Happy Girl Kitchen Co.
Todd and Jordan Champagne spent a summer on a family fjord farm in Norway, milking the cow and putting up the garden, and came back to California to sell five pickled vegetables under the name Fearless Pickles. The cannery is behind the shop on Central Avenue.
Why go
They were farming the central coast, watching a share of every harvest go past ripe, and started jarring it. The mechanism is small and it stays small: at the 2010 opening the production kitchen was a single commercial stove and range and a steam kettle,
and as much as 1,000 pounds of produce a week came through it in summer, with a blackboard announcing the day's job, crushed tomatoes or bread and butter pickles.1 Todd Champagne on what that is for: Preserving food is a cooking investment, it's like saving the past.
They took over the old Central Avenue Bakery in September 2010 to be nearer their Big Sur ranch. In January 2026 the building went on the market, Jordan Champagne told regulars, and more than 600 of them raised $216,720 against a $200,000 down payment with four days left on the campaign.
Order this / avoid
- Order: off the shelf first. Apricot jam and quince jelly on the sweet side, bread and butter pickles on the other, and dill by the spear. The lavender lemonade goes pink from a touch of hibiscus.1
- Avoid: arriving hungry for dinner. This is a daytime counter attached to a shop, and the cafe menu is short by design.
What locals & experts say
- Monterey County Weekly (Pat Tanumihardja, 4 November 2010): Todd Champagne calls the room the
center for home preservationists on the Central Coast,
and the workshopsare sold out months ahead.
1 - Jordan Champagne, March 2026, on what comes after the fundraiser:
Planning the 'We bought the building' party.
2 - Todd Champagne, on teaching people to can:
The canning process is not rocket science, all it is is dunking cans in hot water.
1
Good to know
- Timing: daytime. Breakfast and lunch, and the shop is the other half of the visit.
- Workshops: they run regularly and they sell out well ahead, so book before you drive down.
- Getting there: Central Avenue in Pacific Grove, a few blocks from Happy Girl's neighbours on this same day out. The sandwiches at the 2010 opening came on Parker-Lusseau ciabatta from Monterey.
Verdict
could-visit — A working cannery you can buy from, run by two people who learned preservation on a Norwegian fjord farm and started with five pickled vegetables under the name Fearless Pickles. The scale is the interesting part: one commercial stove and a steam kettle putting up 1,000 pounds of produce a week at the 2010 peak, in a former bakery on Central Avenue. In March 2026 more than 600 customers raised $216,720 so the Champagnes could buy the building, which tells you what the town thinks of it. It is a shop and a daytime counter, not a destination dinner, and it is on Jeff's own Monterey list.