Rosetta’s Kitchen launches retail line

Rosetta’s Kitchen is launching a retail line that includes frozen veggie burger patties and the peanut butter-baked tofu that’s helped make the Asheville vegetarian kitchen so popular. The packaged foods will be available at select local and regional grocery stores soon. Select Earth Fare and Ingles stores will be the first to carry the products. Trout Lily and the French Broad Food Co-op will likely follow. A letter from Rosetta Starshine from the Rosetta’s Kitchen website:

Dear Asheville Community & Beyond,

The open table, pots full of food, the kitchen that always smells enticing and inviting, the visceral experience of an Appalachian home cooked meal: all of these describe the food of Rosetta’s Kitchen. Beyond the healthy meals that we serve, we are driven by a mission of Feeding the Family Right. To us, that means our ventures are respectful workplaces which support the community that supports them, produce experiences that nourish the whole person, support the customers who make conscious choices about what they eat, and that care about the environmental impact they were making. The downtown Asheville, NC restaurant is where it all started – and now we are growing.

This winter, we are launching our new packaged food line based on our values of life and community, just like Rosetta’s Kitchen. We believe in: high quality food, grown as locally and organically as we can source, prepared by inspired, respected staff, served in an inviting atmosphere and packaged in take-home containers that are designed with our earth in mind. This is our commitment, but it’s only the beginning of our evolution.

Growing up in rural Western North Carolina I have had ideas fermenting to help to restore communities to vital, self-sufficiency, strengthened from within. We are on the path with our first production kitchen located on the outskirts of Asheville where we are continuing our practices of using biodegradable packaging, composting and fueling our deliveries on bio-diesel. As demand increases across the Southeast, we will have to find a new production facility. By next year, we intend to relocate and develop a food production facility in rural WNC; creating good jobs while sourcing ingredients from local farms and developing a replicable model for production. From sourcing to production to distribution, we will continue to honor the values on which Rosetta’s Kitchen was started.

As we grow beyond the Southeast, we’ll implement replicable models of community production kitchens in rural regions across the country. These community facilities will provide employment and growth opportunities within the regions where they are located. We will continue our commitment to providing community based nourishment, doing our part to support sustainable food systems and bringing common sense back in style. We will continue our commitment to Feeding the Family Right.
In Community Service,

Rosetta Star