’re selling.

“Everybody loves to eat; you can almost say that as an absolute. We sell everything from a jar of salsa, which you just open, to some very specific tools that are just used for one thing. We try to make it so that anyone who walks in the door may find something.”

The name, Tumacookery, is a play on using the name of the historic Tumacacori Mission, a national historic park five miles south of Tubac. Rosenquist said a few names were being considered. “I was trying to think of something else, and at one point, it just popped into my head,” she said.

Crate and Barrel

For shoppers who frequent big-city stores, Tumacookery is strongly reminiscent of Crate and Barrel with modern design and popular food choices.

Prepared foods include many flavors of dips for chips, salsas, olive oil, mustard and dessert sauces. One eye-catcher is titled “raspberry liqueur hot fudge.”

There are colorful enamel teapots in varying sizes, along with an extensive selection of bagged teas. Arbuckle Coffee Co. of Tucson is represented in beans and ground coffee, and there’s generally a pot of coffee brewing for tasting.

There are hundreds of utensils and gadgets to make things easier when preparing for a party, a holiday meal or a family gathering. Shoppers will find ice cream makers, espresso makers, Cuisinart choppers, rice cookers and blenders.

Brightly hued margarita pitchers and glasses, along with imported pottery from Portugal inspire thoughts of party planning. Chef’s knives are displayed, and there’s an entire wall shelf filled with salt and pepper shakers in wood, ceramic or plastic.

When possible, the shop stocks locally produced products. Those include an oven rack push/pull stick of mesquite crafted by Mike Hoeck of Tubac, mesquite cutting boards from the Tumacacori Mesquite Sawmill, packaged seeds from Native Seed Search, which has farms near Patagonia, Green Valley Pecan Co. products, and packaged scone mix from Adobe Rose Bed and Breakfast of Tucson.

The store, now about 2,400 square feet in size, stocks more than 4,000 items. When they opened, Wade said, the store was full of items and “for the first two years we didn’t even have a storage room.”

The expansion has elicited compliments from shoppers and friends. “We’ve had great response from everybody who walks in,” Wade said. “They love it, they love that things are more visible.”

This is their first experience in the retail sector. Wade and Rosenquist were architects in Tucson from 1993 to 2005, and originally they were only going to help with design ideas.

Now, they’re the mainstay of the business and have three part-time employees. The shop is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The expansion means there is now a large and inviting demonstration and sampling counter. “We’ll do sampling of food right off the shelf, like salsas and sauces,” Wade said, along with showing how gadgets and equipment work.

Wade invites people to visit their Web site for a schedule of sampling days and times, and special activities. Visit www.tumacookery.com. The shop’s phone number is (520) 398-9497.

(Reach the writer at kathleenvan@msn.com.)