February 11, 2025 • 26 mins
In episode thirty-two of the Napa Valley Insider Podcast, Andrew sits down with Kara Haspel Lind, founder of Kara’s Cupcakes and Bar Lucia, two beloved staples in Napa. Kara shares her journey from the world of magazine publishing to becoming a celebrated entrepreneur in the food and wine industry. She dives into the challenges and triumphs of growing a business, navigating economic shifts, and creating spaces that bring people together.
Episode Highlights:
- From Publishing to Pastry: How Kara transitioned from a career in advertising to launching one of the Bay Area’s most well-known dessert brands.
- Building a Business: The early days of Kara’s Cupcakes, securing prime locations, and scaling from one bakery to multiple successful locations.
- Pivoting Through Change: How Kara adapted during the pandemic, from downsizing to launching new concepts like Bar Lucia.
- The Oxbow Connection: Why Napa’s Oxbow Market became her favorite location and how the space fosters a community of like-minded entrepreneurs.
- Celebratory Moments: The philosophy behind Kara’s brands and her mission to bring joy through food, wine, and hospitality.
From cupcakes to wine bars, Kara’s story is a masterclass in entrepreneurship, resilience, and creativity. Whether you're a business owner or just love a good success story, this episode is packed with valuable insights.
This episode is brought to you by Cuvée, the go-to app for planning your Napa Valley experience. Follow @NapaValleyInsiderPodcast for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is the Industry Insider Podcast, brought to you by Cuvée, the Napa Winery Guide, powered
(00:07):
by Preferably, with your host, Andrew Allison.
All right, all right, all right.
Welcome back to another episode of Napa Valley Insider.
I'm Andrew Allison.
I am the CEO of Cuvée.
We make this podcast in partnership with Highway 29 Media, and I am so excited to introduce
today's guest.
Who are you and what do you do?
(00:29):
I am Kara Haspelind.
I'm the founder and president of Kara's Cupcakes and the Napa Valley Wine Bar, Bar Lucia.
I love the Oxbow.
I can't wait to talk a little bit about the Oxbow, but maybe we could rewind the clocks.
What is your origin story in your entrepreneurial journey?
Well, I feel like I've been an entrepreneur like my whole life because when I was a young
(00:53):
girl growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I used to play boss.
So I have transcended that throughout my life.
I guess I'm somewhat of a control freak or creator, either or.
You could be both at the same time.
I know you can.
I love it.
I had moved out to the West Coast from the East Coast and had worked in magazine publishing
(01:15):
for Hurst and Conde Nast doing advertising sales.
I had big, fun, cool clients all over the West Coast, traveled.
It was great.
I wanted something more, and I'm the daughter of a dentist, and I was never allowed sweets.
However, I have 14 cavities, so I ate sweets even though I wasn't allowed.
I was the middle child that always did the wrong thing.
(01:35):
I wanted to pursue a passion in food.
I love dessert, and so I enrolled in pastry school in San Francisco at Taunt Marie's,
which is no longer in existence, but it's a wonderful place.
It was a wonderful place.
A lot of great people went there.
From that, I decided I want to be an entrepreneur.
I want to do a couple different things.
(01:56):
Some of them had nothing to do with food, but this one, I was like, I'm going to go
to pastry school and figure it out.
I walked into pastry school, and I said, I'm going to open a cupcake bakery, and everyone
thought I was nuts.
I had the vision already.
I had it in my head.
I think I even had a business card.
Day one, pastry school.
I think I made a lot of people angry because I was like, I know exactly what I want to
do.
Wow.
(02:17):
I would love to ask just a little bit about going through a culinary program.
There are so many people that have aspired to be better chefs at home.
When you go through a professional program, what were you hoping to get out of it, and
what was that experience like for somebody who's never going to have the opportunity
to do it?
Well, it was a part-time pastry program.
(02:40):
It was not culinary.
It was pastry.
Was it nights and weekends?
Yes.
It was nights and weekends, so I could keep my job and still do my love of dessert.
That is what I did with a goal in mind.
My husband was my business partner.
He still is.
He's kind of backed off because we've got the wheels on the bus and we're moving, so
(03:00):
I can kind of handle it.
It's always nice to have a partner in anything you're doing because you have someone to bounce
ideas off of.
That is definitely the case.
Yeah.
From there, we took out a home equity line of credit on a property we had and found a
location in the Marina District in San Francisco.
(03:22):
Went around looking at things we love that the city was producing and what the design
sensibility looked like.
Our designer said, well, whatever you like, you should call that person to do your build
out.
We called this fabulous architect out of Santa Monica, David Montalba, and we flew him up
and we were like, here's what we want to do.
He was like, let's do it.
I had a great team behind me.
(03:42):
We launched one.
Once you launch one, people are pounding on your doors.
When's your next one?
I launched my next one.
I didn't know what I was doing, but I opened the next one in Ghirardelli Square and then
Palo Alto.
Then we kept building, building, building.
It's great to build.
Then COVID hit and we had to shrink.
I've done growth and I've done non-growth and I've done new ideas with Barlucia.
(04:08):
I have a real firm sense on what it takes to create a business, build a business, bring
down a business, but then continue to make that business profitable even with a new concept
folded into the current.
I can run a Fortune 500 company.
If somebody let me, I could do it.
I don't want to, but I could.
(04:28):
I would never bet against an entrepreneur that believed in themselves.
Totally.
Thank you.
Tell me a little bit about finding your initial customer base.
I'm somebody who's had the privilege to bar crawl the marina about 3,000 times in my 20s.
When you decided the marina was the right location for you and you were thinking about
(04:49):
your initial customers, besides being able to make an amazing product, which I'm sure
as a byproduct of going through a pastry program, how did you make your initial decisions?
How do you make your initial marketing decisions?
What were some of the original business thoughts that went into, I'm confident this is going
to work?
Well, I think location, location, location.
(05:09):
You don't want to be three blocks from prosperity.
You want to be on the road of prosperity.
And so if you look at all the locations of Keres Cupcakes and then Barluci and Oxbow,
we are at highly desirable locations.
So location is key, but what does location mean?
So it means who's walking by, who's in the neighborhood, what are the demographics, what's
(05:30):
the socioeconomic status of this?
Who else?
Who are your neighbors?
Who are you keeping company with?
The marina just seemed like a logical spot.
There was a lot of foot traffic.
It was great weather.
There were other great brands around.
Apple was there, so many other food places.
We're going back 17 years now, but we found this one location and it had really good jujube.
(05:54):
It was a Pilates place and then it was a pizza place before that.
So the jujube was there and the neighbors were there.
So it was a great first location.
Literally in the nexus of the heart of San Francisco's vibrant district of the marina.
Follow us on Instagram at Cuvate Collective HQ.
(06:16):
If there's someone in Napa's hospitality scene you'd like to see featured in our industry
interview series, send us a DM.
We're asking the pros where they go, whether it's the best burger or the top cocktail,
our audience wants to know your favorites around the valley.
Make sure you follow us on Instagram at Cuvate Collective HQ, link in the show notes.
When you made the decision to come to the Oxbow, the Oxbow is quite intuitive in terms
(06:38):
of the nature of the building.
It's almost like a Napa version of Italy in the sense that it's got many things.
Yes.
But why did you choose Napa as your next location?
Well Napa was probably our fourth location and it just seemed like a logical progression.
(06:59):
We had the city and we had Palo Alto and we wanted something in the North Bay.
And Napa is a real food and wine destination.
People have an appreciation for it.
They understand it and they kind of flock to it.
It's like a glue, food, Napa, wine.
It all comes together.
And we were a premier dessert brand in the building and building it.
(07:20):
And we really wanted to be in Oxbow.
It was to me, I mean I shouldn't say this because you don't want to say you have a
favorite child, but Oxbow is my favorite location of any bakery I've ever had of all of them.
It's my favorite.
I love the energy about it.
I love the other vendors and people that have built their businesses in there.
(07:40):
I love the founder of it.
I think he really gets us as entrepreneurs because he's an entrepreneur.
So he gets our momentum.
But Napa to me was a logical location for obviously the food and wine connection.
But the particular space of Oxbow Market was a gathering of like-minded entrepreneurs that
(08:02):
want to make the world a better place, want to create celebration, and want to deliver
the best possible experience, food and wine available in Napa in a one space location
that's very gathering.
Do you believe that you are your own first customer with everything that you work on
(08:23):
or do you think that you have a good sense as to who the customer base is and you can
modify your offerings to them?
Well, I think it's a combination.
I mean, 17 years ago I was younger and I had a new baby and I was like, oh, I'm going to
cater to all the moms.
And now I have a 17-year-old daughter.
And so I can be all of my customers.
(08:46):
I can fit myself in each segment of them and figure out what I want and what I think will
work.
So yes, I think it's a yes to both points of your question.
Yes, I think of myself as the customer, but yes, I can get in the heads of anyone that
I foresee being my customer to create a celebratory moment.
(09:08):
And so for those that haven't followed the journey, when you started your second business,
introduce us to the bar concept and when you wanted to actually expand into doing a little
bit of alcohol, what does that look like?
So our daughter is Lucia and we had been approached by the founder of Oxbow.
(09:30):
Would we be interested in creating a new concept at our end of the building to activate it?
And I said, yeah, let's totally do that.
And so he got behind us, we got behind the concept and we said, well, we'd love to do
a wine bar with delicious food that complements Kara's Cupcakes that continues along the path
of creating celebratory moments.
(09:51):
It was a natural progression.
And so with our architect and our builder, we were able to establish within Oxbow to
build out Bar Lucia, like this beautiful little space that continues celebratory moments.
So it's really a homage to the women in my life.
My great grandmother came over here from Italy during a pandemic and they succeeded quite
(10:16):
well in their lives and raised kids and then grandkids and then I'm the great granddaughter
and Lucia is the great, great granddaughter of the namesake.
So we've been able to keep that momentum going in my family and bring that to fruition in
Napa Valley.
And we've created great food and great wine and it's really heavily women wine driven.
(10:39):
A lot of the wines are made by women like Tansy from Shelley Lindgren of A16, Heidi
Barrett and her daughter Chelsea and Remy with La Serena and A.B. Atrix and just Azor.
There's so many of the wines are female led and what I'm noticing is they're becoming
more and more female led because that's what I'm going after.
(11:02):
But heck yeah, Alain is an amazing, an amazing entrepreneur.
Yeah, they all are.
They're fantastic and I've done women's events.
So Barlucia is that next step for me to kind of bring another level of celebration into
life.
And I've been able to do that.
(11:22):
How do you see the Oxbow changing in 2025?
They've lost a major anchor tenant with CICASA.
How do you see the space or the evolution of the Oxbow changing in the next year or
two?
I think Napa is shifting, right?
In which direction or which way?
(11:44):
Well a couple of things.
The economy, let's go 30,000 feet.
So the economy is shifting.
It has to get better and it is going to get better.
I can already sense my January is better than January last year.
That's number one.
So San Francisco is getting better, right?
It's cleaning itself up.
People are coming.
Visitors are coming back to Northern California, which will trickle into Napa, which will increase
(12:07):
foot traffic in Napa.
As far as, and that trickles through to Oxbow as a food destination.
Everyone knows Oxbow.
People in Southern California, people that are traveling here, when they come to Napa,
they get off the plane.
Before they go to the hotel, they come to Oxbow.
It's a destination for them and it will continue to be.
As far as a tenant leaving, tenants are in and out all the time.
(12:27):
It's the natural progression of having a leaseable space and change is inevitable and we just
kind of have to go with it.
But I think that for Oxbow, I think sky's the limit.
I think there's a lot of opportunity for more guests to come in, new food concepts.
They have a pop-up, which is outstanding.
It's a great opportunity for new ideas.
(12:48):
I think the space that's vacant will...
I already have my leasing guy called me about the space and he's like, I want to talk to
your landlord about the space.
I was like, great.
So I think it's an opportunity that's a positive.
It's sad that the tenants he costs are left, but I think it opens up opportunity for freshness
and newness and go with it.
(13:10):
The vibrance of it.
How do you go about other aspects?
Is there a catering component to the Carers Cupcakes business where people can ask commercial
orders for their business or large bulk orders?
Yeah.
That's our bread and butter is the catering business.
The corporate business, the wineries, the guests, that is all what we thrive on and do really
(13:34):
well because we're in the business of creating celebratory moments.
So we can do that with large amounts of cupcakes, thousands and thousands.
We can make that happen.
We've been able to do a lot with Barlucia as well.
A lot of the, I'm having a dinner party, can you cater it?
I'm having a corporate lunch, can you cater it?
It's great.
(13:54):
I mean, our salads, our sandwiches, and wrap it up with cupcakes and cookies.
It's like a slam dunk.
Like it's a no brainer to have that for your lunches or dinners, for private events or
corporate events.
But that's our bread and butter.
Catering for both Barlucia and Carers is like, that's where the rubber meets the road and
we make the money.
(14:15):
Is there anything else that you've been aspiring to work on that you haven't had a chance?
I'm always creating and thinking.
I think there's another space for a Barlucia.
I don't know where that is, but I believe it has the opportunity to create another one,
(14:36):
another space.
I don't know where yet.
I'm thinking about that.
Do you think it might be approximate to another Carers cupcake somewhere else?
Like Carers and Barlucia together?
Yeah.
Well, obviously these two are literally next to each other in the Oxbow.
Is there another Carers cupcakes that might need to have both open at the same time, like
(15:00):
another Carers destination?
Yes.
I think a combined opportunity for them both, maybe a little more fluid, is definitely something
I would love to do.
So yeah, for sure.
And I have other ideas.
Maybe there's a homeware line for Barlucia.
Oh.
Yeah.
(15:21):
I'm always thinking, always creating.
Maybe there's a Casa Lucia.
Who knows?
Lots of opportunity to continue celebratory moments.
To take it really into your home.
Now we have the food and the cupcakes in your home, and now you have the plates and the
housewares to put it all together.
You got that celebratory flatware.
Yeah.
So that's where I am.
(15:41):
I admire somebody who has operated a business as long as you have.
I bet the trials and tribulations, the lows must have been low, and you shine so bright
past them and beyond them because you've learned to weather the storms, as they say.
Yes.
Thank you very much for those words.
I appreciate it because there are so many lows, and COVID was such a low.
(16:04):
And we've come out of it.
Do you mind sharing some of that?
Is there a part of your COVID story that might be unique to you?
Well, we opened Barlucia in June of 2020 in the middle of COVID.
It was like we were masked.
So that was a real challenge.
It was a challenge for everyone, but we literally opened our doors in the middle of a pandemic
and had to see that through.
(16:24):
And I didn't know how to navigate that.
Just as an entrepreneur, you're on the fly.
You figure it out as you go.
You're building the plane as you're flying it.
Yeah.
And as the other analogy goes, the NoComC has ever made a good sailor, right?
Right.
How would you share that advice with another entrepreneur that is considering starting
(16:46):
a business, either in your category or a category similar that has retail, is foot traffic dependent?
What are some of the tenants besides location, location, location that you would not tell
them to look past or underestimate?
What are some of the things that are truly critical to consider when you start a business?
(17:09):
I think policy and procedure is really important because as an entrepreneur, if you're building
and you have a team behind you and you're creative, but you're also flailing, you're
like, I don't know, what do I do?
They sense that kind of fear and then they're lost.
So you have to visualize it, manifest it, putting it into form and then making it happen
(17:33):
and writing it all down, documenting it and writing the steps and thinking through each
step of what this will look like to come to fruition.
People want to get behind something if they can see the steps to do it.
But as an entrepreneur, you're creative.
So you're just creating the steps kind of on the fly.
The people working with you, supporting you, boots on the ground, they may need something
(17:55):
visual to look at to figure out how to do that because they're not necessarily an entrepreneur,
but they're on your ride.
But they need to know that the things are in place.
You kind of have to show them.
Help keep local Napa news alive by donating to Napa Valley News Group.
Napa Valley News Group is dedicated to preserving local voices and 100% of your tax deductible
(18:17):
donation goes directly to supporting Napa Valley's news and journalists.
Every dollar truly makes a difference.
Head over to NapaValleyNewsGroup.com to donate and keep our community informed.
That's NapaValleyNewsGroup.com.
Napa Valley News Group is a 501c3 nonprofit.
100% of donations go to support local journalism in the Napa Valley.
Tax ID 93-466-2744.
(18:39):
Cheers.
Is there a recruiting challenge with your business in terms of finding or growing or
home growing talent?
Yeah, we promote from within.
I've had people with me for 15 years, 12 years, 10 years, 8 years.
We have a lot of longevity, which is great.
I think that's a testament to the building of standard operating procedures.
(18:59):
There's a believability in that.
As far as recruiting, I like to promote from within because they know the mission vision
values of the company and they know the process that we're doing.
We have something called best, be welcoming, engage, serve, thank, and they know to get
behind that.
They just continue the momentum of it.
(19:19):
I think that's really important.
The recruiting outside of Keras Cupcakes can be challenging, but it's really getting better.
Really good people out there.
Have you ever considered franchising?
I've thought about it and at different times throughout the years we've looked at it.
If someone came to me with the right thing, sure, I'd take a look at it.
(19:42):
If the documents are good and the price is right, absolutely.
But that's not on my horizon right now.
Mine's more creative and other opportunities.
But if somebody wanted to talk about that, I'm happy to talk about it.
Are there other businesses that you draw inspiration from, whether it's from your category or
(20:05):
from a totally different category?
Some entrepreneurs that you like to watch what they do because you draw inspiration.
A hundred thousand percent.
I draw inspiration from so many people.
Instagram's a real source for me, very much a resource for me.
Things like Sarah Blakely who started Spanx, she's a really great person who inspires.
(20:29):
Lots of other businesses that have nothing to do with food are inspirations.
People swears, homes, architects, anybody creating anything, I look to them and see
okay, how'd you come from nothing and do that?
And there's really a sense of knowing that you kind of have to follow.
So tons and tons of inspirational people.
(20:51):
When you think about the other things on your vision board, what are some of the areas that
you feel remain unscratched beyond the extension of the current vision?
Is there anything that you've ever wanted to work on that you just like, it doesn't
fit what I'm working on now that I would love to work on in the future?
(21:13):
Something that's totally like a different lane.
A different lane outside of Kara's Cupcakes and Bar Lucia?
Yeah.
I mean, I love house design and architecture and creating really great food and meals.
It's interesting, Ina Garten didn't start really her business until she was 52, I'm
(21:37):
actually 54.
And I'm like, oh my God, there's hope for me.
I can do other things still.
So yeah, I mean, I just love the creative process and creating beautiful things and
bringing people together.
I love food and I love wine.
So I think there's something even in the home, if I could create something like that.
(21:59):
Is that also something that you used to recharge as well?
So like time off?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, my recharging is cooking and making things and creating.
My recharging is really trying to cook.
The same thing that energizes you.
Yeah.
And then bringing it to fruition, whether it's at Bar Lucia, Kara's or in my own personal
(22:20):
life.
I was looking at something the other day and it had a passion fruit martini.
I was like, oh my God, we got to do that at Bar Lucia.
I'm like, we have to do that.
So it's like, I'm always, always, always creating.
It will never end.
And so I don't know what will happen after Kara's and Bar Lucia.
Hopefully there'll be more things to create that are in the same category.
(22:42):
If we talked about Napa Valley as the macro visitation is returning at the 30,000 foot
view, as you mentioned, what are some of the things that you believe may have caused Napa
to have a bit of a contraction?
(23:02):
What are some of the areas of the overall industry that Napa might've gotten wrong for
a moment that is now starting to correct itself?
I don't know that Napa really got anything wrong.
I think that we had a pandemic that impacted the world that changed everything.
And I think the state had a lot of challenges, a lot of states had challenges, the country
(23:26):
had challenges.
And I think San Francisco, there was a lot of stuff happening there.
People didn't want to come visit San Francisco.
San Francisco is my most favorite city in all of the world.
I think it's spectacular.
I've traveled.
I've been to Italy, I've been everywhere.
San Francisco is my all time favorite.
It's beautiful.
It had some bumps and blips, but I think it's having a comeback.
(23:48):
I think it's getting cleaned up.
And I think that people weren't coming to San Francisco.
The media was giving it a bad rap.
And then so people weren't coming to San Francisco, so then they weren't coming up to Napa.
I think that's going to shift.
And I think Napa will start to get its visitors.
Napa also had some growth.
Downtown Napa exploded, right?
So now with that growth coming back to the state and the city and Napa, we're going to
(24:13):
see that come back to all of us here at Oxbow and downtown Napa and Yomphil and St. Helena
and Calistoga where I spend time.
I think it's coming.
I feel it.
Yeah, that's so interesting.
I've spoken on prior episodes about San Francisco is really top of the funnel for Napa Valley's
(24:34):
visitation, especially Europeans passing through, they only come to Napa for the day.
Just as one example, San Francisco definitely had its challenges not to understate them,
homelessness, fentanyl, et cetera.
But I completely agree and have the same read as you that San Francisco is so back and is
(24:55):
so on the mend.
I've spent a few days in the city in the last month where it is just live, it's vibrant,
the downtown core of the Phi Dai is really starting to feel like it used to a decade
ago.
Yeah, it's going to have its day and everything's cyclical and it went through a cycle.
So it's on the other end of that cycle.
(25:16):
It's coming back.
Yeah, that is exciting.
Maybe just to close up, where would people find your work?
Maybe you can plug your Instagram handle or a couple of them.
Sounds like you have a few businesses.
And how can people get a hold of you if they would like to?
(25:37):
So for our businesses, we are located in Napa Valley's Oxbow Market, which is in downtown
Napa.
We have Karis cupcakes in the market.
And next to us is our famous Rose wine bar, Bar Lucia, that has amazing a frosay.
So you can find us in downtown Napa at Oxbow.
You can find us in other locations, Palo Alto and the city of San Francisco.
(25:59):
We are at kariscupcakes.com for our Instagram handle and our Bar Lucia handle is at Bar
Lucia Napa.
If you want to find me, you can find me on LinkedIn, Kara Haspeland.
You can find me at Kara K Cup on Instagram.
You could shoot an email to hello at Barlucia.com or hello at Kariscupcakes.com and believe
(26:20):
it or not, it comes to me five other people, but we're all on it.
And so we're on it to help you get what you need.
And that's why we have that.
Well, thank you.
Thank you so very much for jumping on today.
Thank you.
It's great.
I loved it.
Yeah, it's so nice to have you.
I am Andrew Allison.
I'm the CEO of Cuvée.
We make the Napa Winery Guide app.
Cheers.
(26:40):
The industry insider podcast has been brought to you by Cuvée, the Napa Winery Guide.
Download the app for iPhone today and start planning your perfect wine country adventure.
Find out more at CuvéeApp.com.
Cheers.
This is the Industry Insider Podcast, brought to you by Cuvée, the Napa Winery Guide, powered
(00:07):
by Preferably, with your host, Andrew Allison.
All right, all right, all right.
Welcome back to another episode of Napa Valley Insider.
I'm Andrew Allison.
I am the CEO of Cuvée.
We make this podcast in partnership with Highway 29 Media, and I am so excited to introduce
today's guest.
Who are you and what do you do?
(00:29):
I am Kara Haspelind.
I'm the founder and president of Kara's Cupcakes and the Napa Valley Wine Bar, Bar Lucia.
I love the Oxbow.
I can't wait to talk a little bit about the Oxbow, but maybe we could rewind the clocks.
What is your origin story in your entrepreneurial journey?
Well, I feel like I've been an entrepreneur like my whole life because when I was a young
(00:53):
girl growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I used to play boss.
So I have transcended that throughout my life.
I guess I'm somewhat of a control freak or creator, either or.
You could be both at the same time.
I know you can.
I love it.
I had moved out to the West Coast from the East Coast and had worked in magazine publishing
(01:15):
for Hurst and Conde Nast doing advertising sales.
I had big, fun, cool clients all over the West Coast, traveled.
It was great.
I wanted something more, and I'm the daughter of a dentist, and I was never allowed sweets.
However, I have 14 cavities, so I ate sweets even though I wasn't allowed.
I was the middle child that always did the wrong thing.
(01:35):
I wanted to pursue a passion in food.
I love dessert, and so I enrolled in pastry school in San Francisco at Taunt Marie's,
which is no longer in existence, but it's a wonderful place.
It was a wonderful place.
A lot of great people went there.
From that, I decided I want to be an entrepreneur.
I want to do a couple different things.
(01:56):
Some of them had nothing to do with food, but this one, I was like, I'm going to go
to pastry school and figure it out.
I walked into pastry school, and I said, I'm going to open a cupcake bakery, and everyone
thought I was nuts.
I had the vision already.
I had it in my head.
I think I even had a business card.
Day one, pastry school.
I think I made a lot of people angry because I was like, I know exactly what I want to
do.
Wow.
(02:17):
I would love to ask just a little bit about going through a culinary program.
There are so many people that have aspired to be better chefs at home.
When you go through a professional program, what were you hoping to get out of it, and
what was that experience like for somebody who's never going to have the opportunity
to do it?
Well, it was a part-time pastry program.
(02:40):
It was not culinary.
It was pastry.
Was it nights and weekends?
Yes.
It was nights and weekends, so I could keep my job and still do my love of dessert.
That is what I did with a goal in mind.
My husband was my business partner.
He still is.
He's kind of backed off because we've got the wheels on the bus and we're moving, so
(03:00):
I can kind of handle it.
It's always nice to have a partner in anything you're doing because you have someone to bounce
ideas off of.
That is definitely the case.
Yeah.
From there, we took out a home equity line of credit on a property we had and found a
location in the Marina District in San Francisco.
(03:22):
Went around looking at things we love that the city was producing and what the design
sensibility looked like.
Our designer said, well, whatever you like, you should call that person to do your build
out.
We called this fabulous architect out of Santa Monica, David Montalba, and we flew him up
and we were like, here's what we want to do.
He was like, let's do it.
I had a great team behind me.
(03:42):
We launched one.
Once you launch one, people are pounding on your doors.
When's your next one?
I launched my next one.
I didn't know what I was doing, but I opened the next one in Ghirardelli Square and then
Palo Alto.
Then we kept building, building, building.
It's great to build.
Then COVID hit and we had to shrink.
I've done growth and I've done non-growth and I've done new ideas with Barlucia.
(04:08):
I have a real firm sense on what it takes to create a business, build a business, bring
down a business, but then continue to make that business profitable even with a new concept
folded into the current.
I can run a Fortune 500 company.
If somebody let me, I could do it.
I don't want to, but I could.
(04:28):
I would never bet against an entrepreneur that believed in themselves.
Totally.
Thank you.
Tell me a little bit about finding your initial customer base.
I'm somebody who's had the privilege to bar crawl the marina about 3,000 times in my 20s.
When you decided the marina was the right location for you and you were thinking about
(04:49):
your initial customers, besides being able to make an amazing product, which I'm sure
as a byproduct of going through a pastry program, how did you make your initial decisions?
How do you make your initial marketing decisions?
What were some of the original business thoughts that went into, I'm confident this is going
to work?
Well, I think location, location, location.
(05:09):
You don't want to be three blocks from prosperity.
You want to be on the road of prosperity.
And so if you look at all the locations of Keres Cupcakes and then Barluci and Oxbow,
we are at highly desirable locations.
So location is key, but what does location mean?
So it means who's walking by, who's in the neighborhood, what are the demographics, what's
(05:30):
the socioeconomic status of this?
Who else?
Who are your neighbors?
Who are you keeping company with?
The marina just seemed like a logical spot.
There was a lot of foot traffic.
It was great weather.
There were other great brands around.
Apple was there, so many other food places.
We're going back 17 years now, but we found this one location and it had really good jujube.
(05:54):
It was a Pilates place and then it was a pizza place before that.
So the jujube was there and the neighbors were there.
So it was a great first location.
Literally in the nexus of the heart of San Francisco's vibrant district of the marina.
Follow us on Instagram at Cuvate Collective HQ.
(06:16):
If there's someone in Napa's hospitality scene you'd like to see featured in our industry
interview series, send us a DM.
We're asking the pros where they go, whether it's the best burger or the top cocktail,
our audience wants to know your favorites around the valley.
Make sure you follow us on Instagram at Cuvate Collective HQ, link in the show notes.
When you made the decision to come to the Oxbow, the Oxbow is quite intuitive in terms
(06:38):
of the nature of the building.
It's almost like a Napa version of Italy in the sense that it's got many things.
Yes.
But why did you choose Napa as your next location?
Well Napa was probably our fourth location and it just seemed like a logical progression.
(06:59):
We had the city and we had Palo Alto and we wanted something in the North Bay.
And Napa is a real food and wine destination.
People have an appreciation for it.
They understand it and they kind of flock to it.
It's like a glue, food, Napa, wine.
It all comes together.
And we were a premier dessert brand in the building and building it.
(07:20):
And we really wanted to be in Oxbow.
It was to me, I mean I shouldn't say this because you don't want to say you have a
favorite child, but Oxbow is my favorite location of any bakery I've ever had of all of them.
It's my favorite.
I love the energy about it.
I love the other vendors and people that have built their businesses in there.
(07:40):
I love the founder of it.
I think he really gets us as entrepreneurs because he's an entrepreneur.
So he gets our momentum.
But Napa to me was a logical location for obviously the food and wine connection.
But the particular space of Oxbow Market was a gathering of like-minded entrepreneurs that
(08:02):
want to make the world a better place, want to create celebration, and want to deliver
the best possible experience, food and wine available in Napa in a one space location
that's very gathering.
Do you believe that you are your own first customer with everything that you work on
(08:23):
or do you think that you have a good sense as to who the customer base is and you can
modify your offerings to them?
Well, I think it's a combination.
I mean, 17 years ago I was younger and I had a new baby and I was like, oh, I'm going to
cater to all the moms.
And now I have a 17-year-old daughter.
And so I can be all of my customers.
(08:46):
I can fit myself in each segment of them and figure out what I want and what I think will
work.
So yes, I think it's a yes to both points of your question.
Yes, I think of myself as the customer, but yes, I can get in the heads of anyone that
I foresee being my customer to create a celebratory moment.
(09:08):
And so for those that haven't followed the journey, when you started your second business,
introduce us to the bar concept and when you wanted to actually expand into doing a little
bit of alcohol, what does that look like?
So our daughter is Lucia and we had been approached by the founder of Oxbow.
(09:30):
Would we be interested in creating a new concept at our end of the building to activate it?
And I said, yeah, let's totally do that.
And so he got behind us, we got behind the concept and we said, well, we'd love to do
a wine bar with delicious food that complements Kara's Cupcakes that continues along the path
of creating celebratory moments.
(09:51):
It was a natural progression.
And so with our architect and our builder, we were able to establish within Oxbow to
build out Bar Lucia, like this beautiful little space that continues celebratory moments.
So it's really a homage to the women in my life.
My great grandmother came over here from Italy during a pandemic and they succeeded quite
(10:16):
well in their lives and raised kids and then grandkids and then I'm the great granddaughter
and Lucia is the great, great granddaughter of the namesake.
So we've been able to keep that momentum going in my family and bring that to fruition in
Napa Valley.
And we've created great food and great wine and it's really heavily women wine driven.
(10:39):
A lot of the wines are made by women like Tansy from Shelley Lindgren of A16, Heidi
Barrett and her daughter Chelsea and Remy with La Serena and A.B. Atrix and just Azor.
There's so many of the wines are female led and what I'm noticing is they're becoming
more and more female led because that's what I'm going after.
(11:02):
But heck yeah, Alain is an amazing, an amazing entrepreneur.
Yeah, they all are.
They're fantastic and I've done women's events.
So Barlucia is that next step for me to kind of bring another level of celebration into
life.
And I've been able to do that.
(11:22):
How do you see the Oxbow changing in 2025?
They've lost a major anchor tenant with CICASA.
How do you see the space or the evolution of the Oxbow changing in the next year or
two?
I think Napa is shifting, right?
In which direction or which way?
(11:44):
Well a couple of things.
The economy, let's go 30,000 feet.
So the economy is shifting.
It has to get better and it is going to get better.
I can already sense my January is better than January last year.
That's number one.
So San Francisco is getting better, right?
It's cleaning itself up.
People are coming.
Visitors are coming back to Northern California, which will trickle into Napa, which will increase
(12:07):
foot traffic in Napa.
As far as, and that trickles through to Oxbow as a food destination.
Everyone knows Oxbow.
People in Southern California, people that are traveling here, when they come to Napa,
they get off the plane.
Before they go to the hotel, they come to Oxbow.
It's a destination for them and it will continue to be.
As far as a tenant leaving, tenants are in and out all the time.
(12:27):
It's the natural progression of having a leaseable space and change is inevitable and we just
kind of have to go with it.
But I think that for Oxbow, I think sky's the limit.
I think there's a lot of opportunity for more guests to come in, new food concepts.
They have a pop-up, which is outstanding.
It's a great opportunity for new ideas.
(12:48):
I think the space that's vacant will...
I already have my leasing guy called me about the space and he's like, I want to talk to
your landlord about the space.
I was like, great.
So I think it's an opportunity that's a positive.
It's sad that the tenants he costs are left, but I think it opens up opportunity for freshness
and newness and go with it.
(13:10):
The vibrance of it.
How do you go about other aspects?
Is there a catering component to the Carers Cupcakes business where people can ask commercial
orders for their business or large bulk orders?
Yeah.
That's our bread and butter is the catering business.
The corporate business, the wineries, the guests, that is all what we thrive on and do really
(13:34):
well because we're in the business of creating celebratory moments.
So we can do that with large amounts of cupcakes, thousands and thousands.
We can make that happen.
We've been able to do a lot with Barlucia as well.
A lot of the, I'm having a dinner party, can you cater it?
I'm having a corporate lunch, can you cater it?
It's great.
(13:54):
I mean, our salads, our sandwiches, and wrap it up with cupcakes and cookies.
It's like a slam dunk.
Like it's a no brainer to have that for your lunches or dinners, for private events or
corporate events.
But that's our bread and butter.
Catering for both Barlucia and Carers is like, that's where the rubber meets the road and
we make the money.
(14:15):
Is there anything else that you've been aspiring to work on that you haven't had a chance?
I'm always creating and thinking.
I think there's another space for a Barlucia.
I don't know where that is, but I believe it has the opportunity to create another one,
(14:36):
another space.
I don't know where yet.
I'm thinking about that.
Do you think it might be approximate to another Carers cupcake somewhere else?
Like Carers and Barlucia together?
Yeah.
Well, obviously these two are literally next to each other in the Oxbow.
Is there another Carers cupcakes that might need to have both open at the same time, like
(15:00):
another Carers destination?
Yes.
I think a combined opportunity for them both, maybe a little more fluid, is definitely something
I would love to do.
So yeah, for sure.
And I have other ideas.
Maybe there's a homeware line for Barlucia.
Oh.
Yeah.
(15:21):
I'm always thinking, always creating.
Maybe there's a Casa Lucia.
Who knows?
Lots of opportunity to continue celebratory moments.
To take it really into your home.
Now we have the food and the cupcakes in your home, and now you have the plates and the
housewares to put it all together.
You got that celebratory flatware.
Yeah.
So that's where I am.
(15:41):
I admire somebody who has operated a business as long as you have.
I bet the trials and tribulations, the lows must have been low, and you shine so bright
past them and beyond them because you've learned to weather the storms, as they say.
Yes.
Thank you very much for those words.
I appreciate it because there are so many lows, and COVID was such a low.
(16:04):
And we've come out of it.
Do you mind sharing some of that?
Is there a part of your COVID story that might be unique to you?
Well, we opened Barlucia in June of 2020 in the middle of COVID.
It was like we were masked.
So that was a real challenge.
It was a challenge for everyone, but we literally opened our doors in the middle of a pandemic
and had to see that through.
(16:24):
And I didn't know how to navigate that.
Just as an entrepreneur, you're on the fly.
You figure it out as you go.
You're building the plane as you're flying it.
Yeah.
And as the other analogy goes, the NoComC has ever made a good sailor, right?
Right.
How would you share that advice with another entrepreneur that is considering starting
(16:46):
a business, either in your category or a category similar that has retail, is foot traffic dependent?
What are some of the tenants besides location, location, location that you would not tell
them to look past or underestimate?
What are some of the things that are truly critical to consider when you start a business?
(17:09):
I think policy and procedure is really important because as an entrepreneur, if you're building
and you have a team behind you and you're creative, but you're also flailing, you're
like, I don't know, what do I do?
They sense that kind of fear and then they're lost.
So you have to visualize it, manifest it, putting it into form and then making it happen
(17:33):
and writing it all down, documenting it and writing the steps and thinking through each
step of what this will look like to come to fruition.
People want to get behind something if they can see the steps to do it.
But as an entrepreneur, you're creative.
So you're just creating the steps kind of on the fly.
The people working with you, supporting you, boots on the ground, they may need something
(17:55):
visual to look at to figure out how to do that because they're not necessarily an entrepreneur,
but they're on your ride.
But they need to know that the things are in place.
You kind of have to show them.
Help keep local Napa news alive by donating to Napa Valley News Group.
Napa Valley News Group is dedicated to preserving local voices and 100% of your tax deductible
(18:17):
donation goes directly to supporting Napa Valley's news and journalists.
Every dollar truly makes a difference.
Head over to NapaValleyNewsGroup.com to donate and keep our community informed.
That's NapaValleyNewsGroup.com.
Napa Valley News Group is a 501c3 nonprofit.
100% of donations go to support local journalism in the Napa Valley.
Tax ID 93-466-2744.
(18:39):
Cheers.
Is there a recruiting challenge with your business in terms of finding or growing or
home growing talent?
Yeah, we promote from within.
I've had people with me for 15 years, 12 years, 10 years, 8 years.
We have a lot of longevity, which is great.
I think that's a testament to the building of standard operating procedures.
(18:59):
There's a believability in that.
As far as recruiting, I like to promote from within because they know the mission vision
values of the company and they know the process that we're doing.
We have something called best, be welcoming, engage, serve, thank, and they know to get
behind that.
They just continue the momentum of it.
(19:19):
I think that's really important.
The recruiting outside of Keras Cupcakes can be challenging, but it's really getting better.
Really good people out there.
Have you ever considered franchising?
I've thought about it and at different times throughout the years we've looked at it.
If someone came to me with the right thing, sure, I'd take a look at it.
(19:42):
If the documents are good and the price is right, absolutely.
But that's not on my horizon right now.
Mine's more creative and other opportunities.
But if somebody wanted to talk about that, I'm happy to talk about it.
Are there other businesses that you draw inspiration from, whether it's from your category or
(20:05):
from a totally different category?
Some entrepreneurs that you like to watch what they do because you draw inspiration.
A hundred thousand percent.
I draw inspiration from so many people.
Instagram's a real source for me, very much a resource for me.
Things like Sarah Blakely who started Spanx, she's a really great person who inspires.
(20:29):
Lots of other businesses that have nothing to do with food are inspirations.
People swears, homes, architects, anybody creating anything, I look to them and see
okay, how'd you come from nothing and do that?
And there's really a sense of knowing that you kind of have to follow.
So tons and tons of inspirational people.
(20:51):
When you think about the other things on your vision board, what are some of the areas that
you feel remain unscratched beyond the extension of the current vision?
Is there anything that you've ever wanted to work on that you just like, it doesn't
fit what I'm working on now that I would love to work on in the future?
(21:13):
Something that's totally like a different lane.
A different lane outside of Kara's Cupcakes and Bar Lucia?
Yeah.
I mean, I love house design and architecture and creating really great food and meals.
It's interesting, Ina Garten didn't start really her business until she was 52, I'm
(21:37):
actually 54.
And I'm like, oh my God, there's hope for me.
I can do other things still.
So yeah, I mean, I just love the creative process and creating beautiful things and
bringing people together.
I love food and I love wine.
So I think there's something even in the home, if I could create something like that.
(21:59):
Is that also something that you used to recharge as well?
So like time off?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, my recharging is cooking and making things and creating.
My recharging is really trying to cook.
The same thing that energizes you.
Yeah.
And then bringing it to fruition, whether it's at Bar Lucia, Kara's or in my own personal
(22:20):
life.
I was looking at something the other day and it had a passion fruit martini.
I was like, oh my God, we got to do that at Bar Lucia.
I'm like, we have to do that.
So it's like, I'm always, always, always creating.
It will never end.
And so I don't know what will happen after Kara's and Bar Lucia.
Hopefully there'll be more things to create that are in the same category.
(22:42):
If we talked about Napa Valley as the macro visitation is returning at the 30,000 foot
view, as you mentioned, what are some of the things that you believe may have caused Napa
to have a bit of a contraction?
(23:02):
What are some of the areas of the overall industry that Napa might've gotten wrong for
a moment that is now starting to correct itself?
I don't know that Napa really got anything wrong.
I think that we had a pandemic that impacted the world that changed everything.
And I think the state had a lot of challenges, a lot of states had challenges, the country
(23:26):
had challenges.
And I think San Francisco, there was a lot of stuff happening there.
People didn't want to come visit San Francisco.
San Francisco is my most favorite city in all of the world.
I think it's spectacular.
I've traveled.
I've been to Italy, I've been everywhere.
San Francisco is my all time favorite.
It's beautiful.
It had some bumps and blips, but I think it's having a comeback.
(23:48):
I think it's getting cleaned up.
And I think that people weren't coming to San Francisco.
The media was giving it a bad rap.
And then so people weren't coming to San Francisco, so then they weren't coming up to Napa.
I think that's going to shift.
And I think Napa will start to get its visitors.
Napa also had some growth.
Downtown Napa exploded, right?
So now with that growth coming back to the state and the city and Napa, we're going to
(24:13):
see that come back to all of us here at Oxbow and downtown Napa and Yomphil and St. Helena
and Calistoga where I spend time.
I think it's coming.
I feel it.
Yeah, that's so interesting.
I've spoken on prior episodes about San Francisco is really top of the funnel for Napa Valley's
(24:34):
visitation, especially Europeans passing through, they only come to Napa for the day.
Just as one example, San Francisco definitely had its challenges not to understate them,
homelessness, fentanyl, et cetera.
But I completely agree and have the same read as you that San Francisco is so back and is
(24:55):
so on the mend.
I've spent a few days in the city in the last month where it is just live, it's vibrant,
the downtown core of the Phi Dai is really starting to feel like it used to a decade
ago.
Yeah, it's going to have its day and everything's cyclical and it went through a cycle.
So it's on the other end of that cycle.
(25:16):
It's coming back.
Yeah, that is exciting.
Maybe just to close up, where would people find your work?
Maybe you can plug your Instagram handle or a couple of them.
Sounds like you have a few businesses.
And how can people get a hold of you if they would like to?
(25:37):
So for our businesses, we are located in Napa Valley's Oxbow Market, which is in downtown
Napa.
We have Karis cupcakes in the market.
And next to us is our famous Rose wine bar, Bar Lucia, that has amazing a frosay.
So you can find us in downtown Napa at Oxbow.
You can find us in other locations, Palo Alto and the city of San Francisco.
(25:59):
We are at kariscupcakes.com for our Instagram handle and our Bar Lucia handle is at Bar
Lucia Napa.
If you want to find me, you can find me on LinkedIn, Kara Haspeland.
You can find me at Kara K Cup on Instagram.
You could shoot an email to hello at Barlucia.com or hello at Kariscupcakes.com and believe
(26:20):
it or not, it comes to me five other people, but we're all on it.
And so we're on it to help you get what you need.
And that's why we have that.
Well, thank you.
Thank you so very much for jumping on today.
Thank you.
It's great.
I loved it.
Yeah, it's so nice to have you.
I am Andrew Allison.
I'm the CEO of Cuvée.
We make the Napa Winery Guide app.
Cheers.
(26:40):
The industry insider podcast has been brought to you by Cuvée, the Napa Winery Guide.
Download the app for iPhone today and start planning your perfect wine country adventure.
Find out more at CuvéeApp.com.
Cheers.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.