Today we’d like to introduce you to Evona Niewiadomski.
Gourmet Wedding Gifts (gourmetweddinggifts.com) is both a business and relationship “baby” – Evona Niewiadomska and Mike Rheaume have been together since 2011 when they met in Boston, MA. Gourmet Wedding Gifts was born out of Mike’s business, SnapKnot (snapknot.com), a website that helps engaged couples find wedding photographers and helps photographers book more weddings, and Evona’s business, Undiscovered Kitchen, an online marketplace for artisan food, an idea she got while they spent 9 months traveling, living and working abroad in Europe.
In 2014, Mike and Evona moved to sunny San Diego “for a year or two.”
In 2016, again while abroad in Gdansk, Poland, Evona had the idea to expand her business into the wedding industry, providing artisan food favors for weddings. Initially, Gourmet Wedding Gifts began as a partnership between Undiscovered Kitchen and SnapKnot. However, Mike and Evona quickly decided to launch Gourmet Wedding Gifts as a separate and joint business instead!
We are SO incredibly excited to be working on this business and with our partners. At our core, what drives us are the relationships we have created and the mission to support and empower the artisan businesses we work with. We are proud to be working with an incredible team of artisan makers and craftsmen to offer a unique and delicious selection of artisan wedding favors and personalized gifts.
Has it been a smooth road?
Definitely not as smooth as we would have liked! Initially, we thought that we would get a much bigger marketing bump from the SnapKnot connection. For various reasons this did not work quite as well as we would have liked. Getting early traction was difficult.
We had some early costs related to complicated shipping calculations on our website which not only added up on the expense side but also led to many abandoned carts on the website. We decided to test offer free shipping on ALL orders which had an immediate positive impact. We decided the test was a success and now offer free shipping sitewide to everyone on everything. 🙂
Too early we launched an aggressive Pay Per Click (PPC) Facebook advertising campaign with a small agency. It turned out to be an extremely expensive experiment (financial disaster!). However, we did learn quite a bit about our customer behavior and how we can better utilize the Facebook advertising platform for our business. There has been no shortage of lessons learned but the key for us is to focus on the learning aspect and not letting anything stop us from growing what we know is an amazing business with amazing people behind it.
We try our best to listen and learn from every experience. An example of that is our recent shift in focus toward our local community. For a long time we set our sights nationally, but for a small business without millions, this is very challenging and can also feel disconnected. In recent months, we have been working very hard to build a strong local network in the San Diego wedding industry. While we still serve couples nationwide, we are very excited to be building quality relationships with local wedding planners, venues, photographers and more so that we can better serve our local market and work with closely with the community.
Now we have to mention the elephant in the room – of course there are also many challenges when working closely with a romantic partner. 😉 Mike and Evona have *very* different work styles, but we continue to work to improve both our workflow and communication and try not to let work life interfere *too much* with normal life. Though Evona has been known to take a peaceful walk through the forest and turn it into a Gourmet Wedding Gifts brainstorming session once or twice. 😉
We’d love to hear more about your business.
As a concierge wedding gifts company, Gourmet Wedding Gifts offers a personalized shopping experience that is not only fun and easy but feels like you’re shopping with your best friend (see exactly what we mean below!) We offer the most unique selection of high quality, handcrafted wedding favors and personalized gifts as well as custom gifting, design services and more!
In addition to classic flavors, we also offer many organic and eco-friendly gifts as well as allergy-free options such as vegan, nut-free and gluten-free. We are NOT a one size fits all company, which is why we use the term concierge. We work with customers and partners all the time who come to us and ask “Hey, I’m looking for X, can you help me?”
The answer is YES! Custom project are our often our favorite! (If we can’t help, we’ll try to give you a recommendation of someone who specializes in what you’re looking for and might be able to!) We proudly work with an incredibly passionate team of small-batch makers from around the country with a mission to support and empower everyone we work with, every step of the way.
What sets us apart? This is something we continue to explore and turn up the volume on. We focus VERY heavily on the experience of working with us because when you’re shopping online, you want to know someone is there and feel safe in your purchase. When we say it’s like shopping with your bestie – that’s EXACTLY what we mean.
Your best friend cares about you, will go out of her way to help you, she’ll text you from an Uber, sweaty after yoga so you’re not worried, she’ll wake up 5 AM to call a store on the east coast because they open at 8 AM and you know she’s anxiously waiting for an update, she’ll stop midway through a castle tour to make sure your package is being overnighted and write the tracking number on her entrance ticket, she is ON IT! These are not hypothetical examples, we work with our customers just like we would with our bestie. 🙂
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Fish tacos… hands down! We love the food, the weather, and the slower pace of life compared to the East Coast (although that was very hard for Evona to get used to). We enjoy being able to do outdoor activities year round. A year ago we purchased a condo in Little Italy and have since actually learned to build our own outdoor furniture! We are now regulars in the Home Depot lumber department. We absolutely love our neighborhood and living downtown. Also, a fun fact is that we *still* don’t own a car!
We also love the fact that San Diego has a large transplant population. We have been fortunate to meet some amazing people and make a lot of friendships very quickly. This definitely makes the city feel like home.
There isn’t too much that we don’t like about San Diego. Ideally, there would be better public transportation options to the beaches and other points outside the city and maybe some more direct flights since we love to travel. We are biased coming from Boston. 😉
Of course, we would also love to be closer to our friends and family back home, but we do get a lot of visitors. 🙂
Pricing:
- Best selling wedding favors: Stroopwafel Hearts (Starting at $1.75)
- Wedding guest favors (Average $1-$5)
- One of a kind custom designs (Free of charge)
- Bridesmaids/Groomsmen Gifts (Average $20-$30)
- All Personalized Gifts (Average $20-$40)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://gourmetweddinggifts.com
- Phone: 716.901.1500
- Email: evona@gourmetweddinggifts.com
Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
