Just Like Nana’s Launches New Cart at Lorraine Mills’ Crawl
Baker Karen Griffin will debut her new sweet and savory menu, alongside food and tastings from other businesses that are located in the building.
Karen Griffin, owner of Just Like Nana’s. Photo by Jamie Coelho.
Baker Karen Griffin is a bonafide people person. As a former first grade teacher and daycare director, now retired, she likes meeting people and learning what they do and where they’re from. Case in point during an interview when she asks nearly as many questions about the interviewer, even though she’s the one who is the subject of the article.
She’s made getting to know people and caring about them a big part of her business, too. Just Like Nana’s is a bakery and cafe based at the Lorraine Mills in Pawtucket, but Griffin also sells her baked goods through retail markets across the state. She has perfected her grandmother’s recipes for baked goods, including her signature Jewish cookies, which are synonymous with her brand. They often serve as a conversation point to reel in customers at farmers markets.
“I would stand behind the table and say to people who walked by, ‘Do you know what rugelah is?’ And they’d say to me, “Arugula?’” Griffin says with a laugh, “I’d say, ‘Come here, I’m going to tell you what it is.’ So I had to explain it, and once they tasted it, they liked it.”
Just one of the ways she gains customers is by showing interest in them. When she finds out where they are from, she pinpoints a nearby market that carries her products. Her rugelah comes in four flavors, including chocolate, cinnamon and sugar, apricot walnut and raspberry walnut. She also creates cinnamon braids which can be made into wreaths for the holidays, Jewish biscotti cookies, pecan rolls, sweet and savory scones, and sometimes she creates sugar cookies that kids can paint like a color-by-number craft.
This month, Just Like Nana’s is launching a whole new menu to coincide with the hours that the Lorraine Mills’ neighboring brewery, Crooked Current, and distillery, White Dog Distilling, will be open in the later afternoons. She’s serving bacon and cheese quiches, charcuterie, liege waffles topped with fresh fruit or compote, whipped cream and chocolate sauce, and cheese blintzes. The Lorraine Mills is hosting a Mill Crawl on Thursday, June 16 from 5-9 p.m. which will be her debut with the new menu, alongside food and tastings from other businesses that are also located in the building, including the distillery and brewery, Cakes by Eboni, Ja Patty and Ming’s Asian Street Food.
Karen Griffin.
This will be the night that Griffin finally debuts her beautiful bakery and cafe situated in an Italian food truck that is stationary outside in the Lorraine Mills parking lot. She will serve her baked goods and menu items out of the Italian imported cart that is called a bartolomi marko. She bought the mobile cart from neighbor Josh Burgoyne of Ming’s Asian Street Food. His grandfather, Giovanni Conte, used to run Conte’s Bakery and owned the cart.
Griffin can’t wait to finally showcase her baked goods outside of her commercial kitchen space. “I often say what John Lennon said, ‘It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.’ And this is like my childhood, especially my truck,” she says. “I feel like a ten-year-old when I am in there.”
Not only will Griffin be open during brewery and distillery hours, Thursdays and Fridays from 5:30-8 p.m. and Saturdays from 1-5 p.m., but she will also serve breakfast on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, from 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
While she’s been producing out of the Lorraine Mills for more than two years, Griffin was one of the first startup businesses to launch out of Hope and Main in Warren, starting in 2015. Back then, she perfected her grandmother’s recipes on a larger scale and launched her business long after she retired from teaching in the Providence School system. She had moved to England for a time, as well as to Kentucky and North Carolina, then returned to Rhode Island with her husband.
“One of the reasons I went into the business was because I wanted something to do,” she says. “I knew you couldn’t get good rugelah anywhere. It’s hard to get, and I knew I made good rugelah.”
She had read about Hope and Main in the newspaper and decided to give them a call to see what they thought. Co-owner Waterman Brown answered the phone, which was a funny coincidence since she was also a docent for the John Brown House at the time. After she perfected her recipe, Hope and Main helped her with branding and got her rolling with marketing and sales.
“It was great and I recommend it to anyone who wants to start a business, because you don’t know if you have a business until you get out there and start selling your stuff,” Griffin says. She worked with Hope and Main for five years, before moving on to her own space at the Lorraine Mills.
She knew she had a customer base at that point, and was able to purchase all of her own equipment and store it in one place. “Once I knew I had a business because I was selling products, and not just selling, but people were reordering consistently, I said, ‘Okay, I heard about this place,’ and came to the Lorraine Mills.”
In her new location, she’s also been able to pass the torch by mentoring students from the MET School by teaching them how to bake and about pricing. At the same time, they help her in the kitchen.
The Lorraine Mills is hoping to host a Crawl every month to support the food and drink businesses at the mill. “I’m advertising the truck as a cafe bakery, so you can come and get prepared foods, or just buy bakery stuff,” Griffin says.
Or you can just come and meet Griffin and she can tell you the difference between rugelah and arugula.
560 Mineral Spring Ave, Pawtucket, 859-333-9096, justlikenanas.com
