FUNK & STANDARD VARIETY STORE
and YUMMY YUMMY GOOD STUFF
40 Broad Street | 732.219.5885
There’s
a map of the United States tacked up on Patti Siciliano’s
office wall with pins marking dozens of locations, coast to coast,
where she’d like to have her Funk & Standard Variety Stores,
recently juiced up and revitalized with Yummy Yummy Good Stuff —
the newest creative turn of the retail kaleidoscope that has made
her Broad Street emporium a trend setter since it opened in 1998.
In part, Yummy Yummy Good Stuff is a chance to chow down on healthy
grub that has been added to the store’s famously funky mix
of merchandise — fresh juices, smoothies, soups and vegan
eats from collard wraps and soba noodles to vegan pastries and desserts.
The bigger purpose here, according to Patti’s official “Our
Dream” statement is to “revolutionize the American fast
food industry” and, in the process, make the planet a happier,
healthier place radiating out from the goodness of happier, healthier
food and lifestyle choices. Yummy Yummy Good Stuff is offered as
a good place to start...or carry it on.
With
a passion born from personal experience, Patti made dramatic changes
in her own life after seeing six of her peers — all under
the age of 45 — die from cancer over the past three years.
Add to that the national statistics on such killers as obesity,
diabetes, heart disease and substance abuse, and she decided it
was time to seriously celebrate life by stepping off the junk food
line, change her diet to vegan, and start taking better care of
her body. Swapping “liquid confidence”(ie fruit and
veggie juices and smoothies) for bags of chips and burgers, she
added yoga and spinning as part of a new regime. In addition to
her own practice, she now teaches both — “hot yoga”
at Synergy Yoga in Fair Haven and spinning at the Community YMCA
in Red Bank.
Yummy
Yummy is about food at Funk, but, more importantly, it is Patti’s
way of passing the Good Stuff forward. She sees kiosks at hospitals
and school cafeterias and amusement parks; roll-outs to yoga studios
and farmers markets and places where good health is happening. Raising
consciousness means getting the word out in interviews and blogs
and public events like “Fork Over Knives,” a sold-out
film screening held recently at the Clearview Cinema in Red Bank
presented by Funk & Yummy.
But
what really excites Patti is that she knows it all works from her
own lift off in life. She is healthier and happier. “Happy
is contagious,” she says. She’s as busy as ever, literally
flying here and there — to L.A. on buying trips, to India
this winter with her daughter. Against the backdrop of ringing phones
and an MTV camera crew filming in her store, Patti glows with the
confidence that good change attracts good stuff.
Yum!
FUNK & STANDARD VARIETY STORE
and YUMMY YUMMY GOOD STUFF
40 Broad Street | 732.219.5885
funkandstandard.com
