Little Flower Candy Company & Café seemed to be a little known gem en route to Pasadena each day just off the 134 Fwy. 7 years ago the love affair began for us…we drove by it everyday unwittingly knowing the place it would ultimately take over in our hearts (and stomachs!) We’d meet friends there for coffee each week and have our Monday afternoons taken over by what came to be known as “Sugar Mondays” for our girls. It was a chance to gather and catch up while our kids indulged in a sweet treat. When launching this blog, it seemed fitting that Little Flower would be our first “Inspiring Tales” feature (penned by friend and author Karen Rizzo). We were so excited when Christine Moore came into our lives and even more excited to hear of her new venture: Lincoln in Pasadena, CA! We sat down with Christine and Pam Perkins (Lincoln’s co-owner) to talk about their new space together, what the reaction has been like thus far plus the beautiful retail store that is a part of it.
Christine, when did you first open Little Flower Candy Company?
Little Flower started 15 years ago, just making caramels and marshmallows. It was a wholesale company for 8 years. Then 7 years ago, on December 1st, i opened the café and in 2012 put out my first cookbook.
You and Pam Perkins are business partners in this venture. How did partnering in Lincoln come together?
Christine: Pam and I starting working together around 2 years ago at Little Flower. She was a friend and wasn’t happy with her job. She would always do catering jobs with me and we’d have fun. I needed her to come on board. She quit her job and took over the catering aspect of Little Flower. She built the catering department and when this opportunity came up, I just felt like I didn’t want to do it by myself. Pam is kick-ass so I asked her if she wanted to partner with me on this project.
Pam: I met Christine as a customer of Little Flower. I had read about it on Daily Candy so I went to visit her and we eventually became friends. I had a Corporate Sales job at the time and did a lot of traveling so I’d see her when I wasn’t traveling…I’d go to the cafe for lunch and we had talked about doing something together. I was getting ready for a trip and I really didn’t want to go, so we decided then that I would quit my job and help her. We developed the retail, catering & merchandising and just planning something bigger.
Tell me about the two buildings that occupy Lincoln…How did you find them?
Christine: When I would leave Little Flower, I’d come up Lincoln to go grocery shopping at Super King. I would drive the Lincoln corridor and loved this area. I was always looking out for lease signs. One day I saw a sign on the back of this building so I parked the car. It was abandoned: no windows, no doors, birds, etc. I poked around to get a look. Originally we had worked with the owners, as it was only for lease for a month or so and they had frequented Little Flower and had wanted me to open up here. During that process though we discovered we didn’t have the same vision. So, I called some friends that were developers and talked to them about buying the building and restoring it to its natural beauty, which is what we wound up doing. Buying the buildings was a big project so other friends helped me organize and purchase because that’s what they do. Pam and I are the only owners of Lincoln, both the restaurant and the store. We’ve been working on it for two years getting it to where it is now.
Tell me how you two made this space come together?
Christine: We had almost no money so we did everything ourselves. Pam is a master gardener and she bought all the plants wholesale, did the landscape herself, and we built the raised beds. We shopped at garage sales and estate sales, bought the chairs on Craigslist from the Pomona Library and the Glendale Library was remodeling so we drove trucks across the city. A friend of mine was closing her restaurant so we bought her entire kitchen. We put this place together on a dime. We poured the cement floors ourselves and everything is used or repurposed. We hired a master carpenter to rebuild the windows and doors so they matched the period and we built the restaurant on Tenant Improvement money.
Are you aiming to get a liquor license?
Christine: We’re aiming to get a Beer and Wine license in 2015. We’ll be open for dinner too.
Lincoln has so much space and light. The atmosphere is airy yet really has that vibe of being invited over for lunch and hanging out. We’re you ever daunted by the amount of space?
Christine: No, because the one thing we’ve run out of at Little Flower is space. For me, when you run out of space my creative juices dry up so I needed to be in an empty warehouse just to think about a new menu. When I started Little Flower it was empty and we filled it up with wonderful food, people and candy!
Having opened a restaurant before and learning from it, did you expect the challenges that came with it or were there unexpected surprises along the way?
Christine: There are always unexpected surprises but when you own a business you are a problem solver, that’s your #1 job. Those things don’t fluster me and having done it before and having an amazing crew at Little Flower to help the transition and our incredible customer base that helped support it…this has been a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. It took a long time to get Little Flower off the ground, nobody knew we were there & it took about 3 years. I feel like I’m cashing in on 7 years of hard work by opening a second place because we have that customer base, we have Social Media, which wasn’t as big 7 years ago and that has really been fantastic.
Pam: I think the only thing we weren’t expecting was how busy we were right away. I mean, it’s a great problem to have but there was a bit of trying to keep up initially but the team really stepped up and made it work. That first Saturday we opened was a little stressful but we made it through.
What’s been the most rewarding for you in this new venture?
Christine: You can write a menu and love it and cook it but you never know if the kitchen is going to be able to execute it the way it is in your mind and you never know if the customer will enjoy it the way you enjoy it. I really feel like the customers at Lincoln know my food, like my food and understand the food — I don’t have to explain it. To have a breakfast bowl with warm beans and fennel sausage and I don’t have to explain any of that to my customers…that is super rewarding.
Tell us about the private dining room. is it intended for larger functions and parties?
Christine: We booked 23 parties in there the first week we opened! It’s a long, 800 square foot space with a raw brick wall. We’ve done catering for years but we want the people to come to us…keep it all here. We’ll do platters out of Little Flower but we’re done catering, we can do that & have the parties here. It’s good!
What about your retail store and the merchandising aspect of Lincoln?
Pam: I was a buyer for Nordstrom for 13 years so I have a lot of retail experience. Things just kind of just morphed into the gift shop and candy store. It’s a lot of fun. The intent of the store, once we have a little more time, is to find a lot of artisanal product, hand-made, whether from Portland or Boston that’s maybe not the same as it is at every store across the country. Everything we bought for Lincoln we didn’t buy for Little Flower even, there are no duplicates. Even if we really loved something we thought about which store it’d be most fitting for and divided it up that way. That keeps it really fresh and makes you want to visit both locations. I hope people will appreciate it.
Christine: We’ve been to a lot of the shows together across the country. We’re trying to make Lincoln one stop shopping: come for lunch, buy a little gift and go on to your day. Pam is the master merchandiser. We’ve tried to curate a store with items that you don’t really see anywhere else.
What are your thoughts on Social Media as it relates to running your business?
Christine: It’s pretty powerful in getting the word out. We didn’t even announce our opening. We were already set up with expectation because of Little Flower and we just wanted to do it on our terms. Keeping it simple, go through our paces and our systems, see if they worked, always remembering the customer and making sure our service is good and our staff are nice and the food is good… that’s what matters. I want people to be comfortable here.
Pam: We didn’t even tell anybody we were opening. We opened that Monday and we thought we’d go through and train the staff. But that Monday was busy right away and it’s been busy ever since. That’s the difference with Social Media now…you used to be able to work through the kinks but with Social Media, it’s all out there! But everyone was really patient and understood.
Where would you see yourselves by the end of next year?
Pam & Christine: On vacation!
1992 Lincoln Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91103
626-765-6746
626-765-9995 (Store)
Hours:
Mon-Sat 6:30am-7pm
Sun: 8am-4pm
Store:
Mon-Sat 10am-6pm
Sun: 10am-4pm
Visit Lincoln on:
Facebook
Instagram
Photos: Devin Sarno (except portrait of Christine Moore & Pam Perkins © Diana Koenigsberg)
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