Williams-Sonoma returns

It’s been a few years coming. Nearly 60 years to be more precise.

Chuck Williams has brought the pride of his life, Williams-Sonoma, back home to Sonoma where it all started.

And Williams-Sonoma has brought Chuck Williams back to Sonoma as well.

The Broadway store and cooking school will officially open at 9 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 4, and will feature the bannister from Williams’ old stairway and the original sign he painted himself, according Williams-Sonoma brand president Janet Hayes. Hayes brought herself and many in the audience to tears at a recent Chamber of Commerce breakfast, reflecting the high emotional pitch Williams-Sonoma staff have experienced readying the old/new store for Chuck Williams’ 99th birthday.

To celebrate the “re-opening,” Williams-Sonoma will host a free community breakfast of pancakes and coffee in the two Napa Street quadrants of Sonoma Plaza on Saturday morning, Oct. 4. Breakfast will be served from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., with everything prepared by students at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, where Chuck Williams sponsors scholarships.

Sonoma Williams-Sonoma general manager Emily Kendis, who most recently managed the Beverly Hills branch for four years, says that the store will feature cooking equipment that Williams first imported and the company still sells. She also stated that the cooking school will offer nearly constant classes and demos for cooks of all ages.

It all started for Williams on a trip to Europe in 1953 when he was living in Sonoma and doing construction work. He spent three ecstatic months in Europe with friends, watching people cooking and what they were using to cook in their kitchens in France, Germany and Sweden. The experience inspired him to bring that high-quality cookware back to the United States.

In 1956, Williams bought a little hardware store at 605 Broadway and began to bring a few Le Creuset pots and pans in from France to sell, and sell they did, along with other French cookware he imported.

Since many of Williams’ best and most frequent customers lived in San Francisco, he decided it might be a good idea to open a store there, closer to their homes. He moved the whole operation to San Francisco in 1958 and closed the Sonoma store – for the next 60 years at least.

Taking another step into the future, Williams hired former San Francisco Chronicle food columnist and James Beard assistant Jackie Mallorca to produce a catalog. Williams apparently got the idea from Edward Marcus, who had overseen production of the famous Neiman Marcus catalog. The first Williams-Sonoma catalog went to about 10,000 potential shoppers in 1972.

Through James Beard, Williams found a French food processor adapted by Carl Sontheimer, and popularized it as the Cuisinart. That same year he started to launch and market All-Clad cookware, the KitchenAid mixer and W?stoff cutlery, all upscale cutting edge implements to this day.

Williams has a nose and palate for fine foods as well, and brought Balsamic vinegar, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and Nielsen-Massey vanilla to the United States in 1978, leading to worldwide popularity of these products.

He published his first book, “The Williams-Sonoma Cookbook and Guide to Kitchenware,” in 1986, and then published and edited more than 100 cookbooks by well-known chefs and authors over the years.

Williams-Sonoma went public in 1983, with Howard Lester taking over as CEO. Lester oversaw the enormous expansion of the enterprise, with its first a store in Canada in 2001. Currently, under the leadership of CEO and President Laura Alber, there are new Williams-Sonoma stores in Canada, Puerto Rico, Australia and the United Kingdom.

And in Sonoma, too - at the same location at 605 Broadway.