Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to BOB and KATE CARPENTER. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
BOB and KATE, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Our mission is to “Connect our community through food and friendship”
We have an open kitchen and people talk to us while we are preparing their food. People often say they feel like they are in their aunt’s kitchen.
Instead of saying “Have a nice weekend” to our guests we usually say “What are you doing this weekend?” Open ended questions lead to real conversations and getting to know our community. We often plan dinners with customers who become friends, we’ve attended local plays when our guest’s granddaughter is performing, and we attend many local events with other local business owners.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Hello! We are Kate and Bob Carpenter of Escondido, Calif. In 2015 we opened a small restaurant called Sunny Side Kitchen that serves breakfast and lunch panini, fresh salads, homemade soups, old-fashioned lemonade, as well as bite-sized cookies, decadent brownies and gluten free muffins that don’t taste gluten free.
In 2017, Yelp put us on their list of Top 100 Restaurants You Should Visit … in the entire country. They did it again in 2018. How did we get here?
We’re old, so it’s kind of a long story!
Bob and Kate met in 2006, both divorced parents of two kids. It was a match made on E-Harmony and they have found it has been a perfect match. Both grew up in the Los Angeles area and both have journalism degrees. Both have a love of food and family and travel.
Here’s Kate’s journey
Kate is the middle of three children born to native California parents. Her dad, Robert Klassen, was a surveyor for the Department of Water and Power in the City of Los Angeles. Her mom, Mary Ann, was a homemaker who returned to college in the early ‘70s and then embarked on a career in sales.
After she graduated high school, Kate came to San Diego State University to study journalism. She got a job in the cafeteria, where she continued working even after graduating in 1986. She also worked for a time as a cashier at DZ Akin’s Delicatessen, a college area institution in Jewish deli food and service.
Kate loved San Diego and was determined to stay, as long as she could get a job in her career. The newspaper business was stable then, with community newspapers in abundance. After an unpaid internship at an East County paper, Kate was hired at the Chula Vista Star-News. She covered a few city council meetings, but it was features writing that appealed most, and Kate was soon interviewing people on the street, talking to new business owners, relating any and all human interest stories. The overworked features editor started handing off food stories, and Kate happily gobbled them up.
One of Kate’s most treasured cookbooks was given to her during this time. It is called “Second Helpings.” It’s a collection of recipes gathered from the men and women of the Scripps Memorial Hospital Auxiliary, Chula Vista. They published and sold the book as a fundraiser. Many of the recipes were handed down through generations. Some were terrible! She tried a lot of them and discovered a few gems. The Delicious cookie that now is sold at Sunny Side Kitchen is from a recipe in that homespun cookbook. It’s that cookie that inspired the business, but not for a few more years.
Kate continued in newspapers throughout San Diego, including the Poway News Chieftain, and then the Blade-Citizen, which eventually merged with the Times Advocate to become the North County Times. She married, had two beautiful children, got divorced and then entered the arena of public relations.
Working with PR pro Jan Percival at Scribe Communications was a dream job. Their clients were among the best in their industries and Kate was responsible for writing their stories. But when the recession got serious, business became tougher to keep and in October 2011 Scribe was scaled back.
Kate was at a career crossroads. PR wasn’t her passion. She wanted to shift gears completely, get away from the desk jobs she’d had for more than two decades. She wanted to work with her hands and get outside and engage with people one-on-one. Bob’s income could pay the bills, so Kate decided in November 2011 to bake and sell cookies at the farmers’ markets throughout San Diego County. The Delicious cookie was at the heart of this decision. And there have been many, many decisions!
Sunny Side Kitchen’s inception story
As the daughter of a blue-collar worker turned manager, the idea of starting and owning your own business was completely foreign to Kate. The entrepreneurial spark had to be lit. Kate sat at the table in her bright yellow kitchen and started with what she knew, words. Pages of ideas were drafted about what to call the business, what it should look like, how it should operate. Kate drew from her childhood and upbringing by a mom who excelled in the kitchen and as a hostess. She considered experiences in food and travel and also philosophies of life. Not knowing exactly where the business would go, the name needed to be generic enough to include new culinary ideas. It also needed to be easy to remember and spell. Hoping always to be positive in business and to inspire happiness in herself and others, Kate decided to name the company Sunny Side Kitchen. Its origins are in the old time song, “Keep On The Sunny Side.”
Of course there were a few regulations and permits and certifications to be achieved before a single cookie could be sold, and so it was in March 2012 that Sunny Side Kitchen sold its first cookie (thanks, Mom) at its first farmers market, the North San Diego Farmers’ Market, located at the Sikes Adobe Farmstead in the midst of the San Dieguito River Park.
The farmers’ market business grew to three markets per week, including North Park and Pacific Beach, then guest appearances at the Little Italy market. Finally Sunny Side Kitchen was accepted at its home farmers market in downtown Escondido.
Before too long, the menu grew from cookies only to gluten free cake, brownies and then panini sandwiches. Old-fashioned lemonade became a big draw, especially in the summer months. During cold months there was homemade soup.
Sunny Side Kitchen expanded yet again as a mobile food option at many of San Diego’s finest craft breweries, including Lost Abbey, Booze Brothers, Iron Fist and Coronado Brewing, among many others. Bob and Kate gained hours of experience grilling panini to order for hundreds of hungry beer drinkers. They also learned the craft of customization, as some beer drinkers don’t eat bread or maybe are trying to avoid dairy.
Throughout those first years, Bob was involved 100 percent with Sunny Side Kitchen, in addition to working full time as the editor, photographer and writer for 8-Lug Diesel Truck Magazine (and many other magazines before that).
Here’s Bob’s journey
Bob was born in Madison, Wisconsin, as the baby and only boy of Earl and Arlene Carpenter’s three children. The family moved to sunny California when Bob was 1. Bob raced BMX as a youngster, dirt bike motorcycles as a teen, dirt track stock cars as an adult, and learned to fly airplanes a bit later in life.
Action sports consumed him, but he was always interested in journalism. He was editor of his grade school newspaper, was a writer in his junior and senior high school papers, and got a journalism degree from California State University Northridge. He was editor of the college newspaper one summer, too. His dream job somewhat fell into his lap before he even completed his degree. He was hired as the motorcycle test editor at the newly formed Dirt Rider magazine (they were in final edits of the first edition when he was hired) the first Monday in October of 1982. Riding, testing, photographing all the latest and greatest dirt bikes was his idea of fun and to get a paycheck doing it was better than a dream.
After seven years of dirt bike magazines, Bob switched to pickup truck magazines, then stock car racing magazines, then a classic pickup truck magazine, then a performance boat magazine and on and on. When he was laid off as editor of 8-Lug Diesel Truck Magazine, Bob decided 32 years was enough. It was time to go all in on the restaurant venture. Bob’s dad started his own business in the ‘60s so Bob was very familiar with the idea of having your own place and all the background work that goes along with it.
Sunny Side Kitchen finds a permanent home in Escondido
In 2015, after three years of setting up 10×10 canopies and 8-foot tables and carrying ice chests from commercial kitchen to farmers market to brewery and back again, Bob and Kate were ready to set down roots. They found the perfect place at 155 S. Orange St. The 660-square-foot, mom-and-pop shop is just off Grand Avenue in historic downtown Escondido. It is close to both the 15 and 78, on the way to the San Diego Zoo’s Safari Park, Harrah’s Casino and many other local attractions (like Stone Brewing and The Children’s Discovery Museum).
It’s also a good stop on the way to the desert, or back, as actress Susan Sarandon discovered when she needed an emergency vet for her little dog, who got tangled up with some cactus. Sarandon and her son and their friends found Sunny Side Kitchen to be the perfect hideout for lunch that day.
Sunny Side Kitchen is a fast-casual restaurant, meaning guests order at the counter and are served at their table. Customers often help themselves to water and cutlery. The decor is eclectic and colorful; not quite farmhouse, more like hobo trying to be chic. Wood tabletops and thrift store chairs combine with chalkboard menus and mismatched plates and silverware.
Perhaps Sunny Side’s best aspect is that the kitchen is open to the dining area, allowing Bob, Kate and all their employees to engage and connect in a genuine way with their guests. In short, people often say they feel like family in this homey kitchen. Sunny Side is an unpretentious place, to be sure, where regulars often chat with newcomers and many times friendships are formed. It’s an intimate place (a.k.a. small), with four tables inside and three outside on the sidewalk, for a total capacity of 24. As you might imagine, take out and delivery are popular choices. Call ahead to get your order ready for pickup.
The food and drinks at Sunny Side Kitchen are always as fresh as possible, and mostly non-traditional. No scrambled eggs or pancakes. No deli meats. The menu is inspired by Casual California Cuisine, food that is made simply and with the freshest ingredients, often borrowing from the traditions of the many cultures who have settled here in this great state. As much as possible is made by hand, with local ingredients and in small batches. Highlights of the menu are handcrafted panini, seasonal salads, homemade soups, baked treats, craft coffee, and old-fashioned lemonade.
While the menu is relatively small and unconventional, Bob and Kate are committed to having something for everyone. They understand that many people have dietary restrictions. For those who are celiac, for example, Sunny Side Kitchen offers gluten free bread, several gluten free soups, gluten free quiche selections every day and gluten free muffins.
Those who are following a strict Keto diet, or are dairy free, vegetarian or vegan, also will find menu selections catered to their tastes.
This March Bob and Kate will be celebrating 7 years of the brick and mortar store on Orange Street..
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Owning a restaurant during a pandemic has been a challenge! We had to limit how many diners were inside, then we had to close the dining room entirely…then we had to stop letting people sit outside and switch to to-go only. Each pivot was uncharted territory and we watched as some local restaurants couldn’t adapt.
We never closed a day during the entire pandemic and kept making changes. For 3 months we started doing burgers on weekends. It really made a difference in our ability to pay the rent! We also added take home dinners for about 6 months and that was a nice addition to our revenue stream as so many people were on lock down. When all was said and done, we finished 2020 with sales up about 25 percent! And then another 25 percent in 2021. Sometimes it’s hard to believe.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
We didn’t have much in the way of reserves so we had to patch together enough money to purchase an existing restaurant. When we found the place we wanted and the total $ needed was just $40,000, we went to our local Wells Fargo bank and our banker helped us out. We each got a personal (no collateral) loan for $10,000 and we each got a business (no collateral) loan. So we had the money we needed with no risk of losing our house with a home equity loan. We paid off the loans after about 2 years.
Contact Info:
- Website: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://m.instagram.com/sunny_side_kitchen
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sunny-Side-Kitchen-169479659808175
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sunny-side-kitchen-escondido-3?osq=sunny+side+kitchen
Image Credits
Arlene Ibarra