Business Women Awards 2022
Achievement Honoree Jan Faust Dane, Stock Culinary Goods
JAN FAUST DANE has been a writer, editor, public relations consultant and an enthusiast of dinner parties, but she knew nothing about running a retail shop when she opened Stock Culinary Goods in Providence in 2012.
This heading into the unknown, like preparing a new dish for the first time, all began with basic ingredients. For Dane, those ingredients were her appreciation for small, local culinary businesses.
It would be several years before she took the plunge and started Stock Culinary Goods.
Dane worked as a contributing editor for Rhode Island Monthly from 2008 to 2010, and then for the upscale Ocean House in Westerly – a role that she says brought her future plans into focus.
“My title was ‘food forager and director of culinary education,’ ” she said. “Which meant I was the go-between for local farms and restaurants. I’d present what I could find, or the owner would ask me to find certain things for the menu. This took my interest in the local economy, which had been stirred up through my shop guides work, and drilled it down to our local farms and restaurants.”
The store was formerly the European Deli, and its mustard- interior walls and brick-patterned wallpaper needed changing. Old deli cases had to be hauled away. But the biggest budget-buster was the floor, Dane said. When terracotta tiles were removed, an unwelcome surprise was underneath: a pockmarked, ancient terrazzo tile floor, original to the 1920s-era building.
Once up and running, the business was a trial by fire, said Dane, who had never owned or managed a retail shop before. She took out a small-business loan and intended to carry locally made and small-batch products.
“But at the store’s opening, I only had a few hundred products,” she said. “I was undercapitalized. The community needed mashers; they needed peelers. You can’t get those bespoken. You need to work with a recognized company. So, we grew our array of products.”
Today, Stock Culinary Goods’ merchandise includes cookware, bakeware, grocery items, linens and serveware. Learning from scratch has its benefits, though, Dane said. She came to retail without expectations and built upon that clean slate.
Dane said that bringing her sister Jill Eilertson to the team in the shop’s fifth year was a high point. Eilertson’s skill set has been invaluable at the business, Dane said, combining graphic design, cooking knowledge, friendly service and more.
“One thing we stressed is that this was to be a people-first store. It’s more than transactional,” Dane said.
