Who We Are

Carol in the shop 1993

Cranking cranberries and apples through the food mill to make cranberry apple butter.
1990

Robin picks rose petals along Nantucket Sound. 2004

Carol is the sole proprietor of the Chatham Jam and Jelly Shop.

As a child growing up in New York her mother and aunt passed on family recipes and some were for jams and jellies. After marrying a Cape Codder she moved to Dennisport with her husband. Her mother-in-law introduced her to the wild beach plum, a local favorite for as long as anyone could remember.

Cape Cod is tourist oriented so Carol began one summer in the late sixties to make jams and jellies to sell to a local gift shop. Later when she and her husband moved to Chatham, making preserves was seen as a way to make extra money. In 1983 Carol began selling jams and jellies from a small room in her home at 10 Vineyard Avenue in West Chatham, Massachusetts. A sign was put up in the front yard and the Chatham Jam and Jelly Shop was open for business.

As the business grew, she received a Certificate of Completion from the Educational Foundation of the National Restaurant Association in Applied Food Service Sanitation. Under Massachusetts law each food establishment must have someone who is certified in applied food service sanitation. Carol took her course work seriously. In these early years making homemade preserves became a daily passion in the summertime. Three children later she gave up her job as a rural letter carrier in nearby Harwich and invested her accrued savings into the new business.

Raising a family and making jams and jellies at home was now her fulltime occupation. It became so much a part of the household routine that her husband decided it would be easier for the whole family to be on one schedule so he too came on board as the first full time employee of The Chatham Jam and Jelly Shop. From picking local fruits to waiting on customers all the children have done their share of the work growing up in the jam shop.

Carol likes to cook and Robin likes to experiment. Together this approach has led to over one hundred and fifty recipes in their recipe box. In 1994 Woman's Day included Carol and her business in an article about women in business. Nationally recognized travel guides have recommended The Chatham Jam and Jelly Shop as a place to visit while on Cape Cod. In 2004 the New York Times in an article about Beach Plums mentioned her shop as a source for Beach Plum Jelly.

This is an abbreviated version of who we are and how we came to have a web site Thank you for taking the time to read about us.