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Business & Tech

Novato-Based Local Spicery Now Open For Business

A passion for flavor makes this family business a savory success.

Although their backgrounds are in engineering and marketing, the husband-and-wife team of Nick Davoren and Evelyn Wood found a similar passion: fresh spices.

They opened their business, Local Spicery, to provide the community with freshly milled and blended spices. Along with daughter, Rachel Davoren, they do it all—milling, blending, packaging and labeling—at their state-licensed mill in Bel Marin Keys.

They started by offering artisanal blends and freshly-milled spices to customers at Marin County Farmers Markets and now sell their spices to restaurants and farmers markets in three counties as well as online at freshlocalspices.com.

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“We offer traditional shipping, as well as free pickup at the Mill or at the farmers markets we attend in San Rafael, Santa Rosa, and Oakland,” said Nick Davoren.

With a mission to provide the freshest spices available anywhere, Local Spicery puts mill and blends dates on its labels.

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“To our knowledge, we are the only spice vendor in operation that does this. Otherwise, how can you know how fresh the product is?” said Davoren, who explained that the essential oils that provide a spice’s distinctive flavor and aroma begin breaking down as soon as the product is milled, making the mill date the defining characteristic of a spice’s freshness.

Local Spicery has become known throughout Bay Area food circles for its distinctive spice blends. For instance, local chef-owner Jeff Cerciello of Farmshop recently featured Local Spicery’s Chinese Five Spice Blend in his signature dish served during the Cecilia Chiang Tribute Dinner at the Sixth Annual Pebble Beach Food & Wine event.

Ranging from dry rubs based on Central American chiles to French herb blends, Local Spicery’s products, Davoren said, are reliably fresh.

The owners agreed to field a few questions about their pathway leading to Local Spicery.

How long have you been in Marin?

Nick grew up in Tiburon; Evelyn moved to San Rafael in the early 80s. We were married on Mount Tam almost 24 years ago, and then moved north to Novato 21 years ago to raise our two children.

What were your backgrounds before opening Local Spicery?

We both have professional backgrounds in engineering and marketing (which is how we met) though we also both worked in the food industry prior to that—restaurants and wholesale grocery. With a common extra-curricular passion for experiencing the flavors of the world and a common we-can-do-it-all outlook, we decided to embark on this new and altogether different adventure for the empty-nest phase of our lives.

What inspired this endeavor?

A passion for flavor, adventure, and experiencing different cultures. We love to experiment with very fresh spices and started ordering spices and grinding our own about 10 years ago. We are also intrigued by the story of spice and how it has influenced so much of every culture.

And what are the biggest challenges/rewards of running Local Spicery?

Well, the challenge is in the scope of what we decided to attempt—setting up a full commercial processing facility while simultaneously figuring out how to sell our spices. We never imagined how complex that would be with all of the food safety regulations in place. However, our whole concept revolved around milling our own spices, so we could provide them at the peak of their flavor and aroma. The rewards have been a combination of the people we have been meeting who are equally passionate about flavor and food, and “craftsman's pride”—that sense of fulfillment that comes from creating something yourself that touches somebody else's life.

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