Function Junction is cooking up big plans
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A few days ago, I met up again with Mary and her business partner Rebecca Wilkie (she's the lady on the left and has a good sense of humor too) at the last remaining Function Junction in town: the shop on the third floor of Crown Center, 2450 Grand Boulevard. There used to be several Function Junctions in Kansas City -- including a flagship shop on the Country Club Plaza which closed last year -- now the four-year-old Crown Center location is it. But that store's going to get a helluva lot bigger.
Merola and Wilkie have leased the adjacent space which, for years, was the setting for a toy train shop owned by the Hall family -- don't ask me any more details, I never set foot in the place. The toy trains that were on exhibition have been donated, apparently, to Union Station. And the now-empty retail location will become, if all goes according to plan, a veritable housewares heaven by September.
The plans include a full-sized, commercial-grade fully-equipped Viking kitchen, so that Function Junction can host celebrity chefs, culinary demonstrations by local personalities -- like, say, my cheese ball class -- and opportunities for the staff to show how all those pretty, shiny, neat-looking cooking accessories sold in the shop can actually be used at home.
Many years ago, I remember that the kitchen department at the Hall's Crown Center store -- just an few feet away from Function Junction's current store -- used to offer cooking classes and culinary demonstrations, but that was a different time and a different economy. But Merola and Wilkie are eager to turn up the heat on serving up theatrical cooking demonstrations. After all, they reason, more people are cooking at home these days and, thanks to all those TV cooking shows, there's a renewed interest in all things culinary.
"What we want to show customers," says Merola, "is that behind all the show business of the Food Network, are simple techniques that most people can do at home. By showing how the products work, we can de-mystify a lot of the fear people have about actually preparing some of the cuisine they see on the TV programs. We need to get past the fear factor."
The renovated Function Junction will also be more family friendly; after all, Crown Center has become a destination point for the pint-sized patrons of the Coterie Theater, the Crayola Store, Fritz's Railroad Restaurant. When Function Junction moves into the expanded space, there will be a hands-on kids corner where youngsters can play with staples like rice and beat on pots and pans. "The things they're not allowed to do at home," says Wilkie.
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