About

You can't fake authenticity.

We all know that the most authentic food isn't cooked in a professional kitchen. It's cooked by your mom, dad, friends, and folks that care deeply about what they're cooking.

It's hard to make a living making food.

On average the US farmer takes home $0.17 for every dollar that US consumers spend on their products. The overall take for specialty produced sauces and spices is similarly thin. 85% of Consumer Packaged Goods startups fail within two years.

It's surprisingly hard for consumers to find
great food to buy.

Supermarket shelves are stocked mass distributed products that are cheaply made, farmers markets limit distribution to a 15-20 minute driving radius, and specialty retail stores suffer from limited supply and shelf space.

Shack 65 is changing the food industry
(for the better)

We don’t have giant warehouses storing huge amounts of food and products. Instead, we have a community of chefs and artisans who harvest, create, and ship amazing products directly to your door.

Shack 65 makes it easy for consumers to buy quality food and puts more money in the pockets of our producers than traditional distribution channels letting them earn a sustainable living doing what they love

We're on a mission to give farmers, chefs, and artisans the opportunity to make a sustainable living feeding fellow foodies.

Small Batch Production

Bad food is made by people who cook without love, without pride, and without purpose. That's not us. We care deeply about the things we cook and eat.

High-Quality Ingredients

Great food is, most often, simple. Every chef knows that a great meal starts with great stuff. We don't believe in taking short cuts.

Unique Flavor Profiles

You learn a ton about someone by the food they create and eat at home. We're a bunch of food geeks and love to find and create some of the most unique dishes out there.

Shop Shack 65 Sell On Shack 65

How did this all start?

The Art of Just Enough

I'm John (or JVS to many of my friends and colleagues). I was kicking around bars, music joints, and Micheline Star restaurants before I really knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. Like many before me, I dove into a kitchen with my entire soul.

It took a while but I realized that somewhere along the line I'd sold out and pushed for more (and more and more). More revenue, more money, more locations, just more. It chewed me up, burned me out, and spit me out of the industry I once loved.

"What happened to my passion for food?" I wondered.

In the years since, I've had the opportunity to work at some of the most ground breaking companies in the world like Amazon, Zulily, Redfin, HomeLight, and Shef.

To combat the stress I started cooking again and found it balanced me. My passion was back but there was a new problem: I was spending more time looking for quality ingredients than I was cooking or eating delicious things.

Shack 65 started as a way for me to cook for friends, sell what I thought was interesting food, and hopefully make someone's day a little better through food. Informally at first; and in a more scalable way as the years passed.

Today, Shack 65 has taken on another life and now we're inviting our friends and fellow cooks to help us spread the love.

My how the time flies

The journey

1997

Island time

Some of my first "real" jobs have revolved around food. In '97 I moved out to Nantucket for the summer and quickly grabbed as many jobs as I could. Bartending, waiting tables, shucking oysters... You name it I was all in.

2005

Time to get a haircut and a real job

After working at some pretty cool, but disorganized, places I decided to get real. I packed my car, pointed it west from Boston, and didn't stop until I hit San Francisco and the Hillstone Restaurant Group.

2020

Locked down, but not out

I'd been gone from formal cooking for years but during COVID the availability of really amazing ingredient, the time to explore, and our micro-bubble brought me back. I was hooked (again).

2022

Taking it to the streets

We'd invite folks over and send them home with leftovers. Eventually I started selling my creations, then a few of my friend's creations, and eventually it all turned into the Shack 65 you see today.