Today we’d like to introduce you to Brent Hammer and Stephanie Gilewicz.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Brent and Stephanie. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
We leased our kitchen space over a year ago in order to accommodate our growing yogurt business, Milk & Patience. We were fortunate enough to be asked to supply our yogurt to all of the Central Markets across Texas, so we quickly realized we were going to need a larger space. We originally had no plans for the dining room until Christmas of last year we thought it would be an exciting challenge to turn our kitchen space into a breakfast and lunch spot for the growing Design District of Dallas. We re-did the interior ourselves with salvaged wood and rot iron decor, my husband’s chef books from the last 20 years, a few key pieces of furniture from IKEA and some great weathered butcher block style tables from a friends restaurant up north.
We transformed our space into a Monday to Friday, a small cafe and gourmet provisions spot for the neighborhood. We opened March 9th of this year, 2020 and of course, two weeks later, when COVID hit, we had to think fast and decided to immediately turn our concept into grab and go without any dining in. We have been so fortunate that the design district is such a tight community and the tenants and residents in the area have supported us since the beginning. We continue to offer gourmet provisions, all items either made by us or purchased from local businesses we’ve met along the way, in addition to local coffee, homemade pastries, and artisanal breads with our homemade sandwiches.
Has it been a smooth road?
The main struggle is, of course, the worldwide pandemic that has sadly shaken everyone and everything. Small and large businesses across the nation have had to re-configure their concepts to accommodate this terrible situation, and we did the same. With a two-year-old at home, as well as my mother and my growing belly (we are expecting our little boy on November 24th), we knew we were taking risks every day just having the doors open, so we have minimized the risks as much as possible. Again I say, fortunately, because our customers have been grabbing food to go or dining on our make-shift patio of 4 tables since almost the beginning and have continued to support us through the toughest of these times. Smooth the road has not been, but we approached this challenge like we would any other, with vigor and dedication and we have been doing well enough to be able to keep our doors open and our customers happy!
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Brown Bag Provisions – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
We are best known for our sandwiches, but customers that have followed us for some time now are also aware of our in-house provisions. We make our own yogurt, butter, buttermilk, chia pudding, jams, pickles and also house cure and smoke our own salmon, bacon and pastrami. During the worst of COVID, our customers used us as their small local gourmet grocery to avoid the large crowds and now they continue to check us out for what we are making next. We like to challenge ourselves with homemade provisions and have recently done our own kolaches with brioche laminate, honey baked ham, koji aged beef burgers and more. Our customers and reviewers have recognized the effort both in our menus and on our shelves and have helped pass the word along throughout the design district and into other parts of Dallas.
We are most proud of our dedication to the craft and the customer, we are very aware that none of this would even be possible without the support of our customers and that drives us to always pay attention to the detail and if we aren’t, wow’d by our own creation it goes back to the “drawing board” for review. There are only four of us in the restaurant and it’s important to us that we all taste and report honestly on each item, from the cookies to the Cuban sandwich. We call ourselves a sandwich shop, but we are so much more than that; we are a family and a small business and we stick together through the toughest of times and take care of one another and our customers as if they were an extension of our immediate family.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Dallas has always provided us with the next opportunity, both in the personal and professional means. I fell in love here in Dallas, I also started my career in this city, so for those two reasons, Dallas is home. My husband and I have taken a few leaps of faith in this city and we’re fortunate to say those decisions have mostly worked out or at least pointed us in the right direction. As far as least, I miss the mountains and the ocean!
Contact Info:
- Address: 150 Turtle Creek Blvd. Ste. 202
- Website: brownbagprovisionsdallas.com
- Phone: 469-317-7164
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: brownbagprovisionsdallas
- Facebook: brownbagprovisionsdallas
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