After plugging away for 14 years as a successful home-based caterer serving residential and corporate clients, Pam Dziedzic decided to go retail.
She bought a storefront space on Kercheval Avenue, an eclectic and re-emerging commercial stretch in Grosse Pointe Park, her hometown, and added cafe and bakery to the business plan.
She's calling it Cabbage Patch Cafe and after just six months in business - previously operating under the prior owner's name, Fou 'd Amour - she is expanding, doubling the space and channeling her endless energy and enthusiasm into a cafe that's more than a place to have a meal.
By spring the cafe, which now has four tables, a bakery display case and a refrigerator/freezer for the prepared take-out meals honed by the previous business and carried on by Dziedzic, will have 10-12 tables and space for 40-50 to eat.
"There's so much I want to do," says Dziedzic, a mother of twin high-school students whose passion for cooking and food is contagious. "I want to be be able to rent out the space for birthday parties and showers and do pop-up restaurants with a different theme each month. I want to be known for a place to pick up your prepared dinners, where you can find, heat, and serve healthier options for families, high protein meals for marathon runners and gluten-free meals."
She describes the cafe as "fresh, funky, friendly and fun."
What excites her almost as much as the food business is being a part of changes in Grosse Pointe Park - and the Pointes in general. Cabbage Patch Cafe - the name derived from a surrounding lower-rent neighborhood where Irish help brought their cultural affection for cabbage to their modest homes while working in more affluent residences in the Pointes - is one of several businesses playing into a larger re-development plan of Kercheval Avenue. The commercial stretch known as The Park borders the city of Detroit, and is a stepchild to the more successful business districts on Kercheval: The Village in the city of Grosse Pointe and The Hill in Grosse Pointe Farms.
In The Park, there is Red Crown restaurant that opened in a renovated art deco gas station 10 months ago. Atwater Brewery is opening a brewpub and biergarten in a church a block away from Cabbage Patch, and other plans to bring new businesses and redesign the street to make it more walkable are unfolding.
"I feel like this might be perfect timing. This area truly feels more urban and I have something that is part of that urban feel," she says. "It's coming out of the comfort zone for Grosse Pointe, and it's needed here. I really want to try to do something that's different for Grosse Pointe."
In the meantime, she's focusing on the mainstay of her business, catering, as she takes on the new job duties that will make her business grow. She has hired a full-time chef, Brittany Swineford, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Chicago and a chef at The Palm in the Windy City. She retained the baker, Brian Rentschler, from the previous business, which was also known for its scones. She and another full-time staffer run the business she's reinventing.
"This has really been a natural progression," she says. "It's a big transition, but it's exciting."
Source: Pam Dziedzic, caterer and owner, Cabbage Patch Cafe & Catering
Writer: Kim North Shine
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