Huntsville foodies are well aware of the city’s many hidden culinary gems. One of these treasures is Walker’s Market, tucked into a storefront in the Five Points area of the Old Towne District at 813 Wellman Ave.

Founded and owned by Huntsville native Kimberly Walker, Walker’s Market is truly a one-of-a-kind establishment, offering a wide assortment of kitchen items, unique small-batch, locally-sourced gourmet foods and wines, and a seasonal selection of fresh, precooked to-go meals and desserts prepared by local caterers and stored in the Market’s cooler and freezer.

Kimberly Walker of Walker’s Market

Walker’s Market is a labor of love and a friendly family establishment where customers are greeted warmly by name as they enter. As Kimberly’s daughter-in-law Chelsea Walker looked after customers, Kimberly took some time to discuss her business.

When did you first come up with the idea for your market and what inspired you to start your own business?

My daughter went to college in Atlanta in 2012, so in 2013 and 2014 we went over there to see her…there were a couple of stores that were gourmet specialty food stores and they offered dinners and foods to go and some other things, and I was just like ‘this food is so good and I love the labeling and packaging.’ It’s all from small batch vendors, it’s not stuff you’d find in the grocery store. So basically, for the next two years I hemmed and hawed and the kids were like ‘you should just do it!’

Tell me about the process of creating your business.

So the first thing I did was I went and talked to Narvell Patton…she’s a caterer so I went to her and I was like ‘I have this idea and I want to do fully cooked dinners…would you be interested in cooking for the market?’ And she was like ‘That sounds like something I would really enjoy doing.’ Thankfully I had her on board.

I started off in a little house on Pratt next to Regions [Bank] because it was a one-year lease and I was like ‘what if this goes south? I don’t want to be stuck somewhere in a lease that lasts forever or five years or whatever.’ So I opened the store, got a couple other caterers on board along the way, and kept growing the business and found out that there was a real need for people who wanted to have really good dinners but didn’t want to go out to eat or have it delivered, but wanted to have it to warm up or take to their friends. So that’s really how it came to fruition.

Once I got my EIN and tax ID number and business license I started ordering products for the store and they started rolling in. They’re made in [places like] North Carolina and South Carolina…they’re not made overseas so it’s not things you have to wait months to get in. I had a pretty good little stock, not like I have now, but good enough to start. And I had a couple caterers on board and they had the dinners in there, and I had the freezer, and it’s just kind of grown.

So it’s a collaboration with caterers?

It is. We talk every week, which is fun because we have four caterers that I work with, and we kind of look at the weather, we look at “is it Valentine’s Day, is it Mardi Gras, is it St. Patrick’s Day,” all these little things. Narvell, for example, loves to cook vegetables and every summer she’s at the farmer’s market loading up on every fresh vegetable and stocking us full of cooked vegetables and they’re going out as fast as she brings them in. You don’t have to worry about cooking a big huge pot of turnip greens if you just want a serving for two.

Our menu changes with the seasons, with the weather. Right now we’re loaded up with soups because it’s 12 degrees (laughs). So we have meatloaf plates, lasagna, and a lot of soups this week because it’s cold and nobody wants to have a grilled steak in the middle of a cold period. It’s fun working with them because we get to pick.

They do it all at their catering kitchens that are certified. They either own or rent their commercial kitchen space. They cook and package everything at their facility and transport it via car in coolers on ice, where it’s immediately put into the refrigerators here.

Tell me about the process of selecting items for the store.

Everything that’s inside our store that’s for sale that are food items, they’ve all been tried by all of us before they’re put on our shelves. We always sample and taste before we decide whether or not it should go on the shelves. We have 5 or 6 people and we always try to get a lot of different taste buds. Just because I think it’s great doesn’t mean someone else will not. So we try to let everyone taste it. If we don’t like it we’re not going to put it on the shelf because if we don’t like it we’re not going to sell it.

What were the greatest challenges you faced as a new business owner?

It was a very, very new concept. Winning over people at first…people weren’t sure about buying something that was fully cooked, whether they would enjoy it, where it was made, that kind of thing.

The biggest hurdle I had was with the health department. When I first started they told me ‘you can’t do this, this isn’t right, this doesn’t exist…’ But it took me a while to get them to read their manual and realize that people around the state of Alabama have done this. The biggest thing that happened that scared me the worst was that I didn’t get my food permit until the day before

I opened the store. That was very stressful. The caterers that I use have the same group of health inspectors that I have so it kind of follows the food. The same inspector that inspects me inspects Narvell, may go into Vicki’s or wherever to do their inspections. So it gives me the sense, and the customer too, that it’s being followed [Walker’s Market’s latest health inspection score was 99].

So the initial challenge with the health inspector was that it was a new idea?

It was a very new idea and it was very unheard of, but once they researched it and realized that okay, we can do this…they started doing inspections. They check my temperatures, they check my logs, they check my coolers, they do all that.