An open letter to the linden hills community

Hello friend,

If you’re here you are probably wondering: “What is Picnic?”  In my opinion, the best way to tell you about it is to share with you how I personally learned.  And it starts with a fateful dinner at Mr. Paul’s Supper Club that was arranged by my very good childhood friend Andrew “Kitz” Kitzenberg…

Kitz set up this dinner to introduce me to his wife Elizabeth “E” Kitzenberg.  He loosely told me that she was flirting with the idea of opening a restaurant and wanted to bounce some ideas off of me.  For most people this is a pipe dream, so I came to the dinner with minimal expectations and figured if nothing else we’d have a few sips, bites and laughs and be on our way.  What I found in that meeting was something else entirely.

Immediately I was struck by E’s candor.  Beside being the wife of my friend and the mother of their 2 children, she was also clearly a strong, intelligent and articulate woman.  She told me about her childhood in North Carolina, using her words to paint the picture in vivid detail.  She told me about how she was always fascinated with food and wanted to go to culinary school but that her parents would only support that path if it was paired with a business degree.  Instead, at their strong guidance (I’m sure many of us can relate) she pursued a degree in law which ultimately led her to Boston where she built impressive professional success and met and fell in love with Kitz.  Eventually that path led to working remotely and having 2 beautiful children back in Minnesota (the home state of Kitz and myself) in the beautiful neighborhood of Linden Hills.  But even with all these societally recognized benchmarks of success, the internal voice of her younger self and her dream of pursuing a bar restaurant only grew louder.

As a result of that dinner E & I became friends.  We began meeting regularly at Rustica Bakery to grab coffee and go for walks around Lake Bde Maka Ska.  She told me about her other passion for writing, and how she had 200+ pages of historical fiction written about a female bootlegger, spinning out of her love of bourbon.  We discussed the seemingly impossible balance and responsibilities of raising a family, working full time, finding an outlet for her writing passion and simultaneously entertaining the idea of opening a bar.  She was always genuine, thoughtful and very inspiring with her words and she made things that seemed impossible feel totally attainable.

When I realized that E was not just a pipe dreamer and that Picnic was simply a matter of time, the conversations shifted to tangibly what it would be.  She had already secured the recently vacated Clancey’s Meats space in the center of Linden Hills as her canvas.  She told me that as (what I like to call) a “Mompreneur” living in that area that what the neighborhood was missing was a bar where she could just go to have a casual cocktail or glass of wine and maybe a little plate of bread, meat and cheese, a place where the social and gathering needs of the neighborhood could be met.

At the end of one of our walks, we were standing by her car where she asked me point blank if I would consider being her partner in making this concept come alive.  As I contemplated, she opened the back door of her SUV and reached past a child seat to pull out a snapback hat that had a hawaiian print on the bill and the letters “HAM” in bold print on the front.  “Here, you want a Picnic Hat?” she said, handing it to me.  “What does H A M stand for?” I asked her.  She looked at me with a quizzical expression, as if the answer to my question was so obvious.

“I like ham,” she said matter-of-factly, “And I made one for my daughter that says cheese.”

I laughed at the innocent simplicity, and it was at that moment that I knew my decision.  “I’m in.”

So to answer the question “What is Picnic?” I would tell you that it is a place where the culinary, potable, and casual social needs of the Linden Hills community will be met.  It is a place that will be staffed by the most genuine, talented and caring service industry professionals in the Twin Cities.  It is a place where we will collaborate with great local talent to create amazing and unforgettable experiences for the community.

But most importantly, it will be the place where the dreams of a Linden Hills mompreneur come true and a place that we want to use to inspire others that their dreams are attainable too.

And we can’t wait to serve you.

See you soon,

Pete