Pineapple Kitchen adds grab-and-go breakfast products to its Tasting Room operation
Jenny and Mike Schenk opened their Tasting Room at Pineapple Kitchen three weeks ago, offering grab-and-go breakfast eats, including sandwiches and pastries.
It’s a new direction for the couple who opened Pineapple Kitchen in March as a wholesale operation for their Pineapple Kitchen Soft Bavarian Pretzel Bite kits, now sold in more than 100 gourmet markets.
Their motto for their pretzel bits is Dip. Eat. Party On!
Pineapple Kitchen’s soft pretzel bite kits — for gift giving, parties and sports gatherings — include sea salt caramel, pumpkin spice, and Italian pretzel pizza bites with marinara sauce. For the state’s crazed football fan base, jalapeno or beer cheese themed dip are available in Gator, Seminole and Hurricane-themed packaging.
Customers have welcomed the tasting room, a retail companion to the wholesale business, located at 4914 Lena Road, Unit 104. Customers will find Pineapple Kitchen on the backside of the shopping center.
Krissi Liskiewicz, a graduate of the Manatee Technical Institute culinary program, recently joined Pineapple Kitchen. She has been bringing her own ideas and creativity to the company, building on generations of southern recipes developed by Jenny Schenk’s family.
Breakfast eats include pretzel bun breakfast sandwiches for $4.50 each. There are two basic versions: Eggs with candied bacon, sharp cheddar cheese and sweet Bavarian mustard or egg with maple sausage, pepper jack cheese, and “wake ‘n’ bake chipotle sauce.
Also available for $2.50 each: assorted European pastries: pain au chocolat, all-butter croissant, and a variety of Danish pastries: raspberry, maple pecan, lemon creme, cinnamon swirl and chef-created filled Danish.
Pineapple pound cake is also available for the cake or by the slice. Also available: energy cookies.
Helping with the wake-up call are coffees, lattes, cold brews, coffee smoothies and hot chocolate. The grab-and-go breakfast operation is from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Monday-Friday. The Tasting Room is open until 3 p.m. Monday-Friday and 8 a.m. noon Saturday. The business is closed on Sunday.
Pineapple Kitchen has a Christmas market with tastings and shopping planned for 9 a.m.-1:30 p.m. on three three consecutive Saturdays: Dec. 5, 11 and 19.
The business might seem a little out of the way, but the Schenks say they are easy to find: just look for us under the giant American flag. “This location allows us to grow at a nice pace. We were overwhelmed Saturday,” Mike Schenk said of a Home for the Holidays shopping and tasting event on Nov. 14.
Pineapple Kitchen is now taking Thanksgiving and Christmas orders for its pies. The most popular offering is the Knob Creek, smoked maple bourbon, southern pecan pie, served with a topping of drunken whipped cream.
“We want to bring restaurant quality products to the customer’s table,” Jenny Schenk said.
While the Tasting Room might not have been in the original business plan for Pineapple Kitchen, neither was the COVID-19 pandemic, nor how important online sales became during the early days if the virus.
For more information about Pineapple Kitchen call 941-254-1763 or visit https://pineapplekitchen.com/.
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
