The Glendale Star
12
January 6, 2022
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Glendale chef leaves Microsoft to sell pastries BY HALEY ZIOMEK
Special for Cronkite News
It’s not yet 10 a.m. on a breezy Saturday in October. The sun is tucked behind the clouds and the smells of kettle corn and hand lotion waft through the air. Dogs of all breeds and sizes are nosing their way up to people for a pat on the head or chuck under the chin. “I got the bourbon today. I got the bourbon-dipped cinnamon rolls,” said an enthusiastic voice at the southeastern end of the Arrowhead Towne Center Farmers Market. It’s Slade Grove greeting customers perusing his “wicked good” products, from pumpkin-spice tres leches cakes to peanut butter bacon CBD pet treats. Grove, 51, will tell you he’s 21 on the internet. He’s a comical guy who turned his hobby making really good pastries into a full-time business — Wicked City Kitchen — that has grown to include pet and body care products. But it took time to transition from years toiling in the technology sector to become an acclaimed pastry chef. Throughout this experience, he has had to adapt to new spaces and realities. Baking is in Grove’s blood. His great-grandmother owned a pie shop in Indiana, so he would switch between making pies with her and helping his
Wicked City Kitchen’s bourbon-soaked cinnamon rolls are a farmers market favorite.
Slade Grove goes to the Arrowhead Towne Center Farmers Market every Saturday morning to sell his collection of homemade desserts, pet treats and body care products. (Photos by Haley Ziomek/Special for Cronkite News)
mom make candies and caramels for Christmas. Grove said he always has baked on the side because it’s “cheaper than therapy.” But he went to school for IT and marketing and accepted a job with AT&T soon after graduating in 1990. But by 2000, Grove said, working for AT&T and Microsoft had burned him out. After he quit his IT job, his baking hobby moved closer to becoming a business when a friend persuaded Grove to work
part-time at Williams-Sonoma. Grove began conducting cooking demonstrations in-store and teaching classes around metro Phoenix. Grove continued to bake out of his home in Peoria while working at Williams-Sonoma. One day, he got a call from the Arizona Department of Health Services: His cake was tasty, but he lacked a permit for his home baking. From there, Grove used a friend’s restaurant’s kitchen at night for bak-
Slade Grove’s CBD body care products range from hand lotion and muscle balm to hemp oil.
ing. This lasted about six months until Grove opened his bakery and storefront in the mid-2000s. Although his pastries drew local and national attention, Grove said the brickand-mortar location wasn’t right for the time. He closed Wicked Bakery on Cave Creek Road almost a decade ago, and Wicked City Kitchen now sells solely at farmers markets and for local delivery in Peoria and Glendale. Grove makes his magic in a commercial kitchen in a house near his Peoria home. The name of his business, Grove said, comes from his East Coast friends who refer to anything good as “wicked.” Grove thinks the lack of a permanent storefront helped him through 2020, when many small businesses had to shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many businesses no longer could pay rent, Grove said, but Wicked City Kitchen carried on with its delivery service and experimented with body care products. But the business still struggled. Nancy Sanders, the regional director of the Maricopa Small Business Development Center, saw a lot of businesses like Grove’s. “What the pandemic has taught all businesses is that they, you know, need SEE PASTRIES PAGE 13
Slade Grove tests a new item: whiskey-soaked peanut butter cakes.
