Cooks’ Wares will close area store

Owner calls it a difficult decision, but downsizes as she thinks of retiring.

A specialty shop in Springboro will close at the end of November; another such shop will stay open.

Cooks’ Wares — the specialty shop that has offered cooking classes and culinary equipment from its Marketplace at Settler’s Walk storefront on Ohio 741 since 2002 — will shut down by the end of November.

The Cooks’ Wares store in Montgomery north of Cincinnati will remain open. That store was the original Cooks’ Wares, opening in 1992.

“This was a very difficult decision,” owner and co-founder Mary Fricke told this news outlet in a phone interview. “I’m of an age — I’m 71 — that I’m thinking of retiring. It’s a good time for us to downsize.”

The Springboro store, adjacent to Dorothy Lane Market’s Springboro store, has hosted hundreds of cooking classes and cookbook-author demonstrations through the years, and sold highend kitchen equipment to countless home chefs. For the next several weeks, the store will continue to operate with its regular hours, and previously announced cooking classes and sessions will take place as scheduled, Fricke said.

An inventory reduction sale will begin on Friday, Fricke said. All sales are final. The closing will affect about seven employees.

Fricke, who lives in Montgomery now, said she has ties and fond memories of the Dayton area. Her late husband Paul, who died of cancer in 2010, was a store manager for Rike’s Department Store in Dayton, and the couple lived in Centerville for seven years. Their son and daughter live in the Dayton area.

Fricke recalled how she and her late husband drove down Ohio 741 15 years ago and passed a sign that read, “Coming soon: Dorothy Lane Market.” Her husband made a U-turn — twice — to check the sign, and decided on the spot to open a second Cooks’ Wares location in the retail center alongside DLM.

The region, and those who operate the Marketplace at Settler’s Walk retail center, “have been very good to us,” Fricke said.

“We so appreciate the support and friendship of our Settlers’ Walk customers over the past 14 years,” Fricke wrote in an email newsletter. “The relationships this store has brought us are what made this decision so difficult. Many of you, our customers, have become friends. Not only are our associates like family, they are the ones you would choose if given the opportunity. Thank you all.”