By Jessica Steinhoff | Photo courtesy Workbench Kitchen
It all started with a spatula. Jonathan Uecker couldn’t find the right model for making the hearty breakfasts he loves. The big ones were clunky, and the smaller ones were no match for a pancake of epic proportions. To solve this problem, he looked to one of his favorite pastimes: woodworking. And in 2017, Workbench Kitchen was born.
This Stoughton-based, online purveyor of wooden spatulas, serveware, cutting boards and more is the brainchild of his wife, Hanna, who watched his creations become treasured objects in the homes of family and friends. She credits the brand’s success to Jonathan’s craftsmanship and the spatulas’ unique design.
“Our Original and Perfect Pancake Spatulas are ergonomically curved to the right for right- handed users and the left for left-handed users, which allows for easy flipping and rotating,” she says. “They also have a unique bend in the handle, which is made using an ancient woodworking technique that not only creates a beautiful, functional design but also strengthens the wood.”
Workbench Kitchen also exists to help people cultivate a happy, healthy home life. Each kitchen tool is made of locally-sourced, sustainably-harvested maple, cherry or walnut and coated with a plant-based finish that has a mild citrus scent. So many customers raved about this scent that the Ueckers began offering it in candle form.
“It helped us create our first candle, the Workbench Kitchen Candle,” explains Hanna, who crafts each candle from clean-burning soy wax, scented oils and a wooden wick. There’s another ingredient as well: love, the kind that grows from creating together.
“When Jonathan and I began dating, we spent a lot of our time together renovating a dilapidated house he’d bought,” Hanna says. “This showed us that we could work well together, and combining our skills to run a business has been a beautiful thing. We couldn’t do this without each other.”