Fuelled by charcuterie Savoury, bespoke boards from Peckish can help quell those playoff cravings By: David Sanderson Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Apr. 21, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/04/2023 (871 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The battle for the Stanley Cup is in full swing, so what better way to begin than with a story from playoffs-past.

Megan McMaster is the owner of Peckish, which became Winnipeg’s first bricks-and-mortar charcuterie shop when it opened at 1393 Pembina Hwy. in December, a little over two years after McMaster founded her venture, in the fall of 2020.

McMaster’s husband Jason is the head equipment manager for the Winnipeg Jets. At the start of the 2020-21 post-season, the NHL club commissioned her to craft carefully curated charcuterie boards for the players’ wives or partners to enjoy, during the team’s first-round series versus the Edmonton Oilers.

“That was back when fans weren’t allowed in the rink because of COVID, so management wanted to do something special for the guys’ loved ones, who were stuck at home, watching the games by themselves,” she says, seated in the front area of her brightly painted, 725-square-foot shop.

Not only were her expertly adorned boards, each of which sported an individual player’s jersey number fashioned out of white cheddar, for the Winnipeg Whiteout, a big hit, it could also be argued they were a lucky charm, what with the Jets sweeping the Oilers, four games to zip.

McMaster would happily repeat the process if it means bringing the Jets good fortune in their current showdown with the Vegas Golden Knights… as long as it doesn’t involve spelling, as some have suggested.

Remembering whose number was whose was one thing; correctly spelling Scheifele, Hellebuyck or — pass me a pickle and an umlaut — Mäenalanen out of provolone would be something else entirely, she says with a wink.

Like most of us, the McMasters found themselves spending a lot more time at home, at the outset of COVID-19.

They would often grab takeout when the weekend rolled around. As the days passed, however, and pandemic-related restrictions remained in place, Megan began changing things up, by fashioning charcuterie boards laden with crackers, cheese, cold cuts, veggies and fruit, for the two of them to pick away at, while they were parked on the couch, watching Netflix.

Megan and Jason both love to entertain, so as soon as the province announced it was relaxing some of the rules pertaining to household gatherings in the summer of 2020, they began hosting small groups of friends or family members. And because she thinks it’s a waste to be stuck in the kitchen warming up trays of appetizers when everybody’s having fun in the backyard, she would spend an hour or so before their guests arrived, piecing together a charcuterie board large enough to feed a small army.

Although McMaster calls those early attempts “not much to look at,” what with empty spaces here and there, one of her pals begged to differ. She posted a photo of McMaster’s handiwork on Instagram. A few hours later, she told her friend to start thinking about business names, as people were inquiring how to purchase one for themselves.

It took a few weeks to acquire necessities such as a food handler’s certificate, but by the end of September 2020, Peckish, a word she’d long been fond of, was good to go. It’s true she’d never run a business of her own before, only how tough could it be, she figured, filling what she guessed would be no more than a few requests, every other weekend?

Uh, try again.

Before too long, she had created a bit of a charcuterie monster, and was fielding as many as 30 orders per day, during the weeks leading up to, first, Thanksgiving, then Halloween. (Know how the Jets are fuelled by passion? During the 2020-21 regular season, they were also fuelled by McMaster’s charcuterie, which was regularly served as an in-flight meal.)

Peckish continued to grow exponentially once pandemic restrictions were largely lifted in 2021. By Mother’s Day that year, things had become so hectic that McMaster, who was working full-time at another job, had a decision to make: maintain the status quo, by accepting only as many orders as she could handle, which almost always meant disappointing interested parties, or devote her full attention to her biz.

“Doing both (jobs) was great, money-wise, but it wasn’t sustainable… it was just too stressful,” she says. “It was definitely a risk to quit my full-time job, but after discussing it with Jay, we agreed Peckish was in a good spot, so why not take the plunge, and see where it might lead?”

Initially, McMaster prepared her arrangements, which arrive in heavy-duty, white boxes, in a variety of sizes, at a rented commercial kitchen. While that setup worked well enough if she was building a few dozen boards for, say, Friday date night, it was problematic when she was slammed with orders for Valentine’s Day or New Year’s Eve, and needed to be in the kitchen for hours on end. (Every board is freshly made; it’s not like she can store completed ones containing crackers or mini-baguettes in a fridge for days, she points out.)

She also had little flexibility if she needed the space on short notice, for large events such as wedding receptions or real estate open houses. For all those reasons, she started hunting for a place to call home, around this time last year.

Like we mentioned, Peckish is the city’s first storefront operation to specialize in charcuterie, though it has since been joined by Sharecuterie, which opened on Stafford Street in March, and which we profiled in March 2021. No longer a one-person show, McMaster presently has staff to assist her with deliveries and managing the books. When it comes to what customers are noshing on, mind you, that is still all her.

Treating her platters like blank canvasses, she styles each with checklist-precision: cherry tomatoes here, expertly sliced cheese there, pieces of salami folded to look like roses down the middle. Approximately 20 minutes later, she’s ready to move onto a second, followed by a third, then a fourth…

Ingredients are generally uniform, but she is amenable to vegan, vegetarian or gluten-free requests. Also, if you want an array to be customized in a particular manner, as was the case when she did a board for her husband’s 1,000th game as the Jets’ equipment manager, that isn’t a problem. Shades of the movie Jaws, last fall she conjured a charcuterie board in the shape of a shark — that’s right, it was a sharkcuterie board — for a couple whose son’s favourite creature is the ocean predator.

Now that she has a dedicated spot, McMaster intends to expand her services by, in addition to pre-orders, having a few completed boards in the store at any one time, which a person can scoop up on their way home from work. Additionally, she has added a shelving unit stocked with made-in-Manitoba products she uses time and time again on her boards, such as Fancy Infusions pepper jelly and Flour & Flower baked goods.

“What’s cool is that now that I’ve been around for coming up on three years, I have repeat clients who feel more like friends than customers,” McMaster says, reaching for a cucumber, as she gets ready to get back to work.

“One month I’ll be at somebody’s place for a birthday, and the following month I’ll be back, dropping off a board for their wedding anniversary, or their kid’s birthday. I can’t tell you how rewarding it is, to feel like I’ve become a part of people’s lives, when they’re celebrating a special occasion.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca