Good food is simple, elegant, and delicious. It starts with the best ingredients and ends with careful presentation. Good food and the act of breaking bread with one another adds familial flavor which enhances any meal.
Alice’s Kitchen at Honey Hill is a welcoming home to everyone. It is a place for good food, for the community to come together, and every bite Alice offers is absolutely brimming with love.
The Mission –
“Delicious, Nurshing & Beautiful Foods Prepared with Love”
Alice’s Kitchen at Honey Hill was started in 2015 by Alice Cozzolino, who you may very well remember as the former proprietor of The Old Creamery from 2000 to 2012. Having relocated to Cummington with her partner Amy back in 1986, Alice spent fifteen years cooking at The Rowe Center, a conference center and camp retreat forty minutes to the north.
When the store came up for sale in 2000, she made the plunge. In her tenure here she introduced many folks to an appreciation of food and flavor. For a time she ran seminars and tastings where anyone could stop in and find exotic flavors presented in comfortable and relatable terms. These explored the joys of taste – from ice wine vinegar to fine cheeses, imported oils, and exquisite chocolate. Examples of these delights were shared with an infectious joy and enthusiasm fondly remembered by all those who partook.
For twelve long years she brought this passion and her love of community to the pursuit of operating the Creamery. And when it was time to explore the next phase in her professional life, she made sure that the spirit of the Creamery would live on by selling it directly to the community. In 2012, after months of planning and work with the town and a newly minted co-op board, The Old Creamery officially became The Old Creamery Cooperative.
Stepping away from the incredibly long hours she was used to, Alice found herself wondering what would be next. The words of a younger member of her chosen family, reminded her “Agha, you’re the feeder!” Of course Alice was going to be feeding people. Talking with Amy brought further clarity: The day before Alice had brought food to the firefighters at a friend’s home. Before that she’d brought cookies around, and in fact eighteen of the last 21 days she had spent feeding others. So started the saga of Alice’s Kitchen at Honey Hill.
Alice and Amy added an addition to their home in 2014 where they could house the commercial kitchen and walk-in. In January of 2015 Alice planned an opening event, on what would turn out to be one of the worst ice storms of the season. In spite of the terrible weather, 200 happy and supportive people showed up to help launch the venture. For years, Alice’s Kitchen at Honey Hill would cater events and produce a new twenty-five item menu every week. Entrees, side dishes, salads, beakfast, and desserts could all be ordered online in advance of the weekly delivery date. For a while, it was just right.
Fast forward to March of 2020, and Alice’s Kitchen pushed through all the challenges inherent to operating a full service kitchen during a global pandemic. While the rise of Covid generated a substantial increase in demand for their delicious and beautiful food, the available working space for staff was effectively cut in half by safety and proximity considerations.
Once again, Alice found herself working long weeks full of long, long days. In April of 2022, this heightened effort culminated in a knee injury that would require an “emergency” surgery – with a six month wait list. The former business model would not be sustainable under these circumstances.
It was difficult at first, finding a new way forward. But through careful consideration and Amy’s insightful influence, a new business model was born. Alice’s carefully crafted dishes would be converted into stable frozen foods that could be purchased from a self-service storefront.
Under this new model, Alice would be free to cook what she wanted, when she wanted, in whatever quantities she was able. Ingredients could be sourced from her own garden, and what was on hand. Additionally they needed a space to hold community events that would allow them both to host gatherings and conversations through the warmer months.
And while the plan sounded ideal, freezers and community gathering places don’t grow on trees. Money would have to be raised, if this dream was to truly take shape. Fortunately, opportunity came knocking in the form of a grant program organized by the Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation. A crowdfunding matching grant program, the Biz-M-Power grant offers small businesses in Massachusetts financial assistance with their “acquisition, expansion, improvement or lease of a facility, purchase or capital lease of equipment, or with meeting other capital needs for the business.”
Alice and Amy set about raising $20,000 from community donations. If they could meet that goal, then the grant would match those donations. In the end, the community was able to pull together $80,000 in donations. This avalanche of generosity paved the way for their outstanding post and beam pavilion, built by David Bowman. It also allowed for the long-time dream of a pizza oven to be built from scratch by Sam Coates-Finke. And a year ago, in April, the newly transformed Alice’s Kitchen at Honey Hill opened back up once more.
One of the things that surprised Alice was the preservation of the natural beauty of her food, she never expected to be serving frozen foods as she had always cooked everything fresh. But through testing and experimentation she found all the things she loved to produce would freeze without issue, even maintaining that important element of aesthetics, which can often be left to the wayside.
This new model allows for the intricacies of their lives, and is (usually) a much more relaxing way of offering sustenance to those who need it. Last year showed the fruits of this shift, with pizza nights, tastings, tea and scones with Amy, and a magic that can’t be imitated. The incredible space is filled with beaming faces, laughing children, with songs from neighbors, and the silence that comes between bites of a great meal. The land, the people, and Alice’s Kitchen at Honey Hill are all connected.
At key moments along Alice’s path her community has shown up for her. Twenty years ago, during the “get to know each other” circle before the shared meal, when asked who had lived on the land with them, thirty people out of seventy raised their hands. Looking back, over a hundred people have called it home, at one time or another, since they built it in ‘86.
“This place has held the hearts, and joys and sorrows, and souls of countless people.” And that’s what makes a meal taste so much better, the people, the connection. That’s the secret ingredient at the Pizza Night events, and when you pick up a meal from the freezer you’re getting a taste of that magic. It’s Alice’s open heart, and open door, and the connection with community which enhances the food.
If you’d like to attend a Pizza Night you can sign up for her newsletter and find out more on her events page. Reservations eat from 5-7 and then after 7:15 the event is open to anyone who shows up! There is a sliding scale for donations, based on how much you eat as well as your means.
If you’d like to taste Alice’s cooking at home, you can find Alice’s Kitchen at Honey at the following address. Don’t be shy, just let yourself in and perouse the offerings inside. Immediately on the shelves Alice has a curated selection of groceries, some local, some imported, all high quality ingredients and dry goods. There are even some chocolate samples to get a taste before you buy a full bar.
These items are mixed in around her homemade delights; three kinds of granola, three types of pancake mix, fresh ground hot cereal, house made jams, and so much more. For the main event, the freezer you can usually find: 15 entrees, 12-15 soups, 8-10 desserts, breakfast items, as well as her house made line of burgers and dressings, pesto, and salad dressings.
Alice’s Kitchen at Honey Hill
7 days a week, 7am – 7 pm
48 Trouble Street
Cummington, MA 01026
Creamery3@verizon.net
Phone: 413-634-5659