mutual support for solo
business venture
Café, bakery will supply
mutual support for solo
business venture
By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer
CHRIS KELLY Karen Grieco plans to run a catering business and wholesale bakery out of her new corporate eatery, Cafe 106, located in an office complex on Apple Street in Tinton Falls.
This time, Karen Grieco is doing it for herself. Grieco, well known as a pastry chef, opened Cafe 106 in a corporate office building at 106 Apple St. in Tinton Falls.
The eatery is designed to give the workforce in the building and surrounding business district a lunch-time option beyond brown bagging it or grabbing something at a fast-food restaurant. And it’s set up to be a lot better for their bottom line and their waistline.
"Business people don’t need to go out for fast food. We want to offer them nutritious, delicious food at an affordable price. I know what it can cost them to eat out every day," said Grieco.
"I want to give people healthy food, vegetable dishes, low-cal desserts and nutritious salads," the Red Bank resident who developed a local following as pastry chef at a downtown coffeehouse said.
CHRISKELLY Café 106 is designed to offer affordable, nutritious food to business people in a hurry.
"I’ve run other people’s businesses; now it’s time to run my own," said Grieco, a former instructor at the Brookdale Community College Culinary Education Center in Asbury Park. "I’ve worked for a lot of restaurateurs. Now I want to benefit from my skills and my work ethic."
The café, which seats 24, will serve a breakfast buffet and gourmet lunch menu offering nutritious choices. Breakfast prices begin at $1.25 for a fresh-baked cinnamon bun, and lunch prices start at $4.99 for a menu that includes homemade soups, sandwiches on freshly baked focaccia, and gourmet salads to eat in or take out.
Café hours will be 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Grieco is aiming to attract not only employees among the 300 office tenants in her own building, but workers in neighboring office complexes, as well as those who work in nearby commercial districts like downtown Red Bank.
In addition to daily breakfast and lunch menus, the café’s kitchen is equipped for corporate and private catering, which, Grieco said, will be moderately priced.
Drawing on her background as a pastry chef, Grieco plans to run a full-scale wholesale bakery operation out of the café kitchen, which she has supplemented with professional bakery equipment.
An array of the baked goods and desserts — including her signature cheesecake and macaroons that she will be whipping up for hotels, country clubs and local restaurants — will be available for retail purchase at the café.
Just 28 years old, Grieco has years of solid culinary experience, including European training, under her chef’s toque.
While still in culinary school, Grieco moved to the West Coast to take a position as an apprentice to the pastry chef at Spago, restaurant of famed chef Wolgang Puck.
"It was pretty exciting. I was 19 years old and pursuing my dream. I was very star-struck," she admitted, noting that she baked for a host of Hollywood stars while apprenticing at Spago and at Patina & Pinot Bistro in Los Angeles under chef Joachim Spichal.
Grieco returned to the East Coast and CIA, graduating in 1994, before taking a position as pastry chef with Rebecca’s, a restaurant cum bakery in Boston’s Beacon Hill section.
Next, she segued to the historic Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Mass., where she inaugurated the hotel’s annual "Death by Chocolate" buffet event.
After four years in Boston, she returned to her hometown in Staten Island, N.Y., to accept a job as a high school home economics instructor. In 1998, she moved to New Jersey and accepted a position as head pastry chef instructor at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft.
After years of working for others in the culinary field, Grieco said she began looking around for a business venture of her own after becoming frustrated "with business owners who don’t treat kitchen staff fairly."
Initially focused on opening a bakery, she switched hats when the corporate eatery "fell right in my lap."
The restaurant component of her new business, Grieco figured, would pay her overhead, while the kitchen facility gives her the capability to offer catering and run a wholesale bakery operation.
The mother of two young sons, Grieco realized she could run the tripartite business without working long bakers’ hours or weekends.
She expects to staff the café with culinary school graduates and current students, whom she will mentor.
Grieco said she isn’t daunted by the challenge of juggling the demands of being a contemporary working mother/business owner.
If she has a motto, it’s "Look out, Martha!" she said, referencing her idol, homemaking maven Martha Stewart.
"I think I’m a lot like her," Grieco noted. "I’m my own person. I’m organized, and she is too. I’m juggling having a family and a career, and I think anybody who does that deserves a medal.
And, she was willing to pay the price to live in the vintage home she and her husband bought on Red Bank’s east side.
"I love Red Bank," she said. "I iced a million cakes to be able to move to this town."