From cauliflower-laced macaroni to chocolate chip cookies aÃÂÂ la broccoli, Shannon Payette Seip and her business partner, Kelly Parthen, are riding a growing wave of concern about childhood obesity by slipping fruits and vegetables into not-so-obvious places at their hip and healthy kids’ cafe in Middleton.
Bean Sprouts, located at 6719 Frank Lloyd Wright Avenue, caters to little sprouts with pint-sized potties, unbreakable tableware and an Alice-in-Wonderland door of their own, creating a kid-friendly atmosphere for parents who have traded in their night life for a night light.
“We wanted to create a cafe that would serve yummy, good-for-you food in an atmosphere designed for both kids and parents,” Seip says. “It’s rewarding to see kids eating fresh, healthy food, and parents actually able to finish a meal.”
Growing a successful enterprise from scratch did come with a few surprises, however, and their business has blossomed in areas the two partners never imagined.
“You plan so much in a business plan, and then some things come up that are incredibly successful, and things you plan on aren’t as successful, and it’s just interesting when you predict and make projections what catches on and what doesn’t,” Seip says.
“I never in our early days thought that every Saturday would be booked with Girl Scout parties, birthday parties and Bitty Bakers cooking classes.”
Bean Sprouts’ conceptual seeds were rooted in Seip and Parthen’s experiences writing a nationally syndicated column, “Cinematters,” which ran in more than 50 regional parenting magazines, as well as a second syndicated column, “Bean Appetit,” that they write in partnership with their head chef. Their first collaborative book, Bean AppÃÂfétit — Hip and Healthy Ways to Happy Tummies, is due out in December 2009.
Seip and another friend, Adrienne Hedger, have also published two humor books titled If These Boobs Could Talk — A Little Humor to Pump Up the Breastfeeding Mom and Momnesia — A Humorous Guide to Surviving Your Post-Baby Brain.
Seip, like most working moms, struggles to balance both career and life with her husband, Roger, and their two sons: Isaac, age 5, and Bini, age 3.
“Having a job that I really, really love, it’s hard for me not to work 24 hours a day,” she says. “I am really passionate about it, but I also have a family that I love.”
For more information on Bean Sprouts, click here.
