Photo: Emily Lyons-Wood Photography
Kat Skeen has thousands of restaurant business cards in storage. For a time, she turned the cards she had collected into resin hostess trays. She also taught at a children’s cooking school, finding ways to pursue her interest in food alongside a career in advertising, sales, and partnerships.
Now, the Charlotte native is opening Special Sauce, the city’s first shop devoted entirely to cookbooks, on November 9th at Optimist Hall.
Growing up in Charlotte, Kat’s food memories revolved around pasta from Pasta & Provisions and Mama Ricotta’s, family dinners at Eddie’s Place, and chicken fingers at Providence Road Sundries.
“Now I get to bring my own kids to those same spots, just like my parents brought me, and it still makes me so happy,” she shares. “Those Charlotte staples are special.”
She left for college in Virginia, then spent eight years in New York before moving to San Francisco. Living in those cities introduced her to cuisines she had not grown up eating and deepened her interest in the people preparing them.
“Food became how I got to know my neighbors and the world, and I fell hard for global cuisine and the people who cook it,” Kat recalls.
That curiosity followed her into the kitchen. Shortly after getting married, she found Bottom of the Pot by Naz Deravian at the Strand in New York. Cooking from it meant steeping saffron for the first time and learning to make food she had previously enjoyed only in restaurants. She still cooks its green beans and rice more often than any other recipe.
“Food I’d only ever ordered suddenly belonged in my own kitchen, along with the stories behind it,” she explains. “That’s what I hope everything on our shelves can do for someone.”
In San Francisco, Omnivore Books on Food became her neighborhood cookbook shop in Noe Valley. Its weekly author talks gave her a reason to return beyond browsing the shelves.
“You could hear a chef or writer tell the story behind their recipes one night and turn it into a dish in your own kitchen the next day,” she says. “Having that kind of inspiration right around the corner felt like a gift.”
When a job opportunity brought her family back to Charlotte in 2025, they were expecting their third child and wanted to be closer to family. Returning meant revisiting the places she had always loved while getting to know a city that had changed during her years away. She saw new residents bringing their culinary traditions and chefs choosing Charlotte as a place to build their lives.
Omnivore had shown her what a cookbook shop could contribute to that mix. She missed having somewhere to hear directly from authors and share her enthusiasm for food, and began talking with people across Charlotte’s food community to understand whether a similar concept would resonate here. Encouraging feedback helped her pursue the idea, while conversations with booksellers around the country, including the owners of Binding Agents in Philadelphia and Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York, helped her understand the business of running a cookbook shop.
Photo: Emily Lyons-Wood Photography
Opening a bookstore brought Kat into an unfamiliar industry, though much of the work drew on skills she already had. Helping build the B2B sales team at luggage brand Away had taught her about creating something from scratch and connecting a brand with its customers. Her partnerships work informed the collaborations she wanted to develop with chefs, authors, and local businesses. More recently, helping nonprofits grow revenue through recurring support gave her a model for Sauce Society, a quarterly subscription that will pair a new-release cookbook with a members’ happy hour hosted with a local partner.
Learning the publishing business has been more challenging, with fellow booksellers helping her make introductions. A lifelong planner, she has also had to become more comfortable making decisions as the business evolves.
“The vision for Special Sauce has evolved significantly since the beginning, and many of the best opportunities came about because I stayed open to them,” Kat reflects.
Time, budget, and the shop’s small footprint have required her to decide which ideas can wait. The shelves, for instance, will initially focus on new releases.
“Eventually I want vintage, used, and all the classics on our shelves, but a small space means every title has to earn its spot.”
For the shop’s identity, Kat turned to an old friend from New York who founded Studio Fooch. Her friend helped shape the brand strategy and designed its squeeze-bottle imagery, color palette, and mascot, Chef.
“Having someone who knew me long before any of this made the brand feel like me, and she captured the fun, inspiring, happy feeling that great cookbooks have.”
Optimist Hall was already a familiar destination for Kat and her family after moving back. Opening there will put her among people already visiting for food.
She also wants the shop to introduce readers to the people shaping Charlotte’s food scene. Through Chef’s Shelf, local chefs will share the cookbooks that influenced them on Instagram and a dedicated shop display. Sauce Talks will bring author signings and conversations to partner locations around the city, while Chef’s Table, a monthly cookbook club planned for 2027, will invite everyone to bring a dish.
Kat hopes Special Sauce will eventually help make Charlotte a regular stop for national cookbook authors. For its first year, though, she will measure success through the relationships that develop around the books.
“That looks like a reader meeting the chef whose recipes they’ve been cooking from, a Sauce Society member who never misses a happy hour, or a cookbook club where strangers become dinner-party friends.”
