The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Recipe for Success: Dean Sales (left) and Barbi Satter say superior service and product knowledge will keep customers coming to Cooking Etc., their new store in Willow Glen.

Cooking Etc. owners say store blends personalities and skills

White Dove chef gives the mixture his thumbs-up

By John Pancharian

On the eve of opening their new cooking store in Willow Glen, following a hard and harried day of work, Dean Sales and Barbi Satter sounded weary yet excited.

They opened the doors of Cooking Etc. on July 25, after hours of arranging cookware, specialty foods, kitchen gadgets and a cookbook library. Apparently their hard worked paid off, as even White Dove Cafe chef George Garza gave the store his thumbs up.

Sales and Satter, who are longtime friends, are both new to the retail industry.

Sales, a former computer-industry marketer, said he opened his own business to take more control over his destiny. He said he has always dreamed of opening a cooking store but needed some haranguing to take the plunge.

Homemaker and former secretary Satter provided all the enthusiasm--and needling--necessary to move Sales. Satter said this project is her mid-life crisis, and while she expects to work harder than ever, she thinks it's worth it to reap the rewards of her own efforts.

"He's the 'cooking,' and I'm the 'etc.,' " Satter said, explaining that Sales has more formal training and gourmet skills, but she knows how to put a store together with a light and homey feel so customers will want to be there.

In addition to their divergent backgrounds, both say they complement the other well in cooking styles and business skills. Sales has trained at the San Francisco Culinary Academy, while Satter learned in the trenches, cooking dinner for her son's entire football team.

In getting ready to open, Sales rigged the store with its point-of-sale computer system and Internet access, while Satter pulled utensils out of sterile plastic packaging and laid them in attractive baskets. The two quipped that they're also financially compatible: Sales had enough money saved up to start the store, and Satter said, "Good, let's spend it."

What the two of them share is the desire to work for themselves and to provide quality products, service and knowledge unavailable elsewhere.

"The differentiators we like to bring to our customers are service and product knowledge," Sales said. "We like to cook, we know how to cook and we'll go the extra mile."

Satter is quick to share her ideas about where that extra mile might go. She plans to assemble gift baskets that look attractive and serve as self-contained cooking kits.

Satter plans to feature a new spice each month and set up a display with recipes that call for it. In addition, she and Sales intend to assemble a cooking library.

"We're hoping people will feel comfortable enough to sit here and read," Satter said while relaxing in one of the twin blue sofas in the back of the store. On shelves above them, Sales and Satter have begun collecting cookbooks from all over the country. Sales plans to feature regional cookbooks, many derived from collections of small-town recipes of church groups, sororities and such.

White Dove chef Garza said Sales and Satter had done a good job assembling their cooking store.

"They've got everything you need here to fill a kitchen," he said. Garza, who found prices reasonable on items such as Henkel knives, said he'd suggest that White Dove owner Jeff Michel buy some vegetable-cutters there, and he compared the store favorably with Lechters.

"I'll definitely be back," Garza said.

Cooking Etc. is located at 1712-H Meridian Ave., near Hamilton Avenue. 266-5382.

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