There’s a happy ending here. While looking around online to see what Bill Penzey’s problem is, I discovered that his sister Patty Erd and her husband Tom run a competing (but much smaller) spice business, called The Spice House. Bill Penzey Sr. and his wife started the business in the 1950s, and Patty inherited it. Bill Jr, her younger brother, started his own catalog company, Penzeys. I have no idea what the Erds’ politics are — far as I know, they could be commies, or they could be Trumpkins — but they don’t seem to make a habit of getting on their high horse and insulting their customers. Even better, they make a Bavarian seasoning!
I buy all of my spices at my local spice shop, but they have nothing in stock like the Bavarian blend. I have just ordered some from The Spice Shop for my Thanksgiving turkey — and if you’re looking for something different and delicious to try this year, I recommend the same to you.
This Bill Penzey reminds me of the proprietor of a neighborhood coffee shop on Court Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, when we lived there in the late 1990s. Cobble Hill is very much a liberal place, and the kind of neighborhood where people want to support the local guy, but this shop owner was so over the top obnoxious in his left-wing politics that he drove people away. You didn’t want to go there, because the guy couldn’t stand kids, and you felt that he was constantly hovering over you judging you for failing to live up to his extremely particular standards. When Starbucks opened down the street, that was the end of him, if only because Starbucks was happy to welcome moms with strollers, and you could sit and have your cup of coffee without being judged.
UPDATE: The Spice House folks have kindly written to invite this blog’s readers to become new customers. If you’ve never ordered from The Spice House before, use the promo code NOPOLITICS to get free shipping on your first order. Isn’t that great?
Go here to read the rest.
It will be interesting to see if any other businesses like Penzey’s start to suffer losses over the next weeks and months.
Right, because Catholics NEVER force their beliefs or opinions on anyone else, ever, regardless of how insane they are. You stick to beleiving a magical sky santa doesn’t want you using birth control, and leave the rational thought to everyone else, because obviously you aren’t capable of it.
Thank you Bob, for living up to the mindless, hate-filled atheist stereotype. I do appreciate trolls that know their lines.
Internet atheists…they have so much keyboard courage….almost as much as the bible thumpers who claim the Catholic Church created Islam to do the Vatican’s bidding.
Not a big spice guy myself….I’m not much of a cook and the missus likes Mrs. Dash, but I’ll keep this in mind.
Bob Loblaw and Whoopi Goldberg…after school specialists. Here’s rational thought from their base; http://www.lifenews.com/2016/11/21/whoopi-goldberg-anyone-who-didnt-vote-for-hillary-is-stupid-you-havent-done-your-homework/
Bob….go to bed.
Bob, the Catholic Church stating that it is morally wrong to use contraception (as opposed to birth control per se. The Church does regard natural non-contraceptive means of birth control as morally acceptable under certain conditions) is no more forcing someone to believe something than stating that 2+2=4 is forcing someone to believe something.
Bob Loblaw mentions Santa.
How much do you want to bet that he buys Christmas presents for others?
Atheists who, despite the fact that they claim they don’t believe in Christ, go to Christmas parties, give gifts, even put up “Holiday Trees.”
Our newspaper once showed the president of the local Atheist Association decorating a Christmas tree with his family.
Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
Philip,
Wasn’t Whoopi on the {leaving the country if Trump wins list}. So far they’re all still here. Al Sharpton…Amy Schumer…all cried wolf.
FYI, if you are signed up for their print catalog / email list, Penzey’s occasionally sends out coupons for free, no purchase necessary, spices. I highly recommend staying signed up, if you already are, and just using the free coupons. Buy elsewhere.
@ Bob Loblaw
Hey, an internet atheist! How rare!
Too bad you don’t seen them anymore. That’s too be expected when they’re busying tearing themselves apart in their own civil war. As people said, they eat their own. That’s how you become a dying breed.
You convinced me–I’m buying Penzeys and encouraging others to do the same. How can someone calling themselves the American Catholic support the anti Gospel values of Trump.
Interesting, I don’t recall stories of businesses with conservative owners that
sent letters to their customers to tell them they didn’t want their business if
they’d voted for Obama. Nor do I recall conservative entertainers using the
presence of a leftist politician as an opportunity to grandstand and lecture
their audience.
I do, however, recall when NYPD publicly turned their backs on socialist
NYC mayor de Blasio after he’d sympathized with cop killers. As I recall,
the left went nuts over their disrespect for an elected official…
As for Bob the atheist troll– why are internet atheists almost always so utterly
predictable, sneering, and boring?
Bill Penzey Jnr. – what a LOSER.
A basic rule of business is that you GROW your business – this turkey is alienating a possibly large segment of his clientele.
Get some spices elsewhere, and put this turkey on the menu for Thanksgiving.
It’s getting kind of old to point out that their details-in-flux politics are their religion and philosophy, but the examples keep getting more and more obvious.
It use to be that defining someone as a person, or not, because of political utility was viewed as a nasty caricature. Now it’s common public practice.
How can Penzi–a company that makes its profit off of the spice trade, a trade that was built in large part on the backs of East African slaves (see Pemba/Zanzibar) not too long ago–have sufficient moral standing? They, “didn’t build it themselves,” comes to mind.
Oops! That’s supposed to be Penzey’s, not Penzi’s.
“You convinced me–I’m buying Penzeys and encouraging others to do the same. How can someone calling themselves the American Catholic support the anti Gospel values of Trump.”
How do you even know MB what Trump’s values are since he has not yet taken office, let alone that they are anti-Gospel? If you reply, give specifics.
@bill bannon
You have it bill. She should be elsewhere.
Keeping their word is a common problem with this group. They can’t help it. When your bought and paid for by the machine, and given the task to persuade the audience that the machine is God, you are nothing more than a mongo….a pawn in the game of life. She, Whoopi, might better serve the public as a meter maid. At the very least it would match her abilities and be honest work compared to what she’s doing now.
Prayers for our lost entertainers who distort the truth to line their pockets. A sorry lot.
“How do you even know MB what Trump’s values are since he has not yet taken office,..”
…
After over a year of campaigning for president, don’t you think we ought to know what they are?
Since religions have been so busy rendering their faiths man oriented, politically correct and therefore ineffective, many folks, especially Democrats, have sought politics as a home for their beliefs. And lacking a ritual to manifest their new faith they have sought food as a symbol of communion with all that is good and holy which happens, by the way, to be each other. I suppose to some extent it has always been this way (how products define us) but perhaps what is new is that certain designated “holy” products are rendered off limits to the uninitiated and particularly to the outcasts, e.g., Trump voters. I say there’s got to be money in all this divisiveness.
(from Don’s wife Cathy:) Lurker59, the one reason I’ve been just deleting most of the Penzeys Spices emails we get instead of unsubscribing is that occasionally they’ll have coupons for free product just before we visit my mom in Wisconsin, who lives close enough to a Penzeys store that I can use the coupons in-store. There is a Penzeys store about an hour’s drive away from me in Illinois, but it’s in a congested downtown area with very little parking, so I don’t care to shop there. One can always use the coupons on the Penzeys website, but then there’s a shipping charge to pay unless one is also spending enough on other spices to qualify for the free shipping.
Just placed my first order with the Spice House last night, using the free-shipping promo code mentioned in Rod Dreher’s blog post. And one of their physical store locations is in a Chicago suburb not much further away than the Penzeys store I just complained about — and is described as having plenty of parking nearby!
Not really Greg. Campaigning is one thing, governing is another. How a policy is implemented is often just as important as what a policy is. If she responds I will be intrigued as to what MB regards as a specific anti-Christian policy.
We already possessed massive amounts of evidence. We didn’t need additional proof that liberals are idiots.
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FYI – P spice, if you want to stay solvent, repeat after me, “The customer is always right.” I know that is so 1950’s.
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Maybe MB can provide evidence that President Trump is “racist” and “anti-Gospel.” I bet MB hasn’t read the Gospels. Corrupt, incompetent Hillary spent $1 billion on ads miscommunicating it and she LOST. Because ridicule and smart-assery are not rational arguments or reasons to vote for a serial criminal. .
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It’s like seeing the evil ones put up white flags. We know we’re winning when the dastards shriek “racist” or “anti-Gospel.”
smdh. Is this guy in business?
When in Pittsburgh I’ve bought from Penzey’s because they had hard to find spices. No more. I really am stocked up but I’ll order some online from The Spice House just because. The Bavarian spice sounds intriguing…might be good in venison sausage. Thanks for the info.
If Trump’s policies are anti-gospel, then Hildebeast’s policies are downright satanic. Anyhoo, I never quite understood atheists. If you really believe in atheism, then frankly, absolutely nothing matters. We are all just random pieces of meat walking around. So living under anarchy, a Catholic monarchy, a dictatorship, a republic, a literal democracy (where everyone votes on every jot and tittle of legislation) makes zero difference. We are nothing a but an odd collection of molecules. So why get all incensed about this stuff?
Umm, Donald, are talking about their values, not how they may or may not govern. How they govern can be an entirely different kettle of fish altogether. Abilities (or lack thereof) to,implement one’s values and circumstances go into how a president will govern.
…
As for Donald Trump, he is somewhat similar to Bill Clinton in that he values opportunism over ideology. Only he is even less ideological than even Bill and also less politically saavy. But time will tell.
Not values Greg, but rather policies is what I am discussing, and what I am interested in. That is why I have nothing but disdain for a public figure who, in regard to abortion,is personally opposed but thinks it should be legal anyway. It is the policies that are supported by a public official that matter to the general public, not their private sentiments. As I said, campaigning is one thing and governing is another. Let us see how Trump implements his policies before either hailing him to the skies or tying him to a stake.
If I had to guess, I would suspect his implementation would resemble his campaign: uneven, haphazard, but ultimately more effective than his ill-wishers would predict. However, that is just a guess since the man has never held public office before.
c matt –
back when my husband was agnostic, he was living a sort of half-baked natural law theory. The more developed it became, the higher the risk of catching Catholicism got. 😀
“Is this guy in business?”
One would hope not for much longer Art. This might be the best news that his sister ever had for her competing spice business.
For me (ouch), it’s more things than policies and achievements, like Supreme Court nominees. If Crooked Hillary had stolen the election, she’d have put in three or four liberal fabulists (who likely never read the Constitution). Trump will stick to his list of relative conservatives.
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If President Trump does nothing else that is enough.
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SJW’s if you think that the state/Big Sister can earn you your Corporal Works of Mercy bona fides, you are anti-Gospels and likely progressivism is your religion not Christianity. .
One would hope not for much longer Art. This might be the best news that his sister ever had for her competing spice business.
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I’m wagering brother and sister do not speak, and that the competing businesses are a consequence of that.
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We have a Facebook account in our house. What hits you is that partisan Democrats just have to tell you what they fancy, sometimes multiple times a day. It’s all memes and John Oliver clips. Not one intelligent thought is ever put into pixels. The worst offenders in our circle are an elderly couple with three tertiary degrees between them and a psychiatrist daughter. We registered on Facebook to keep track of the younger generation, who do not write, do not call, and seldom if ever e-mail anymore. What’s interesting is that our partisan Democrat friends don’t post pictures of their grandchildren, in re which they’ve been very hands on and primary caretakers at times because of the work and school schedules of their daughter and her various husbands. If you want an understanding of the ‘shy tory’ phenomenon, just consider that shy tories seem shy because they aren’t exhibitionists.
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My wager is that this chump cannot help himself. No clue how people get that way.
Double standard this spicy letter.
God forbid I refuse to sell my pastries to a Gay couple preparing to be so-called married.
Fine the beegee’s out of the owner to a tune if $100,000+…..but what of this “discrimination?”
Sue the bastard!
“No clue how people get that way.”
It’s been a tough election, and people are in mourning. Don’t take anything seriously that a person says the first couple of weeks after an election loss. And people are really grieving: they believe the awful things that they’re hearing about 50% of the population, and they think the country’s suddenly an awful place.
Thank you for providing an alternative business to do my spice shopping. I’ve book marked the website.
Last time I checked, this is a free country and we are free to vote for whoever we please.
@Pinky
It’s not that the country suddenly seems an awful place… it’s that suddenly we are realizing that all the progress we thought we had made away from racism and misogyny in this country was a complete fiction. Remember after Obama was elected and everyone was saying they were “post-racial”? The ugly truth is that America hasn’t changed much since the 1930s.
Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of anti-immigration, anti-trade, and anti-women. He spent so much time yelling about all that stuff that he never had time to establish a platform for governance. That’s why nobody knows what his policies are going to be. So if he want elected for his policies, he must have been elected for the things he railed against during the campaign: women, minorities, and immigrants.
That’s what’s causing so many on the left to lose their minds.
That racist neighbor or uncle you have that everyone hates? He is the real America. And it is really sad.
Invite us to Penzey’s to get insulted, again? Why?
The CEO of Penzey’s sounds like a very confused person. I am an immigrant and ethnic minority from Asia. Many of us Asians and our Latino friends voted for Trump. Does that make us racist too? Or were we just doing something dumb when we voted for Trump?
We know who and what we voted for.
We suggest you stop listening to the fact-warping media and realize that the 50% of the USA population who voted for Trump were not all white middle-class men.
I grew up in a town where 99% of the population were white, like you. The one thing I remember about white people is that they loved telling us minorities we were wrong about this and that.
Stop with your condescending attitude and get back to work at the nice business you inherited from your father before you ruin your inheritance.
“Remember after Obama was elected and everyone was saying they were “post-racial”?”
One of many lies that permeated the closing Obama years. Obama was obsessed by race as were his minions. The ever increasing demonization of white males on the left was a feature of the Obama years that made the post-racial claim truly a very bad joke.
Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of anti-immigration, anti-trade, and anti-women.
Only according to those whose entire power comes from declaring themselves the One True Voice for immigrants, women and those in trade.
I just looooove being informed that I cannot possibly speak for myself as a woman, but that some fat old man who likes “women’s issues” because it lets him have lots of sex without having to deal with the natural results of sex is able to speak for me.
The problem with Trump is that he’s still a Democrat, and he’s still at serious risk of taking on their standard stunt of getting to decide that women, immigrants and those in trade who disagree with them are not “really” women, not “really” immigrants, or maybe we’re just too dumb to possibly understand that the Democrats want to control everything about us “for our own good.”
Foxfier, I don’t think Trump is a Democrat or a Repulican for that matter. Donald Trump is Donald Trump. I believe that in his mind, everything egins and ends with him. Party and ideology are but means to that end.
On the subject of race we as a nation have progressed, that is until Obama was elected. He and his AG Eric Holder were all about race from the beginning. Ferguson is a good example. The media was there to fan the flame and continues to fan the flame. Now we have police officers on a routine traffic stops; latest is a law enforcement assassinated by a bullet in the back of the head. Anarchy is the name of the game for the far left.
Misogynists – that would be Mrs. Clinton and her Democratic Party who are avidly pro-abort. Counting in gender selection, more than half of the millions of aborted babies were little girls.
Greg-
I’m not seeing how that makes him not a Democrat….
Went to the Spice House. .So glad I found this and Opted out of Bill’s Dictatorship
It’s not that the country suddenly seems an awful place… it’s that suddenly we are realizing that all the progress we thought we had made away from racism and misogyny in this country was a complete fiction. Remember after Obama was elected and everyone was saying they were “post-racial”? The ugly truth is that America hasn’t changed much since the 1930s.
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Brian, you’re welcome whatever social fictions you care to maintain to help you feel better about yourself. Just don’t bother the adults with them.
Here’s and explanation for why I cannot care less when imbecile liberals (redundant) call me “racist.”
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“…First, no reasonable person (Which eliminates 99% of Progressives!) can argue that white privilege applies to the great majority of whites, let alone to all whites. There are simply too many variables other than race that determine individual success in America.
[…]
“Why all this left-wing talk about white privilege? The major reason is in order to portray blacks as victims. This achieves two huge goals for the Left — one political, the other philosophical.
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“The political goal is to ensure that blacks continue to view America as racist. The Left knows that the only way to retain political power in America is to perpetuate the belief among black Americans that their primary problem is white racism. Only then will blacks continue to regard the Left and the Democrats as indispensable.
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“The philosophical reason is that the Left denies — as it has since Marx — the primacy of moral and cultural values in determining the fate of the individual and of society. In the Left’s view, it is not poor values or a lack of moral self-control that causes crime, but poverty and, in the case of black criminals, racism. Therefore, the disproportionate amount of violent crime committed by black males is not attributable to the moral failure of the black criminal or to the likelihood of his not having been raised by a father, but to an external factor over which he has little or no power — white racism.”
Dennis Prager
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It’s not that the “post-racial” Obama regime loved middle class, white people less. It’s that they loved blacks/browns and illegals more. The myth that blacks and browns aren’t racists needs to be addressed.
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Everything the left believes and everything progressives “know” is both wrong and evil.
Foxfier, present day Democrats are hard line ideologues. Trump is anything but.
Greg, if they were ideologues (of a single ideology), then it wouldn’t keep changing. There wouldn’t be the massive internal conflict that shows up every time they don’t have an enemy to have everyone attacking.
It’s the place that folks who want power to enforce their goals go, which includes a wide variety of fanatical followers of various ideas, many of which have conflicting requirements.
Bob Loblaw: “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” are our Founding Principles. You are free to leave and you are free to get three quarters of the states to ratify your opinion as Law of the Land. Atheism is unconstitutional. The atheist, as a death bed convert must be tolerated. Please read our Founding Principles: THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE ratified by every state and OUR CONSTITUTION. Next to Holy Scripture, the most beautiful words ever written.
Foxfier, the hard left controls the Democrat Party. On that point, there is no conflict or dissent. The only conflict or dissent that may exist is a fight over who is going is going to be the standard bearer.
I’ll be sending all of our christmas gifts back for refunds. You don’t want our business then your your not getting it it. Real business people would not draw a line in the sand like this. This is a democracy and people should not be ridiculed for their beliefs or political parties they choose to support.