This summer in Austin, Texas, 300 kids will descend upon Faraday’s Kitchen Store for the Summer Kids Camp that takes place over the course of 10 weeks. Meanwhile, business will continue as usual at the retail kitchenware store. Cooking classes for adults will be held at night and on weekends, in-store demonstrations will take place, and customers can shop cookware, cutlery, gadgets and bakeware offered in the good, better, best type of product assortment that the store carries. It’s a far cry from the corporate world that owners Tony Curtis-Wellings and his wife Melissa decided to leave 10 years ago, but exactly the sort of independent venture they were looking for.

When the Curtis-Wellings’ left Boca Raton, Florida for Austin, they didn’t know exactly what they would end up doing, they just knew that they didn’t want to work for other people any longer. It was 2005 and Tony found himself in a parking lot staring at a Starbucks on Valentine’s Day when inspiration struck. Next door to the coffee shop was a Williams-Sonoma with more customers entering at the moment than the Starbucks. Unfamiliar with the store, he walked in to discover that it was a gourmet cookware shop and inquired about franchising. He learned that they did not offer a franchise option, nor did its closest competitor, Sur La Table. With that information, a realization that there weren’t many options for people to purchase cooking tools, and a background in the restaurant business, he called his wife and the idea took off. Five months later, Faraday’s Kitchen Store was open for business.

“It happened very quickly. When something’s right and it feels right, you should always do it, I believe,” says Tony Curtis-Wellings. “It was one of those good feelings that we both had and it happened to turn out that we’ve been able to sustain for 10 years now.”

The cooking school side of the business began pretty much from day one. About 24 different chefs are on rotation depending on the class and its requirements. For the Kids Summer Camp, two culinary instructors, who are on summer break from their regular positions, teach the classes. Curtis-Wellings helps to write the curriculum that the instructors execute over 10 weeks. The classes are broken up into morning and afternoon sessions with ages seven to 10 in one, and ages 11 to 15 in another. There are 30 kids a week, participating in four days of classes each.

Each week has a different theme, but every week culminates in a mystery box challenge. Curtis-Wellings utilizes his time from a previous life, as he calls it, during which he was a kitchen manager and chef, to employ the concept of zero food waste with the children. The kids bid on whatever is left in the fridge at the end of the week and use that along with an oddball ingredient, like escargot or duck liver, to create four plates in two hours.

“It’s amazing. When they get done, we have no waste in food,” says Curtis-Wellings. “By using that concept, what we did in the restaurant business, we’re actually able to use everything that we bring into the store and have very little waste … I mean some of the plates that they put out could be in three or four Michelin star restaurants. Every week – doesn’t matter if they’re seven years old or 11 years old – the production when you give these kids this type of information is incredible.”

In Faraday’s 4,000 square foot space there is plenty of room for a weekly camp to take place alongside regular business. The kitchen area was converted from a barbecue demonstration area left behind by the location’s own previous life as a barbecue restaurant. The business moved into a new mall location two years ago, and this new kitchen is an improvement from the original location’s relatively small kitchen, increasing in size from 200 to 700 square feet after the move. The new location has increased business, aided by the two million square feet total of outdoor retail space that Faraday’s now resides in, consisting of two separate malls across the street from each other.

Curtis-Wellings also credits the store’s approach to product assortment as part its success. He cites Bob Coviello, the founder of HTI Buying Group who passed away in 2013, as his mentor who helped him implement the good, better, best type of assortment that allows customers to choose from a product at each level and decide which most suits their needs and budget. It was this concept that allowed Faraday’s to remain nimble when the recession hit in 2008, says Curtis-Wellings. They already had relationships with the good and better category vendors that customers began to instantly gravitate toward, all they had to do was order less from the best category until the market recovered.

“He introduced some concepts into our business that have really allowed us to excel. We got the good, better, best strategy because of Bob, and I tell you, it was a godsend in this facet,” says Curtis-Wellings.

Faraday’s has applied the strategy to its top selling categories, cutlery, cookware, gadgets, and bakeware. So a customer who maybe only scrambles eggs twice a year can buy a good 8-inch fry pan for $9.99, while there is also something better for the customer really interested in learning to cook, and something for the customer who wants the best cookware to show off while entertaining in the kitchen.

“What I think the good, better, best strategy does is two things; one, to handle whatever type of product the customer comes in looking for in those four categories. And two, it’s allowed us to remain survivable, and I think in the future it will run its course up and down through all those different areas,” Curtis-Wellings says.

Faraday’s Kitchen Store won the awards for Best in Buying and Best Overall Retailer at HTI’s first annual “Best Of” Awards this year. In June, Curtis-Wellings got to act as a judge for the Gourmet Gold Awards during the Dallas Total Housewares & Gourmet Market. He says that what has ultimately allowed the store to do well is the staff who impart their unique knowledge to customers.

“I think the value of an independent store is really the ability to create great customer relations and educate the consumer. I think the reason that we’re really kicking ass right now is, we haven’t had a lot of turnover in staff, which is really good, and we’re engaging with the customer and we’re educating the customer. One thing the customer cannot really get from the internet is this level of education and one-on-one experience.”

This story was originally published in the August 2015 issue of Kitchenware News, a publication of Oser Communications Group.