Who / Gavin + Jen
What / Chops For Tea Kitchen
Where / Castlemaine
Why / Local handcrafted kitchenwares
Instagram / @cft_kitchen
Gavin Krasner + Jen Toogood, the creative duo behind Castlemaine’s very own handcrafted kitchenwares brand Chops For Tea Kitchen, embody everything there is to celebrate and enjoy about modern country life and style; from the collaborative creativity they foster among local designers and artisans to the great food they cook and share with family, friends and fans.
Gav and Jen design and make all their kitchenwares, which range from chopping + serving boards to signature tea towels, using local artisans and Australian materials wherever possible. Possessing a cheeky sense of humour and a love of puns, Gav and Jen have affectionately named each of their timber products after their favourite cuts of meat: ‘The Shank’ (a serving paddle with a handle that comes in six stylish shades), ‘The Forequarter’ (an all-rounder), ‘The Cutlet’ (a small all-rounder), ‘The Hind Leg’ (a bench-top butcher’s block), and the ‘Crown Roast’ (a server with a juice sluice). And, if you’re an avid foodie, you’ll love the delicious recipes they share via their weekly blog ‘What’s for Tea?‘. What a great addition to a region renowned for great food and wine!
The moment you meet Gav and Jen you can tell that Chops For Tea Kitchen is not just about the end product, it’s very much about the journey it takes to get there: caring about provenance, sourcing local, collaborating with other makers, and hanging out with a community of inspired, like-minded folks. All the things that so many of us love about life in the country.
Gav and Jen are about to launch a Pozible campaign to help them along their creative journey, so visit their Facebook page to keep posted and offer your support to these wonderful, big-hearted, local creative folk.
Enjoy! x
You are the creative duo behind Chops For Tea Kitchenware – a beautiful range of kitchenware handcrafted in Castlemaine. Tell us a little bit about the path/s that led you to where you are now?
GAVIN: I have been a graphic designer for nearly 25 years and over that time I have worked with and helped to establish many brands. I felt the time was right to put energy and effort into a brand and product that I have (co) developed and have the potential to shape and share with the world — in other words to simply practice what I preach! I have a passion for food and spend lots of time cooking, so it seemed like a natural fit for me.
JEN: I have worked as a marketing professional for over 20 years, taking 4 years off during that period to be a stay-at-home mum for my son. I now work part-time with my partner Josh Durham managing a graphic design business Design By Committee, and I’m a freelance marketing consultant. I love cooking, discovering and customising recipes to call my own. I also covet quality designed kitchenware and homewares, I care about how and where products are made and I’m all about buying local where I can. I also love music, sewing, shoes and bags — who doesn’t love shoes and bags? Gav approached me mid last year with the business idea, I thought it could work, and we launched in December.
What inspired you to pursue Chops For Tea Kitchenware?
Chops For Tea Kitchenware was born from a desire to create beautifully-designed, handcrafted kitchenware with a strong brand personality. We want the business to express our passion for exceptional design and to project a sense of fun & humour through our products, prints & communications.
It’s a great business name! Tell us the story behind it?
GAVIN: I’m the co-founder of a brand design consultancy called Chops For Tea. The business name was actually conceived by my partner Liz Geddes and was adopted to reflect our move from Melbourne to Castlemaine 4 years ago. I always thought Chops For Tea would make a great name for a kitchenware brand.
What products do you make?
Our launch range features a selection of beautiful handcrafted wooden serving platters, a butcher’s block (chopping block) hand screen-printed tea towels and limited edition art prints.
Sourcing local and collaboration matter to you. Who makes up your team of designers/makers?
Part of our brand ethos includes the process of creative collaboration with local artisans and makers. We are currently collaborating with two exceptional makers. Doug Alderson is our master board maker; what Doug doesn’t know about milling timber isn’t worth knowing. Dale Stevens from Studio Antic lovingly hand screen-prints our tea-towels and limited art prints.
Where do you source your raw materials/design inspiration?
Raw Materials: We source our raw materials from local suppliers in Central Victoria.
Design Inspiration: Anything and everything really— nature, music, colour, food, books, architecture, humour, community, our kids, — that’s a difficult question to answer.
Where/how can we purchase your lovely covetable kitchenware?
At the moment our products are available to purchase online via our website www.chopsfortea.com/kitchen. We have been also just been selected to have a debut stall at the Finders Keepers Market at The Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton 22-24th July, and in negotiations to distribute through a few select retail outlets in Victoria.
What helps make Chops For Tea stand apart from the crowd?
Firstly, we feel we’ve made some unique and beautiful products in a very saturated market place. Then, of course, there’s the name which is very memorable — and this leads nicely into our brand story and values. On a simple level having chops for tea, makes us smile – who doesn’t love a chop? — vegetarians excepted 🙂
So, this story drives our design ethos and sensibilities (we like to think we have a bit of attitude and a sense of humour). This in turn informs the choices we make on materials and in choosing who we collaborate with. All of these elements help to create a real point of difference.
It has to be authentic, our products, our brand and all involved have a real understanding of the qualities that we literally want to bring to the (kitchen) table 😉
What philosophies/ethics guide you in the running of and vision for Chops for Tea Kitchenware?
We want to be mindful of others at all times, our makers, our customers, our families. We need to be true to ourselves and believe in our product.
You are running a Pozible crowd-funding campaign. Tell us about it.
The campaign will help us on a number of levels. To develop our exciting new pizza plate and other items such as our Choppa Shoppa (tote bag) apron and ceramics. We also need to develop our point of sale and display stands for The Finder Keepers market. The campaign will also increase awareness of our brand!
How can we help?
We’d love you to support our campaign and also share it far and wide via social media, we are launching the campaign in early June. Please like our Facebook page www.facebook.com/Chopsforteakitchen/ and we’ll keep you updated with the campaign. And there’s going to be some new exclusive designs, so please check it out.
Many of us dream of living in the country and finding work-life balance. Are you living the dream?
GAVIN: I live in a great country town, full of surprises, work for myself, enjoy family life, love my garden and pretty much get to do what I like — I’d say that’s pretty dreamy.
JEN: Yes, I believe I am!
If so, what have you learnt from pursuing your dream?
Not to dream, give it a go!
What advice might you give other small businesses?
Build and foster mutually beneficial relationships to grow your business and spread the word.
What have you learnt/discovered so far on your foray into handcrafted kitchenware?
It’s a bloody hard slog!! In all seriousness, it’s been highly rewarding to get the business off the ground in such a relatively short space of time. If you believe in your product and your abilities then you have an opportunity to achieve almost anything — well that’s what we keep saying to ourselves! Our advice, throw caution to the wind and go for it!
What does a typical day of Gav & Jen of ‘Chops For Tea Kitchenware’ look like; from when you wake to when you go to sleep?
GAVIN: I’m not a morning person so my day generally starts after 9am and a second cup of coffee – it’s only then that I’m a fully-functioning human 😉 That said, the cat often wakes me before 6am, breakfast banter of 2 school children ensure mornings are busy and in the summer I like to get out early and run.
Working for the design consultancy business is generally my day job but as the kitchenware business has evolved, more time is spent on this. I love listening to music, discovering new tunes or listening to podcasts while I design.
Of course having a studio at home means procrastination is also integral to my lifestyle and I’ll often pop out to the garden and pull a few weeds. And of course the kitchen has to be tidy (most of the time). I do most of the cooking in the house and obsess about what’s for tea – which has actually become part of the kitchenware’s social media strategy.
After school pick-ups, dinner and family time – if I’m not on the sofa with my beloved, or at the pub with friends I’m at my desk working on the kitchenware brand.
JEN: I’m up around 7:30am, I take turns doing the school run with my partner and, like Gavin, coffee is an important part of my morning regime.
I rock up at Gavin’s (where our studio is) around 9:30am and do all things marketing to build our brand awareness. I research and meet up with potential makers that are a good fit with Chops For Tea Kitchenware, collaborate with Gavin on product development and design, and manage the administrative side of our business.
After school pick-up I generally turn back into a mum, organise dinner and really boring household stuff. After dinner and my son is in bed I’m either on the computer (Ebay addict), listening to music or watching TV (Stan addict)
Do you consider yourselves to be ‘Countryphiles’?
Yes we do, we both did the tree change thing to Castlemaine (Jen 7 years ago & Gavin 4 years ago) and haven’t looked back since. Living in country Victoria is wonderful — it has so much to offer.
Do you love country life?
Absolutely, why wouldn’t you! Why? The landscape and native bush land are truly inspiring, we are lucky to live in such a great part of the world. Castlemaine is also a close knit community with diverse mix of people which makes life that little bit more interesting.
The Countryphiles 