The Saucy Mama, 1 Cooper St., Agawam, a new grab-and-go kitchen, had a soft opening on Dec. 16 and will host a ribbon cutting on Jan. 13.
Reminder Publishing photo by Sarah Heinonen
AGAWAM — After Dawn McBride was laid off from her job at MGM Springfield due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2021, she leaned back on her culinary experience with cooking Italian and American food and bought a food truck — The Saucy Mama. Now, she and her husband, Michael McBride, have opened The Saucy Mama grab-and-go kitchen at 1 Cooper St.
The business name is a nod to McBride’s great-grandmother’s recipe for pasta sauce, which came with her from Naples, Italy. The McBrides, who have over 30 years of restaurant experience, are using their skills and knowledge of Italian foods to create offerings for people who stop by to sit and eat lunch or pick up something from the grab-and-go cold cases to take home for dinner.
“We have a countertop hot display case [in which] we feature some of our favorites, hot and ready to go. On any given day, you can find mozzarella-filled risotto balls, Sicilian pizza slices, warm chocolate chip cookies, spaghetti pie, whatever else strikes our fancy that day,” McBride said.
The menu changes on a weekly basis, and is posted at facebook.com/thesaucymama413, but McBride said the most popular items are always available. These include the house salad, chili, cold cut sandwiches and sundried tomato Caesar salad — McBride’s favorite. “We’ll always have our sauce and meatballs in pints,” she said.
In fact, that was one reason behind opening the grab-and-go kitchen. “People asked where they could buy [them] and it kind of grew from that.” The couple also wanted to expand their ability to cater, which they needed more space to do.
Both McBride and her husband are pescatarian, so it was important to them to create a menu with options for people of all dietary stripes and those with restrictions. “In this area, it’s hard to make a living solely with a vegetarian menu,” McBride said, but she offers impossible sausage in some dishes. There are daily gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan offerings.
McBride and her husband are not interested in further expanding the business to include table service. She said both she and her husband, who left his job as kitchen manager at Hampshire College to work at their business, have worked in sit-down restaurants and would rather devote their time to the food truck and the grab-and-go kitchen. Currently, the kitchen is open Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., but McBride said that will likely change when food truck season begins in the spring.
That said, McBride does have other ideas for expanding services. She is interested in hosting children’s cooking classes at the kitchen, her 8-year-old daughter is going to be baking dog biscuits to sell there and a friend, who was also laid off from the casino, is selling their artisanal beeswax lip balm and candles.
The couple opened the business with a loan from Common Capital, a nonprofit loan fund. In addition to the loan, the organization helped them with the bookkeeping skills necessary to run the business.
The Saucy Mama will be celebrating its grand opening on Jan. 13 with a ribbon cutting with free samples of some of the most popular dishes, with several specials throughout the week of the grand opening.
