Stone Creek resurges with help from a longtime produce vendor, and both plan for something bigger.

The official start time was noon on May 7, but the customers started showing up earlier. At 11:50am, there were already four or five people milling around a parking lot in an industrial section of Del Rey Oaks, waiting for Kristina Scrivani to finish piling her spice blends on a table, place the last few pies under the shade of a market umbrella and begin the afternoon’s sales.

From the time she handed over her first order to the time she was able to take a break to talk to a reporter, Scrivani had run up and down the stairs to the coolers at Russo’s Wholesale Produce at least 20 times in 90 minutes. And she still had three-and-a-half hours to go.

“I haven’t been to bed yet,” Scrivani told one customer as she handed him his food. “I’ll see you next week,” he replied.

When she says she hadn’t been to bed yet, she meant in the preceding 24 hours. Scrivani, co-founder of the late and loved Stone Creek Kitchen, had just launched a catering menu for pre-order and pick-up at Russo’s, a longtime Stone Creek vendor and wholesaler that delivers to restaurants and shops from San Francisco to Big Sur.

From a commercial kitchen in Sand City where she rents space, Scrivani spent the preceding days making 80 pounds of paella, 40 quarts of clam chowder and 50 servings of grilled salmon finished with citrus herb butter, plus kale salad studded with red grapes and Stone Creek’s house salad – loaded with oven-roasted tomatoes, crisp bacon and housemade blue cheese dressing, tossed messily and deliciously with romaine. Some of the same customers who stood outside Stone Creek’s doors and cried at the news that come February, Scrivani and business partner Linda Hanger were closing up shop after 10 years, came to the parking lot of Russo’s to see their old friend and buy her food.

A lot of planning went into those five hours of sales, with an eye toward something bigger. Scrivani and the family-owned Russo’s are planning on creating an outdoor market, with products from local vendors (Baker’s Bacon, Tricycle Pizza, Ad Astra Bread Co., and Scrivani, to name a few) to take place every Friday outside the Russo’s loading dock.

Now if the damn pandemic would end, the county Health Department would lift their temporary prohibition on new market licenses and let them launch. The city of Del Rey Oaks is enthusiastic, giving the idea a unanimous thumbs-up from City Council.

At the start of the pandemic, when restaurants were ordered to close, Russo’s began eyeballing its demise.

“Restaurant customers were calling and saying, come pick up the order you dropped yesterday and give us a refund,” says James Russo, whose grandparents founded the company in the 1930s. “I’m talking $20,000 in produce we had to take back the next day. I told (my wife), ‘We can sustain this for three to four weeks, and then we’re gonna have to shut this down forever.’ She said, ‘oh no, we’re not doing that.’”

Russo’s pretty quickly pivoted to direct customer sales when many grocery store shelves were still empty. They brought in milk from Troia, eggs from Glaum Ranch, sauces from Pepe’s in Carmel plus pasta, flour and yeast from still other suppliers. The move proved so popular they sometimes had cars lined up all the way to Canyon del Rey with customers waiting to pick up orders, which exceeded 17,000 total: “It helped us get through the last year,” Russo says.

The market idea began germinating during the pandemic, with Kristin Russo, James’ wife, and Scrivani separately mulling what was possible. It started coming together when Kristin stopped in at Stone Creek before it closed and Scrivani asked her if she’d be willing to talk over a new idea.

Right now, Russo’s has a host permit, allowing them to host Scrivani for pre-made to-go catering. Russo’s, meanwhile, put out a table of locally sourced salad dressings and produce.

“Russo’s was one of our first vendors,” Scrivani said, “and that they were willing to do this is kismet. We are excited about the possibility of having a larger market and we’re going through the process of doing it right.”

RUSSO’S WHOLESALE PRODUCE is at 120 Calle del Oaks, Del Rey Oaks. 899-2638. To order from Kristina Scrivani’s weekly menu, visit stonecreekkristina.com.