Meet Annie Grove | Chef & Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Annie Grove and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Annie, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I have always wanted to own my own bakery. For as long as I can remember, my answer to, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was alway, “A baker.” That goal only deviated when I got to work in kitchens and wanted to be learn more about cooking as well, but it only changed to “A chef.”

I’ve worked in the food and beverage industry since I was 16 and worked my way up into kitchen management pretty quickly after college. I worked in several restaurants in Charleston, SC after I graduated and helped open one when I was 24 as the sous chef. Opening a restaurant is not for the faint of heart…it requires long hours, a lot of learning on-the-fly, and a lot of changes to get things right. After a couple of years, I began to realize I wasn’t happy anymore. The long hours and rigorous schedule had taken a toll on me, and in a lot of ways, I felt like I’d failed, like I couldn’t hack being a chef.

I started to refocus and think about what I really wanted for my future and what really mattered to me: my family, the hope to one day start a family of my own and to be able to stay home with my children, a better, more flexible schedule that would allow me to see my friends and family more, to travel more.

Those goals were very distant future hopes for me at the time, but I realized I wanted to start working toward them. At first, the “how” wasn’t clear to me. I considered a lot of routes, even leaving the industry all together, but I’d never worked a non-food and beverage job, and my heart has always been in working with food. My idea for my own business kept nagging at the back of my mind, and I leaned into it.

Leaving my career with no real plan to start my business but a hope that I would was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done, but I knew if I one day wanted kids I could stay home with, then I wanted to start my own business where I could control my hours and schedule more, where I could control my growth and be the one to decide how fast or slow that process would be, and where I could work from home when and if I have children one day.

I still work a lot of hours…sometimes more than I did working as a sous chef in restaurants, but knowing it’s for myself and to build my own brand and my own business has made it so much more rewarding.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I currently own a baking business where I bake wholesale and custom orders for people and other local businesses while also teaching cooking classes and camps to children and adults.

I met one of my first culinary mentors when I was in college working the Masters. I connected with Nick in a way I never had with anyone else, and for the next four year he patiently indulged my every question from helping me pick out my first chef’s knife and showing me how to hold it, to teaching me culinary terms, and cooking with me. My favorite dish we ever cooked together was ricotta gnocchi with mussels. I marveled at how he took less than a dozen fresh ingredients and made one of the best meals I’ve ever had.

After college, when I first started working in Charleston at Feathertop, I was exposed to chefs who texted with the farmers who grew our food and the fisherman who caught our fish. We focused on local, fresh ingredients with simple preparation, and I was hooked. It reminded me of that gnocchi dish Nick made years before, and something in my mind started to click. When I began working at Basic Kitchen, their motto was the same: clean, simple ingredients. The owner of the restaurant asked me in my interview if I were to go to the farmer’s market and come home to cook a dish, what would it be and why? I knew then and there I wanted to be a part of what he was creating. “Cleaner fuel, longer adventures” is BK’s motto still to this day.

Slowly, without realizing it, I found myself fascinated with food: how it was grown, how it affects us, how it makes us feel, how it can act as medicine.

As my time as Basic Kitchen came to a close, and I was asking myself what needed to change in my life, I found myself missing purpose. I truly love cooking for people, but the hours I was putting in were slowly not feeling worth it anymore, and I felt like I needed more. At the time, my sister was teaching 2nd grade with Teach for America. She brought her school’s 2 2nd grade classes to BK for a field trip where they learned about our backyard garden and how to make fresh produce taste good in smoothies and pasta salad. It was the first time I’d taught kids how to cook, and I loved it.

Those experiences shaped me. Taking the leap to start my business was terrifying but exhilarating. There were a lot of bumps along the way…you just have to roll with them. There’s no stopping the challenges. Working in kitchens, in particular newly-opened kitchens, helped me manage the challenges and find them less stressful.

I now have so many plans for my classes and how to grow them and focus the business more on them. I love teaching kids how to cook. I find food empowering. Knowing how to cook for yourself, how to make things you enjoy and cook things others enjoy is powerful, and I’ll never get enough of it.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I grew up in Macon and was less than thrilled when I moved home about 4 years ago…and was quickly surprised at how wrong I was to feel that way. Macon’s downtown when I left for college was not great. Today, It’s thriving and growing, and it’s fun to watch.

I love visiting Fall Line Brewery for the atmosphere and beer. Just Tap’d is a must on Tuesdays and Thursdays for trivia. Pearl is one of my favorite dinner places downtown along with Kinjo and Piedmont Brewing. Macon Bagel has the best bagels in town, JBA is my absolute favorite bar downtown although Reboot is a fun time if you want to play some arcade gamed with a drink in hand. There’s always live music downtown. The Rookery is a must for a burger and milkshake–it’s been a downtown staple forever. Hotel 45’s rooftop bar is amazing. We’d also have to stop by Little Light Coffee for drinks and a croissant (I bake for them!), Ingleside Village pizza for dinner and over to Society Garden for after dinner drinks. Henry’s in Bolingbroke is such a cute place to shop. They do pop up markets in the fall and around the holidays! Quill Cocktail bar is the cutest literary themed bar–I love it there, and the Black Cat speakeasy is so fun. Amerson Park is great for an afternoon walk or river float. And my favorite Mexican food is El Sazon.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I have so many people to thank for where I am! First, my family. I didn’t realize until I got to college and made friends with people who were majoring in fields they weren’t interested in but were pursuing because their parents wanted them to or because their parents had discouraged their true desires for a variety of reasons, that I was incredibly lucky that my parents had never–not once–put down my hopes to be a chef or baker or to run my own business. They did the opposite. They dreamed with me and talked about my bakery in terms of “when” it happened, not “if.” They also funded my education and taught me to always do my best. I owe my work ethic and ability to dream and go after what I want entirely to my family, particularly my parents.

But I met so many other mentors along the way, and most of them I probably shouldn’t have…it was entirely an “in the right place at the right time” situation so many times. There were several times I was working in restaurants in positions I was not trained to be in by pure luck, and I met some of my favorite mentors and learned some of my best lessons that way.

I worked the Masters golf tournament for four years in college and met some of my favorite mentors, friends, and future roommates there. When I started working in Charleston, I worked at Feathertop & Scarecrow, two restaurants under the leadership of Chef Damon Wise. I learned more than I could have imagined there, and the chefs, line cooks, and front of the house staff became my family. I used to sneak in early off-the-clock and beg to stay late (again off-the-clock) when more prep needed to be done just to be able to learn more and spend more time with my favorite people. When I helped open Basic Kitchen, I had no business being a sous chef, but the owner and chef took a chance on me, and I’m forever grateful for that experience.

There are so many others who build me up, believed in me, and encouraged me when I felt like giving up along the way.

I’ve worked hard to get to where I am and have the business I’ve created, but I would be absolutely nowhere without everyone who taught me, corrected me, listened, encouraged, and helped me along the way.

Instagram: @annies_oven https://www.instagram.com/annies_oven/

Facebook: Annie’s Oven https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063680763174