After visiting home kitchen stores in Calgary and Vancouver, Natalie Nelson was inspired to open one in the Edmonton market. “We definitely found there was a need for a kitchen store in Sherwood Park,” says Natalie. She opened up in a tiny area of her mother’s gift basket business to test out if her idea would work. It did and she opened The Pan Tree as a full kitchen store in 2012. “We have been very well received and we get a lot of business from Edmonton, too.”
Home cooking has always been popular, but thanks to the Food Network and the Internet the amount of kitchen gadgets and customer knowledge on how to use them seems to continually increase. The staff at The Pan Tree make it their mission to learn about everything they sell. “We learn about it, we play with it, we try it and then pass that on to the customer,” says Natalie. “We want to offer an experience and even if the customer doesn’t buy anything that day at least they walk away with a little bit of knowledge.”
