PRESERVING YOUR CONNECTION TO FOOD
Our mission is to nourish and enrich our community through traditionally preserved foods and flavors; to share in the nostalgia of these ancient traditions and enjoy their healthful benefits. We aspire to create a community resource to empower and inspire a greater connection to food through :
Our weekly workshops and private events bring people together to learn the simple art of preserving and fermenting in our community classroom. We host a variety of teachers including chefs, local makers and cookbook authors to lead our diverse assortment of classes.
​
Our shop offers healthful and hard-to-find artisanal food products, alongside a selection of accessible, high-quality do-it-yourself supplies.
​
Customized Food Project Advising
We take pride in featuring customized advising, inspiration and troubleshooting for your new or ongoing food projects.
​
MEET THE TEAM
Elizabeth Vecchiarelli, owner and founder of Preserved, has over 15 years of experience with local, sustainable and handmade food. Partway through her food career, Elizabeth began to desire a more intimate connection with the food and beverages she loved, so she embarked on a journey to learn how they were made. She started (literally) from the ground up, learning sustainable farming practices through the work-travel organization, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Preserving the harvest from her urban garden was a natural next step. Inspired by Sandor Katz’s book, Wild Fermentation, she was soon experimenting with the alchemy of fermentation.
Through a combination of formal training, insatiable curiosity and extensive home experimentation, Elizabeth continued to explore the flavors and health benefits of traditionally-preserved foods, beverages and herbal medicines. She interned with the Teutonic Wine Company in Oregon, where she learned how wine can be made naturally using only ambient yeasts. She learned to make yogurt and fresh cheese at home, then leveled up to making aged raw cheeses at Garden Variety Cheese Company in Watsonville, CA.
Driven by a desire to understand why traditional preservation methods nourish our bodies as well as our taste buds, she studied Holistic Nutrition at Bauman College in Berkeley, California.
Elizabeth continues to be driven by the desire to learn, create and share the joys and health benefits of traditional culinary techniques at Preserved. Opening Preserved has allowed her to continue exploring preservation techniques and to share these ancient practices with her community. Not only are we preserving food, but together we are preserving tradition.
​
Favorite Ferments: Honey Fermented Garlic, Curtido-Kraut & Preserved Kumquats
​
Shop Fermentation Maven Nina Haroskiewicz joined Preserved in the Fall of 2022. Though Nina has always found inspiration from community when it comes to food appreciation, preparation, and preservation: from her grandfather's tomato garden; to learning to cook from college roommates in Santa Cruz; to borrowing MFK Fisher and Micheal Pollan books from coworkers. She'll never forget her first sip of kombucha and her momentary journey from disgust to pure delight, forever changing her life! Many kombucha brews later, Nina now finds herself brewing Jun with honey from her apiary and herbs from her garden. When not at the shop, you can find her working at several Berkeley farmers markets selling avocados and citrus. Her favorite part of being on the Preserved team is helping folks feel empowered to get started on their own fermentation journey. If she can do it, so can you!
Favorite Ferments: Milk Kefir, Jun with Lemon Verbena & Pickled Jalapeños
Our shop manager, Kate Goodell, joined the Preserved team in October 2024, bringing culinary knowledge and a passion for fostering community through locally-sourced ingredients. As the creator of a popular TikTok account launched in 2020, she shares accessible cooking inspiration with a focus on sustainable food practices. Kate comes from a family of chefs, where she learned the importance of traditional cooking techniques. A licensed esthetician with a deep interest in skin and gut health, she merges her love for cell biology with her cooking by incorporating fermentation and micronutrient balance into her recipes. She's particularly fascinated by the cultural history of food and how ancient practices can inform modern cooking. Outside of the shop, she volunteers with organizations that provide meals to underserved communities in Oakland, and she’s always on the lookout for hidden culinary gems around The Town. Kate is excited to connect with the community at Preserved who share her passion for learning about fermentation!
​
Favorite Ferments: Sourdough, Kkakdugi Kimchi & Beet Kraut
Stacy Fortenberry grew up in New Orleans, where food ruled everything in her house and French-inspired Southern cooking was a family sport. As a teenager, she learned the art of making a proper roux and a pot of chicken and dumplings from her dad, setting the tone for a lifelong love of cooking. After years of wrangling the chaos of film, TV, and music productions, she’s swapped sets for sauerkraut and found her passion in fermenting and feeding people. A few years ago, she traded gumbo and po’boys for California sunshine and farmers’ markets, and she’s been smitten with the abundance of produce ever since. As Preserved's Workshop Assistant, Stacy supports our team of instructors, and shines when connecting with students during our workshop lessons. ​​
​
Favorite Ferments: Kimchi, Sour Pickles and Miso (her newest obsession)
Helena del Pesco joined the Preserved team as the Workshop & Events Coordinator in August 2025. She also teaches workshops at Preserved, including Gluten Free Sourdough Making. She recently moved back to the Bay Area after 10 years on the East Coast. She has an MFA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and transitioned from being an artist who worked with food to a restaurant owner/operator practicing the art of fermentation when she opened Larder in Baltimore in 2019. The restaurant featured a rooftop herb garden, gluten free ice cream sandwiches and in-house tempeh burger production. After closing the restaurant in 2021, she shifted her focus to consulting and teaching fermentation. She is currently three years into clinical herbalism training and especially enjoys working one-on-one with clients to resolve gut health issues. She currently lives in Vallejo with her cat Piquin, husband Joseph and a stunning passionfruit vine.
​​
Favorite Ferments: Tepache, Peach Lavender Kombucha & Garlic Rosemary GF Sourdough
Jonathan Bennick joined the Preserved team in September 2025. He has watched almost every episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, and his curiosity to try new foods grew as a result. His interest in fermentation was sparked by a gift of doubanjiang from a friend who had just returned from a trip to China. From there, he began experimenting with other home ferments, such as sauerkraut, sourdough, milk kefir, and various types of pickles. Jonathan has always been a big supporter of local food and is constantly amazed by the different fruits and vegetables he finds at the farmer’s market. When not working, you can find Jonathan out on urban hikes and looking for sweets and treats with his partner.
​
Favorite Ferments: Kimchi, Umeboshi & Milk Kefir
Jessica Pham comes to Preserved from a unique, self carved path that stems from her curiosity of finding the intersections of food, sustainability, and culture. A third culture kid of the Vietnamese diaspora, making the most of food was made important to her early in life. An East Bay native, Jessica earned a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Barbara. From there, she returned home and went on to connect with Bay Area farmers, producers and food businesses while working for the Pacific Coast Farmers’ Market Association, and then Firebrand Artisan Breads. She continued her food journey up the Pacific coast in Seattle, completing an AmeriCorps VISTA term for FareStart, a nonprofit that provides emergency meals and culinary job training, before attending Seattle Culinary Academy. After cooking in a handful of James Beard and Michelin Southeast Asian restaurants in Washington and California, Jessica has returned to her roots in Oakland to join the Preserved team and cultivate the local fermentation community.
​
Favorite Ferments: Milk Kefir & Kombucha
WHERE WE BEGAN
%20(6).jpg)
Preserved began in 2015 as a pop-up shop on historic Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, California. We were generously supported in this endeavor by our friends at Good Neighbor, a Piedmont Avenue boutique that celebrates handmade homegoods. What began as a pop-up shop soon developed into a mutually beneficial, long-term partnership.
We built a 100 square-foot cedar shed in Neighbor's beautiful backyard (a rare gem in a busy retail district). Some called it the Tiny Shed of Wonder. The Tiny Shed housed a small but essential assortment of canning and fermentation supplies and DIY kits. Outside the shed stood two picnic tables where we hosted our bi-weekly workshops.
Over the course of a year, Preserved and Neighbor helped foster a community of DIY enthusiasts eager to learn and share. In 2016, Preserved was ready to move to our own independent storefront in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood. We expanded our offerings of kitchen supplies, incorporated a diverse selection of artisanal groceries and steadily increased our DIY workshop offerings. Here, Elizabeth's dream of creating a community space to learn about and share traditional food preservation methods was more fully realized.​
For 9 years we continued to diversify our product offerings. We continued our popular weekly workshop series in the evenings, and expanded our shop’s inventory to include a much wider selection of our favorite pantry products and locally made ferments and preserves. We also began expanding our selection of kitchen supplies and culinary tools beyond our “preserving and fermenting” focus. We (quite literally) took up every square inch of the Temescal storefront with what amounted to over 1000 inventory items.
As we approached our 10th year, we realized our shop was bursting at the seams. Having maxed out every corner, tabletop and floor area we were ready to consider what it would look like to expand again, to a larger location. In a bigger space, we could continue to expand our culinary tools to become the Bay-Area’s go-to kitchen shop for all your culinary needs. Of course, we’d also continue expanding our focus on preserving and fermentation ingredients and supplies. And perhaps most importantly, we would be able to fulfill our ultimate dream of building out our own dedicated event space, separate but connected to our retail store, where we could host more workshops and events for our community!​ And now that dream has come true at our new Rockridge location!
PRESS
“A perfect opportunity presented itself,” she says. “We are essentially taking over two storefronts that are side by side. One will be our dedicated workshop space and the other will be our retail store.”
KQED
EAST BAY EXPRESS
EDIBLE EAST BAY
VISIT PRESERVED
Preserved is located at 5540 College Avenue, in fabulous Oakland, California.
​
Open Everyday: 11am - 6pm
​
In-Store Pick-Up available for online orders, select this option at checkout.