By Allison Law
House of Plenty Brings Variety to Northwest Alabama
Part studio, part demonstration kitchen, part event venue, part restaurant โ the House of Plenty fulfills a multitude of needs in rural Hamilton, tucked into Marion County in the northwest part of Alabama.
The House of Plenty has evolved since September 2021, when owner Jonathan Moore fell in love with a commercial space in the downtown area. With a nudge from his wife and now business partner, Kalyn, he followed his heart to create an outlet for his cooking and hospitality skills while also serving the needs of the community.
The mom-and-pop places in the area are putting out good products, Moore says, but he felt the need to provide more variety and diversity of foods and services. And he wanted it done with true Southern hospitality.
โThe heart behind what we do is, beyond the food for me, itโs about the hospitality. Itโs about making people feel special and valued and taken care of, and I use food as an avenue to do that,โ Moore says. โItโs about creating a place where everyone is welcome, and they can come here and be nourished, hopefully more than with just with the meal.โ
โBring them to the tableโ
Moore is actually from the Midwest, near St. Louis, and didnโt grow up with Southern ingredients and flavors. But he did have family members who enjoyed cooking, so when cousins were out playing football, Moore was in the kitchen, learning how to cook for a crowd and
special occasions.
As a young adult, he had a traveling job that brought him to Hamilton for a short assignment. He fell in love with the community, made friends and found a church home; when the assignment was over, he decided to stay, met and married Kalyn and started working at a local restaurant. There, he learned how to run a restaurant and how to cook for 200 instead of 20.
Another restaurant job followed for a couple of years, then a job at a local pharmacy through the pandemic. In February 2021, Kalyn gave him the confidence to โfollow my dreams and passions for creating a place to host people and to bring them to the table.โ
While still working at the pharmacy, heโd started a blog, sharing recipes and trying to demystify cooking and make it accessible. On nights and weekends, he would rearrange his kitchen, set up a camera and film videos for the blog. But all that took away from family time and was difficult to do with two small children running around.
Then came the idea to have a studio space where he could create recipes and film videos. He picked up catering jobs to make it pay for itself. The space, which he calls a โstudio kitchen,โ serves many needs; the open cooking space in the middle allows him to host cooking classes, but the open area up front can be used as an event venue.
Kalyn had the idea to create Take Home Tuesdays, to supplement the business. Every weekend, Moore sends out a memo to text subscribers, and they can place an order over the weekend for what House of Plenty will have on that menu on Tuesday. Then on Tuesday, they pick up the meals on their way home. The first week, they sold out in an hour. He doubled the amount of food and sold out again.
A diversity of options
At this point, it was just Moore doing all the cooking, planning, menu designing, everything. He hired someone with kitchen experience to help and then a couple weeks later needed to hire others โbecause it just kept growing.โ The phone rang off the hook for catering orders for weddings, business lunches and other events.
โThe Take Home Tuesday and catering response was so large, I never actually got to do the creative side of โฆ doing shoots and recipe development. The blog and videos had to go on pause, because I didnโt have any time.โ
It was two years, once the catering side settled down a bit, before he was able to start filming more YouTube content in the studio that he designed just for that purpose. โWe beefed up our schedule with some more classes, and then we did what we call a Chefโs Table, which is like a private ticketed event โฆ itโs a secret menu. They donโt know what theyโre going to get until they arrive.โ Itโs a fine dining affair, with antique china and flatware, linen napkins and names on placecards.
Those events have been popular, but Moore felt there was more they could do to diversify the dining options in Hamilton. โI thought, what can I do out of the space I have? And thatโs how the Lunch Counter was birthed.โ
With the other events during the week, Moore would have food left over that he didnโt want to go to waste. โSo Iโd make up some extra things, and Iโd send out a text to some of my customers saying โhey, Iโve got some chili, Iโve got this casserole and that casserole,โ and every Friday it cleared out.โ
He started with one cooler and hired another person to make fresh sandwiches and salads every day, along with chicken salad and snacks and such โ all cold foods. The idea to have these options available at lunchtime, as a grab-and-go, went over well.
A few months later, he started to offer one hot plate option every day; itโs not a menu that customers pick from, but one of several lunch options that rotates. One day could be poppyseed chicken; another, Baja fish tacos; and Thursday is always loaded baked potato day.
The store also sells baked goods โ cookies, danishes, savory pasties and more โ made in-house from scratch.
All this reimagining and evolution is at the heart of House of Plenty, Moore says.
โWe want to constantly bring something new and fresh and reimagine what the culinary experience can be, so that we have a changing landscape in the culinary area here in Hamilton,โ he says. โWe want to make sure that those things are consistent for our everyday and
weekly customers.
โWe want to offer that sort of consistency, but also bringing in other things, like our Chefโs Table, or classes โ something new and different,โ he says. โWe provide a big-city experience, but in a rural place, and we try to make it as accessible as we can to all people.โย
House of Plenty
117 1st Ave. SW, Hamilton, AL 35570
205-921-2427 | Houseofplenty.net
Hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday
9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday for Take Home Tuesday pickups
