Why Boutique?

I love America.  As a student and as a missionary I have had the great joy and privilege of traveling around the world in my younger years.  I have seen some remarkably beautiful, wild, and diverse places. I have enjoyed the honor of hosting foreign students in my home. I continually suffer from a very serious case of adventure bug!  But I can still say, America is my favorite place to call home.

In all my travels I realized something. It should have been a no-brainer, but it took some time. I realized that people in different parts of the world think differently about things.  We tend to form specific ideas regarding what is good or bad, polite or impolite, important or unimportant by our own culture.

In America we are good at making money.  I'm a big fan of free enterprise because, hands-down, America makes the best pizza!  All of that competition puts a demand on the production of the best product at the best price.  You just can't beat it. This part of American culture impresses us to think a certain way about business: find a need and mass produce the solution at the cheapest price.  I'm certainly glad most people do that, because now I have a choice of no less than one million types of any given thing at the grocery store!

But mass production isn't the only way to do things.  Not everyone around the world thinks about business that way.  In many places the goal of production is not about quantity, but quality.  The idea is to do whatever you are doing with absolute perfection.  If perfection means hand grinding whole spices rather than buying them pre-ground in bulk - then that's what we do.  This means smaller, hand-crafted batches and prices that reflect value rather than factories and cutting corners to strive against rivaling competition.  This is boutique.  This is our culture.  We invite you!