Today Great News Cookware and Cooking School is located in Pacific Beach, a sunny seaside community in San Diego, California. We are a destination for local cooks, foodies, chefs and gadget hounds. Out of town visitors come see us as well, (we even have the occasional celebrity sighting) and we are fortunate that word has spread and our reputation for great products and outstanding service is legendary. In fact, Great News Cookware and Cooking School won the 2011 Best Kitchenware Retailer in the USA! We were voted “Best” by not only our customers, but also by our vendors and industry partners! Great News has been nominated for International Retailer of the Year and we await the final results! Impressive for a single store, run by a committed staff and an obsessive owner determined to sell the best, and be the best.
Ron and Carol Eisenberg moved from Cleveland in 1976 with their three kids and two dogs to relocate to sunny San Diego. Tired of the harsh winter weather of Ohio, having been trained as a pharmacist, working and owning drug stores was what Ron did for a living.
Carol loved working and enjoyed doing the purchasing for the pharmacy card department. Ron found that his true love was the excitement of retail, rather than pharmacy work. The concept for the new business they would create in San Diego was to be a functional housewares store with an alternative greeting card section. It was named “Great News” in order to convey the excitement of “great new items all the time.”
The transition from functional housewares, gifts and accessories to cookware exclusively started slowly as Ron kept his finger on the pulse of shifting sales and interests of his customers. In the early 1990’s he began changing his buying strategy to strictly cookware and kitchen items. As an alternative to chain stores, Ron had to educate himself, his staff and ultimately his customers on the technical aspects of cutlery, cookware, and kitchen appliances. Around this same time, his wife Carol was diagnosed with stage four terminal breast cancer. Together they fought the long seven year battle with cancer. Ron began his relationship with cooking by learning about Macrobiotic cooking as a way to help his wife fight the cancer. Carol passed in May of 1996, and Ron threw himself into the building of his first cooking school, in the former space that held greeting cards. Thus was born the Great News that we know today.
During the construction of the cooking school Ron met Devora Safran (in traffic school, no less!) who would become his wife in 2002. Devora is an artist, designer, and a great home cook who loves to entertain. Although she does not work daily at the store, Devora has worked on the Great News! Cookbook, contributes to various projects, developed the Teambuilding programs taught at Great News, the “Adventures in Food and Travel,” Italian travel programs, and the “Looking for the Next Great News! Instructor” contest. Her blown glass artwork is also on display in the cooking school.
The cooking school brought instant credibility but Ron had a long way to go to build the business he dreamed of. The cooking school allowed a venue to not only teach about food preparation and tasting food, but about how to use the items sold in the store. The approach in the store was, and still is, to help the customers select not only the items they thought they wanted, but what they actually needed based on the type of cooking done at home. We consider this a novel approach to helping our customers find the right products for each individual cook, and our customers leave educated in both how to cook and what is the right kitchen tool for the job.
Today, the cooking school features a state-of- the-art kitchen that is a perfect blend of home kitchen meets cooking school. The kitchen is designed with a large center island with granite countertops. It feels like you are right at home chatting and cooking with your favorite instructor with no commercial kitchen feel to it. Seating accommodates a total of 52 students with overhead cameras and TV monitors for a close-up of what is hot and happening. It is an approachable, sophisticated cooking school that boasts classes on everything from baking bread to making sausage. We teach everything imaginable from basic techniques “How to boil water” to gourmet meals taught by local celebrity chef/restaurateurs. We have five to six regular instructors (with their cadre of followers), 15 to 20 guest chefs per curriculum, as well as some cookbook authors to round out the mix.
Our curriculum is distributed quarterly, and we teach about nine to ten classes a week. Both day and evening classes keep our kitchen staff busy shopping and preparing. As our name Great News! reminds us, we are always on the hunt for what is new, great, and up to the minute. If it is farmers’ market classes, sous-vide, or gastronomy, we will bring it to our fans, and let them be the judge!
The retail space is 5,200 square feet packed with quality cookware, bakeware, gadgets, cutlery, electrics, scales, linens and gourmet food items (just to mention a few things!). This is where you can find all of the items demonstrated in class and whatever is the newest in the market. We not only sell the items, but instruct our clients on the care and maintenance of their new equipment.
Our knowledgeable staff is legendary in the industry, and we are constantly working with our vendors to supply us with the newest products and the most detailed information that we can pass along to our clients. We listen to the needs and interests of our customers, and respond to both our critics and our fans. This commitment to excellence is founder Ron Eisenberg's key to success.
Click on the link below to read the Gourmet Retailer article
featuring the 2011 GIA winner Great News! for
Kitchenware Retailer of the Year.
