Meet Francesca Avitto Kate Wnek of New Jersey

Today we’d like to introduce you to Francesca Avitto Kate Wnek.

Hi Francesca Avitto, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
We began dating in 2013 and from the very start, we realized our shared love for creating unique food and hosting events, and within two years, we created Lady and the Shallot – a private chef and events company where we created personalized private dinners and thoughtfully curated events. We were love stricken with this business from the start.
We cooked throughout the Princeton, NJ area for the next two years, from large scale events, to business openings, gallery exhibitions, and intimate dinners.
A couple of years into this endeavor, we began to take our health much more seriously than ever before between illness in our own families, and including our own health issues with reproductive health, and my own auto-immune diseases including Chronic Kidney Disease. This path of health changed our lives and our focus, this was when we decided to open a physical location to share what we’ve done for our own health with the community, creating Plant Based versions of everyone’s favorite foods, but with a clean and healthy focus. Using our experience in high end cooking, we created everyday meals with an elevated flare. We opened our first location in a year round farmers market which included other restaurants, bakeries and cafes, as well as small boutique businesses and farms – enabling us to be a Farm-to-Table eatery. Last year, we opened our first brick and mortar location in an area called Campus Town, a little makeshift ‘downtown” outside of the Campus of The College of New Jersey. It was a great decision for us, only 5 minutes away from our former location so our regular customers have followed us and now we have a whole new generation of young, health conscious and compassionate eaters who now regularly patronize our place. And we must say, our place is a chill, laid back spot where people enjoy spending time. Some come and work, and the college kids always have their laptops propped open and they know it’s a safe and inclusive place for them to spend their time.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
If you ask anyone in small business, not one single day is ever smooth sailing. We believe that’s where passion comes into play. You really have to love what you do to emotionally survive being a small business owner and luckily, we do!

Some obstacles where staying afloat through Covid, that was a scary time but our customers have really become a family type community and they really came out to support us – from takeout to catering and for those who couldn’t come out, they bought gift cards online and this really got us through.

Another obstacle was doing a complete build out on our new space and having no idea about how timelines work and as a small business who doesn’t have unlimited funds like some of these large corporations – time really was money. But luckily, we got open, a couple of months past our goal but our customers showed up and brought so much love.

This past July, early on a Friday morning with luckily just a few customers eating in, a plumber made a pretty grave mistake when he installed a water meter. About two minutes after he turned the water back on, it was a complete waterfall inside of our restaurant, pouring though the ceilings and the water was hitting the floors so hard that it sounded like rocks falling. Needless to say, we were closed for close to a month and that definitely hurt us. Luckily, our customers – the amazing community that they are, started a fundraiser and we were able to use that to pay our staff while we were closed and it also helped with fresh inventory when we opened back up.

Sadly, with the surge in gas prices and the cost of goods in general, it has also raised the prices of our some of our inventory substantially, including some distributors who have raised their minimums so that’s been a struggle. Luckily our produce is seasonally local and while prices have gone up, minimums have not on our local produce.

Every day there can be something to stress about, but love for your business and your customers and the hugs and the love and the support they give is just everything that matters at the end of the day.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
To answer all of these questions at once, I’d have to say that our business was completely created out of pure love and necessity. Francesca has been living with CKD and multiple auto-immune diseases. Kate has dealt with depression and anxiety most of her life. Kate’s mother was diagnosed with early-onset dementia in her late 50’s and we lost due to Alzheimer’s, Francesca’s mom who survived breast cancer and father who we lost to heart issues. All of these things that were happening at once really opened up our eyes to what we want to put inside of our bodies. We learned through trial and error and recipe after recipe how to make really nutritious food taste delicious. In the beginning of this journey we were simply doing it for ourselves and our own health. Now, we get to share these ideas and creations with our customers. It’s a great feeling to feed people, but what we’ve learned is that feeding people with the purpose of helping them live longer is even more fufilling.

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
We love where we live. Kate grew up two towns over in Kingston, a suburb of Princeton and Francesca is from NY. We’ve spent most of our relationship living in and around the Princeton area and have recently moved to Ewing three years ago. We just love Mercer county in general, there’s so much greenery, trees, bodies of water parks – so much nature. And at the same time, many small businesses, restaurants, our neighborhoods are diverse and we have made friends from all over and different walks of life. We’re only forty minutes from the shore which we try to frequent as often as possible. We just love it here.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ladyandtheshallot.com
• Instagram: instgram.com/ladyandtheshallot
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/ladyandtheshallot
• Other: https://www.happycow.net/reviews/lady-and-the-shallot-ewing-125701

Image Credits
All photos taken by Lady and the Shallot