Today we’d like to introduce you to Brooke and Jacob Town.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Brooke and Jacob. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
We met over 20 years ago at The Cracked Crab restaurant in Pismo Beach. We grew up on the central coast and in 2001 we decided to move to San Francisco to attend culinary school and Art school. Being immersed in the SF food scene was inspiring, challenging and offered endless opportunities to learn.
We worked for acclaimed chefs and restaurants such as Ken Frank, Gary Danko, Spruce, Rubicon, Nopa, Nopalito, and more. These restaurants and their owners were committed to sourcing ingredients with care and diligence while treating their staff and guests with the highest respect. These values eventually carried over into our current practices at The Spoon Trade.
After attempting to buy a house in SF (insert sarcastic laughter here), we decided to move back to our hometown in SLO County and start scouting locations for a restaurant of our own. Before digging into restaurant ownership, we traveled across the US in our 1966 microbus. We researched “American” food by way of 28 different states and over 10,000 miles. Fried Chicken was at the forefront of this research.
After our return, we started going to the farmer’s market every day, creating dishes and baking sourdough along the way. During that time we were looking at restaurant locations in SLO, Morro Bay, Los Alamos, Arroyo Grande & Grover Beach. The 3rd and Grand location had been dormant for almost three years, but we saw so much potential in it and the surrounding neighborhood. Grover Beach is very different than San Francisco, so we’ve been learning how to adapt our experience to fit the needs of this community.
Today we offer you an expression of our collective experience and appreciate your support and willingness to try something new.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Is life ever a smooth road? One of this biggest challenges we face is our location. Grover Beach has always been the underbelly of SLO county, so it’s not really a place people go for a nice dinner. We are changing that. As we change, we figure out more of what the public likes and needs. We served lunch for a year, it didn’t work out…. we used to close one day a week, now we are open seven nights a week.
We try to accept feedback from the public to improve our model while staying true to our creativity and intentions. A smooth road would be far too easy.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We serve scratch-made food encased in technique and inspired by American food, French Food, Italian Food, Japanese Food and more. We like to create spins on classics such as Fried Chicken, Ramen, Meatloaf, Deviled Eggs and more.
We are very proud to highlight quality ingredients in our recipes. We are proud of our local farming community, wine community and beer community. We are proud to call Grover Beach home and support and underrepresented neighborhood.
Contact Info:
- Address: 295 West Grand Ave, Grover Beach, CA, 93433
- Website: thespoontrade.com
- Phone: 805 904 6773
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @thespoontrade
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thespoontrade/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-spoon-trade-grover-beach
Image Credit:
Rebekah Venturini
(Atomic Graphics)
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