Meet Rhonda Shutt of Cobblestone Market Cafe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rhonda Shutt.

Rhonda, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
For many years, we dreamed about opening our own café. We thought about what we would serve and the atmosphere we wanted to create. We love hospitality and love classic good food. Food you can pronounce! Unforeseen circumstances created the door of opportunity to step out in faith. In June of 2012, we saw our dream of a family owned and operated cafe become a reality. With lots of prayers and seed money from friends, we signed a lease at the 290 and Fairbanks location and with our eldest son Josh, youngest son Matt and a few good friends we began a three-month hands on major renovation project.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The biggest major hurdle, besides cash flow, was to overcome being a brand-new name in a crowded competitive market. I went cold calling to local businesses, made appointments and did tastings with area corporate companies. Doug ran the operations and cooked his recipes and Josh our son did the catering and delivery along with the help of a few other great employees. It’s like, I brought them in and Doug fed them. With good food and hospitality, we have won many loyal customers that continue to come in several times a week. The first three years our sales grew over 35% annually – it was great! In 2015, our second son Joel was discharged from the infantry and joined us. He is one of the owners and he became an excellent cook also! Currently our challenges are the never-ending, Northwest freeway construction and the oil downturn in Houston. But, we keep a positive outlook and believe that Houstonians are strong and always bounce back!

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Cobblestone Market Cafe – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
We want to create our own identity and bring something uniquely ours by developing recipes that are scratch made and lower sodium for Houston’s growing diverse customer base including vegetarian and gluten free selections. Many companies have gone to premade sauces and soups that are high in sodium and preservatives. In each store, we make all of our 28 soups and variety of sauces, so we have control of the ingredients and for those last-minute catering orders we can “whip something up”. We don’t use processed meat, we roast our turkey breast, roast beef and grill our own marinated chicken. Being fresh, flavorful and healthier is very important. We don’t even have a fryer!

We keep variety in the store by rotating our hot lunch specials and soup selection. When we get an idea or inspiration we test it on the dining in crowd, we get some of our best inspiration from them! Many of our customers have been coming in since we opened and have come to know us and our recipes and every soup has it’s fanbase. We also have a delicious breakfast menu available with build your own omelets and over 14 breakfast tacos flavors; which you can get a six-pack or 10 pack to go. We can truly say that we’ve served thousands of our tacos to area businesses!

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
In September 2016, we opened our second location in the Energy Corridor near Katy. We are strategically located at 14838 Park Row and Hwy 6. This café has the same lunch schedule as the 290 store too. Our long terms goals are to continue to provide our city with classic fresh recipes at a great value. We also have some other ideas “marinating” for the future, we’ll just have to see how everything pans out.

Contact Info:

• Address: 14121 Northwest Fwy, Houston, TX 77040
  14838 Park Row, Houston TX, 77084
• Website: http://www.cobblestonemarketcafe.com/
• Phone: Northwest Fwy: 713-939-1255
  Park Row832-321-5797
• Email: Northwest Fwy: [email protected]
  Park Row: [email protected]
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cobblestonemarketcafe/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/cobblestonemkt
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/cobblestone-market-cafe-houston

Image Credit:
Rhonda Shutt

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