A Penzeys in Your Town

I got my Penzeys order yesterday and found a surprise. They had packaged, along with my order, a sample of their chili powder. Unlike lots of national brands, their chili powder doesn't have salt, just ancho chile powder, cumin, garlic and Mexican oregano. I had ordered cumin, ancho chile powder and Turkish oregano, so it's almost like they were showing me that I could get it all together in one.

I also ordered their awesome single-strength bourbon vanilla, which comes with a vanilla bean in the bottle (one of their bestsellers is the double-strength vanilla), and paprika, turmeric and chicken soup base. I haven't tried it yet, but it's kind of a paste and the first ingredient is chicken meat, so we'll see how it is. In the past I've ordered chipotle chile powder (smokey and hot), cardamom pods, paprika (they have hot and sweet), sage, curry powder, peppercorns. They have a great selection of whole spices, vanilla beans.

The have a few stores, and apparently people are always clamoring for a Penzeys to be built in their town, so the company is running a competition. Whatever city sends the most postcards to Penzeys will win a store in their town. (I think the city has to have a population of 300,000.) The company doesn't do a lot of marketing, so this is a way for them to find out where they're known and where a store my do well. It could be genius, or it could fail terribly. It'll be interesting to see. I'm sending my postcard in. (Write "I want a Penzeys in my town" and send to Bill Penzeys, c/o Penzeys Spices, 19300 west Janacek Court, Brookfield, WI 53045; make sure to include your address because it's limited to one entry per address.) They have all the rules on their web site. The contest ends July 31, 2004.