PLEASANT GAP — In 2014, a news headline wrongly implied the owners of Village Eatinghouse were putting their popular cafe up for sale.
They weren’t ready at the time, but they did end up selling to focus solely on their original line of sauces and spices.
At the time, they were indeed looking for another property to purchase to ramp up the dressing production and separate the product business from the cafe.
“It was basically a shotgun moment to resist that sale, that headline basically, or take that as ‘the world has a way for giving what you need when you know it,’” said Melanie Phillips, who owns and operates Village Eatinghouse along with her husband, Clay, the “saucemaster.”
With offers pouring in after the news story came out, they found a buyer they believed would continue the community spirit they felt they had built up at the cafe.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been reminded of what a blessing it was to have Audra Knisely come along, a young entrepreneur opening a restaurant and making it a family thing,” she said.
She said they wanted to wait for the right buyer, and one day Knisely, who had been a patron, came into the cafe and offered to take it over. It’s now known as the Corner Cafe & Grill.
Clay Phillips said he at first missed the life of running a restaurant, but has come to enjoy working the sauce production business from their commercial kitchen attached to their house.
On Dec. 12, Phillips was filling bottles of their signature sauce, the first ever produced as the house sauce for Village Eatinghouse when it was located in Boalsburg. He first filled empty bottles with the Sweet and Sour Italian by hand, capped them, ran them through a labeler then used a heat gun to seal the tops with plastic. Rinse and repeat for 35 to 50 cases in a batch, with 12 bottles to a case.
During a busy four-month stretch this year from April to July, Phillips said they churned out about 10,000 bottles.
When they sold the cafe in 2015 to focus on commercial production, Village Eatinghouse (a name they retained from the cafe) had just seven wholesale sauce clients. Now that number is up to more than 100, they said, in a 65-mile radius of Pleasant Gap.
Both said it’s been a lifestyle change, but a beneficial one.
“It’s worked really well for our lifestyle, for our family. It’s allowed us to extend our community reach regionally. It’s allowed us to really change our focus. We’ve always been a service-oriented business … so to have a product-driven business after all these years it was a little bit new. It was a brand new challenge.”
In just months they prepared their commercial kitchen attached to their home and ramped up production. Melanie Phillips said they didn’t contemplate failure and jumped into the new venture with excitement.
She said this year they passed their two-year milestone, which was when they planned to evaluate if Village Eatinghouse’s sauce production would be a viable business. It has.
“We’ve been very lucky. We’ve been very blessed with the success of this sauce business for sure.”
Once again, the Phillips said they were at a bit of a crossroads. They’ve been mulling the idea of expansion.
“The advantages are definitely entrepreneurial. It is in our nature to grow,” Melanie Phillips said.
But she said they are leaning against a large expansion in order to have more time with their families.
“We know we will lose that if we choose expansion,” she said. “The decision can be put on hold at this point, but holding where we’re at is a great place to be. We have a great product. It’s got great presence in the market. It’s allowed us the freedom to be with our family. It’s allowed us the time. We have it really nice right now. So, we’re kind of weighing the opportunity for further success for the opportunity to spend with our family.”
She said they are looking to expand their number of fundraisers, where 30 percent of sales go to organizations such as Cub Scout Pack of Tyrone and Victory Therapeutic Horsemanship, among others.
“It’s a great way to invest my time for a lot of reward,” Phillips said. “The time that I invest introducing the products and the sampling and such to the fundraiser organization, it’s sort of a minimal time investment to get a win for us as well as a win for the organization.”
As of now, Village Eatinghouse is churning out six sauces and one spice. Their products can be found in a number of niche stores in Centre County and can be purchased from their website, www.villageeatinghouse.net.
