Hungry Herbs No More, Enter The Pizza Kitchen

Her first day as a pizza shop owner won't be one Chris Kachmar soon forgets.

The owner of the Stocked Fridge, one of Merrimack's premiere catering services, situated in a small plaza on Route 101A next to St. John Neumann Church, recently bought Hungry Herbs, a pizza and chicken wings hot spot that sits next door to catering business.

Excited for the first day running the show at the newly-named Pizza Kitchen Kachmar instead found herself pulled away to cater to a regular client that doesn't often get to give a lot of warning: Public Service of New Hampshire.

In New Hampshire, power crews were kept busy in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy restoring outages to more than 100,000 customers and Kachmar was kept busy feeding those crews.

As a caterer, Kachmar has a contract to feed the PSNH utility workers at the Milford headquarters during storms like Sandy that require heavily coordinated power restoration.

A hiccup, for sure, for someone with so much on her plate, but once the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy was taken behind her, Kachmar was able to refocus her efforts on the expansion of her business.

And thankfully, because Kachmar retained the staff of Hungry Herbs, as well as much of its menu, Kachmar knew the shop was in good hands while she was elsewhere.

The Pizza Kitchen, which hung its new signs just this past Friday and rolled out its new website the same day, is a new direction for Kachmar, who began her catering shop Aug. 1, 2006.

The plan is to keep much of the same menu that was Hungry Herbs, Kachmar said, with the inclusion of some new things, like soups, paninis, sandwiches and new specialty pizzas as well as pizza with gluten-free crust.

“One thing we heard from our customers was they told us not to change the wing recipes, so we haven't,” Kachmar said.

A grand opening planned for this Saturday, Dec. 15, will formally introduce The Pizza Kitchen to Merrimack, but people have already been experiencing it for weeks.

Kachmar has built a new Facebook page for The Pizza Kitchen – because Facebook won't allow her to rename the Hungry Herbs page and retain its list of fans. So she's encouraging people to “like” the new page in order to keep up with the goings on at the store.

The great thing about The Pizza Kitchen's location next to the Stocked Fridge is convenience, Kachmar said. The landlord at the plaza allowed her to do some renovations, which included cutting a hole in the wall between the two stores to create an archway that connects them together. The main entrance into the building is through the Pizza Kitchen were people are greeted by a huge, colorful chalkboard wall listing the menu items for the pizza shop. A couple tables will remain in that store, but most of the in-shop seating will move into the Stocked Fridge, where a cooler for prepared foods is being moved out of the way to open up more space.

Kachmar also had a doorway cut between the two kitchens, which allows ease of movement between the two, but still gives them their own defined space. Kachmar said business in the catering/prepared meals world has been great an she's excited by the opportunity to continue that while also doing something new.

“It's two totally different types of business – with (The Pizza Kitchen) I'll be working with a lot of people on a day-to-day basis,” Kachmar said.

Thankfully, she's not completely new to the game. Kachmar said her family has worked in the food industry for years and her uncle owned a sub shop that she worked at as a teenager. Not to mention, Kachmar's extensive experience in the kitchen.

Next door, prepare foods are still a part of everyday life for Kachmar. A three-door cooler will allow for rows of prepared food to be lined up for sale. People can still place orders for days worth of meals, and Kachmar will retain her catering business a full.

Kachmar, who was named the Merrimack Chamber of Commerce's Business Person of the Year in 2009, expects to be done with renovations and fully operating both businesses by the end of 2012.

Kachmar opened the Stocked Fridge in 2006, after becoming somewhat of a personal chef to some of her coworkers in the corporate world.

Having graduated from Penn State with a degree in business and math, Kachmar was working in the mutual funds business before becoming a business owner. As a corporate professional, Kachmar would plan and make all her meals for the week on Sunday and bring prepared lunches with her to work.

As word spread at her office about what she was doing, she began taking home coolers of ingredients from her coworkers and building meals for them as well.

“It was like being a personal chef,” Kachmar said.

Finding that she loved that, Kachmar left corporate America and moved into prepared meals with the Stocked Fridge where she would not only prepare take and bake meals, but she also had a kitchen where people could come and use ingredients and direction from Kachmar to make their own meals.

It was an option that was pretty popular at the time but seems to have moved along. Kachmar stopped that portion of the business three years in, in 2009, and has since stuck with catering to groups, organizations and private parties, and preparing menus of food for regular and new clients.

“It was very much a phase. Three years into it, I realized, people want to eat healthy, but they don't want to make their own meals,” Kachmar said. “And the catering side, which I hadn't expected at all, just exploded.”

Kachmar is busy with regular clients like the Merrimack and Nashua Rotary Clubs, whom she serves breakfast too on a weekly basis and the Milford National Guard, whom she serves every couple of weekends. And there are plenty of take and bake options every day.

Kachmar said she has found the greatest base of loyal customers in Merrimack and regionally as a caterer and she hopes to continue that with The Pizza Kitchen.

She said delivery will continue as it was for Hungry Herbs, to Merrimack and parts of Hollis and Nashua, a much of the same food with her own spin on it.

For more information, visit the Pizza Kitchen's website, the Stocked Fridge website and find them both on Facebook: The Stocked Fridge and The Pizza Kitchen.

And keep your eyes and ears open for more details on this weekend's grand opening.