Savory Spice Shop Takes Cue from Food Network

ST. PETERSBURG – Joan and Paul Bailey opened the Savory Spice Shop on Beach Drive eight months ago, inspired by a visit to the original store in Denver and appearances by the franchise founders on the Food Network.

Paul, a veteran of the banking industry, was ready for a change and had a passion for cooking, so he and his wife did some research and eventually made the choice to open last year.

Savory Spice Shop was founded by Mike and Janet Johnston in 2004 and now boasts 11 locations in six states. Janet Johnston has hosted her own show, Spice & Easy on the Food Network, and the couple appears on other Food Network shows from time to time.

The sparkling new store is well-stocked with 400 spices and 140 blends, all packaged and mixed at the Denver location to maintain consistency and freshness. The products are shipped each week in small batches to assure the stock remains fresh.

The shop contains dozens of chiles and chile powders, even more curries and everything from vanilla bean sugar to Dutch cocoa, black truffle sea salt, honey powder, cinnamon, herbs and teas – all free of gluten and MSG.

Prices are reasonable and customers are able to taste samples and purchase very small quantities. On a recent visit Paul opened a bottle of chives displaying a shocking bright green hue and a strong aroma, both testaments to the freshness.

Q. What's unique about the Savory Spice Shop business model?

A. One of the things we like to do with our customers is when they come in we'll give them a little orientation and then we have these little tasting jars. Most shops will let you smell, but we like to have them experience the actual taste. In addition to that we sell as little as a half-ounce.

Q. Why not buy spices at the grocery store?

A. They are fresher than what you would find at the grocery store. One of the things about a growing company is we're moving them off the shelves so everything stays fresh. What you'll see is our prices are comparable, if not less than, to what you get in a grocery store, and I would challenge anyone to find better paprika, especially the Spanish.

Q. What's popular in the shop right now?

A. One of the most versatile products that we have is the Capital Hill Seasoning, which is dill-based with shallots. It goes with a salad dressing recipe, chicken salad, anything like that. You can put it on chicken. It makes a really nice herb butter. This sort of just flies off the shelves.

Q. Do you recommend a good curry blend?

A. It depends if they want Thai, which tends to be a little warmer. There is a wide variety of Indian, we have Asian curries, we even have a Spanish curry. The people that are really into curry know just about every one of these. We've got Asian, Chinese, Japanese and Ethiopian, which is extremely hot. We've also got Cambodian lemongrass, Vindaloo, Tikka Masala; those are the things that people are picking up on.

Q. How about sea salt?

A. We've got one sea salt that is smoked over chardonnay oak barrels, and we have a hickory-smoked sea salt. We also have the Pink Himalayan, which is the oldest salt in the world. It's got more minerals than most other salts and is still harvested – for lack of a better word – from the Himalayan mountains. When they were covered with sea water it left the deposits and they're still brought down on the backs of yaks... just really fine salts.

Q. How's business?

A. It's going very well. Very well received. We get a lot of repeat customers and are doing restaurants now – supplying here and there. We're finding that some of the restaurants, if they're doing something a little unusual, they'll contact us.

Q. How did you decide on the location?

A. I looked at about eight different locations. Mike Johnston came down and I took him all over. I wanted to be downtown. I brought him down on a Tuesday morning in July and he looked around and was like "where are the people?" As it turned out we had the largest opening day of any of the franchises.

If you go

The Savory Spice Shop is at 400 Beach Dr. NE, No. 173; call 727-290-9893. Visit the Facebook page.