Chef AJ at Local Spicery
Chef AJ visiting Local Spicery in Marysville

 

…amazing SOS free spices!
Get two small free samples with purchase.
~ Chef AJ

How We Met Chef AJ

If you can believe it, our friendship with Vegan icon Chef AJ – and our own journey into a whole-food plant-based lifestyle – began with a love for Pepperoni!  Not the meaty, greasy stuff sold in checkout lanes across America, but our own Pepperoni Spice Blend originally blended for a local chef to use on a vegan appetizer.  One of our most loyal customers from the San Rafael Farmers Market told us one day, almost as an after-thought, that she had shared our Pepperoni Spice with someone named Chef AJ.  She used it in a vegan pizza recipe and loved it.

We soon connected with AJ, and came to appreciate her infectious enthusiasm and encyclopedic knowledge of diet, health, and the benefits of a plant-based lifestyle.  To this day, Pepperoni Spice is AJ’s favorite Local Spicery blend, and AJ has become a valued friend and mentor.  We ultimately succumbed to her siren song and have been plant-based for over a year now.  We are loving our new relationship with plant-based foods.

Local Spicery’s Story

At Local Spicery, we personally mill, blend, package, and sell our products when they are at their peak of freshness. We can offer maximum flavor and aroma because we mill only what we need in small batches.  Our products are all natural – no additives, artificial coloring or radiation.

We know how important our food is to people living a healthy lifestyle.  This is why we offer so many salt-free options, as well as a hard commitment to no irradiation or Ethylene Oxide, no GMOs, no added gluten, no MSG, no fillers of any kind.  Just pure, natural food, locally processed and packaged by hand.  And heart.

More Details

Local Spicery is owned and operated by Nicholas and Evelyn, a husband and wife team who met more than 30 years ago while working in engineering and construction. In 2012, the two embarked on an exciting, new and altogether different adventure for the empty-nest phase of their lives … we commissioned a custom-built, state-of-the-art spice mill and started a spice company!

We currently use four different milling technologies (hammer mill, blade mill, plate mill, and burr mill) which allows us to mill practically anything, and gives us superb control and flexibility in particle size, so we can be creative when developing our artisanal salad dressings, rubs and herb blends, and not simply pulverize ingredients to a powder.

In a few short years, we went from selling our products at farmers markets, to working with creative chefs and high-end restaurants, to opening our first retail store on Ark Row in Tiburon, California.  In 2018, we bought a neglected gold rush era brick building in historic Marysville that had sat unused for 40 years.  We have completely reconstructed it into our own state-of-the-art mill and processing plant.  Here we do our processing, as well as internet order fulfillment.  We occasionally host cooking classes and lectures upstairs in our demonstration kitchen.