Sickles Market is Making Life Easier with Gourmet Boxes to Go

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By Elizabeth Wulfhorst

Pictured is a board with slices of cheese, crackers, olives, tinned fish and quince paste.
The Tapas Kit, the latest offering from Sickles Market in Red Bank, includes sardines, calamari and tuna from José, a gourmet tinned fish company, among other products from small businesses. The Après Ski Fondue Kit is available until the end of March. A Mother’s Day Kit will be available later this spring. Courtesy Sickles Market

RED BANK – After a year of cooking almost every meal at home – including those for birthdays, anniversaries and other major events – most people would welcome a reprieve. Enter Sickles Market’s kits, a collection of products curated around a theme that takes the guesswork out of your next celebration. Or even a regular weeknight.

“People want good products,” explained Jane Haugen, the assistant cheese and charcuterie manager at Sickles Market and driving force behind the kits. “It’s just a matter of finding them. And if you could have them all in one kit and totally skip the stress, that’s what I want to do for the customer.”

Currently on offer until the end of March is the Après Ski Fondue kit, featuring an easy-to-prepare fondue and all the fixings, like cauliflower, a Granny Smith apple, cornichons, peppadews, sweet soppressata, chorizo and crusty bread. The boxes also come with a discount coupon for Bottle by Sickles, the wine and spirits seller adjacent to the market, so celebrators can pair their kit with the perfect wine, beer or cider.

Next up is a Tapas box with products from José gourmet food company, including sardines with lemon and olive oil (bright, fresh, floral, citrusy flavor with a delicate and flaky texture); spiced calamari in ragout sauce, with flavors of pepper, clove and laurel; and spiced tuna pâté with fresh tuna, umami and oceanic flavors. Crispy fava beans from Mitica are included in the box, making it suitable for those with nut allergies, Haugen noted. Also included in the Tapas box will be membrillo (quince) paste, a traditional tapas accompani- ment, a nutty and sweet manchego cheese, Di Bruno Bros Crostini with Olive Oil and olives marinated in tangerine and chili. The Tapas box will retail for $55 with a special introductory price of $44.99. Haugen suggests using the included Bottles by Sickles coupon to purchase some wine from the Iberian Peninsula.

Picture shows a box with a see-through cover and two bottles of wine. Inside the box are various food items.
Sickles Market has introduced grab-and-go boxes like this Tapas Kit, which includes gourmet products suitable for traditional tapas. They recommend pairing the kit with wine from the Iberian Peninsula. All kits include a discount coupon to use at Bottles by Sickles adjacent to the market. Courtesy Sickles Market

She said she is excited about the products Sickles carries and feels like some are overlooked when customers come in shopping for another weeknight dinner. “I feel like it can be quite intimidating,” she said about all the choices from different companies that may be unfamiliar to many. And she noted some items, like tinned fish, sometimes get a “bad rap. But we’ve been preserving fish for centuries.”

She hopes customers use the kits as a jumping off point to discover more products in the store. “Explore the line. Explore that cuisine,” she said about the items in the Tapas kit. “It’s so cool” and indicative of the Spanish and Portuguese cultures.

Haugen said the boxes are about convenience for people. “We want to make it easy for you to enjoy something that is so incredible,” she said. “It’s just creating a better shopping experience for customers. I think definitely a trend right now for food is absolutely convenience and innovative ways to make sure that we can give you the best product that we have.”

Sickles first offered a Super Bowl box for the big game and plans to offer a new box roughly every month or so. Haugen said the Mother’s Day Brunch kit in May will help families create a fun meal for the important women in their life. She encouraged grab- bing a bottle of Champagne or prosecco to go with this box. And an upcoming BBQ Kit will feature frankfurters and brats from companies such as Schaller and Weber from New York City and Olympia Provisions out in Portland, Oregon, and a mustard that Haugen said “pops in your mouth like caviar.”

While the boxes also make it easier for those concerned about spending too much time in a store, those who want to get in and get out and go home, Haugen said they are important not just for the convenience. She noted that, in the industry, they have seen a lot of small businesses shutting down. “Unfortunately, during this pandemic, a lot of these small companies suffer. We get them on the map by just having customers bring this company home with them,” she said.

“That’s what we want to do. We want to kind of help each other out: Help customers out by really enjoying a phenomenal meal and finding really cool products. We want to help small businesses out trying to get on the map, these amazing producers that have spent entire lifetimes perfecting an art. That’s our memo, that’s what we want to do,” Haugen said.

“And bring them to your kitchen table at home.”

This article originally appeared in the March 18 – 24, 2021, print edition of The Two River Times.