Vive La Niche!
Jane Schaffner’s boutique and espresso-gelato bar turns 24
Photography: Timothy Thimmes
As the name implies, La Niche is a shop unto itself. Enticing customers with the aroma of freshly roasted coffee, as well as shelves brimming with exquisite French and Italian wares, it is one of the few Park City businesses to weather the ups and downs of Main Street retail for 24 years. Its uniqueness, a direct result of owner Jane Schaffner’s buying finesse, is a large part of what keeps the petite boutique going strong.
Even dressed in blue jeans, Schaffner, like her shop, exudes elegant, sophisticated style. Though her flair for creativity initially led to a career in retail and interior design, she fulfilled her longtime dream of becoming a retail business owner in 1985 when she and a partner purchased Rocky Mountain Kitchen at 401 Main Street. A year later, she became the sole owner of the renamed shop, La Niche. Since then, the store has evolved into what it is today, an ever-changing assortment of European-inspired gifts and accessories for the kitchen and home — plus an espresso and gelato bar.
“It’s like running two separate businesses,” explains Schaffner. Yet, the two somehow go hand in hand, offering the weary spouse a bit of respite from shopping or the espresso fiend a hearty pick-me up. What was once a kitchen, where La Niche offered cooking classes from a Cordon Bleu chef, is now a gelato bar, with scrumptious flavors like pistachio and black cherry.
Among the regulars who pop in for a hot beverage or a cool gelato treat is a group of longtime locals, including Schaffner’s husband Dave, who owns Flat Rabbet Gallery just a few doors down. A genuine sense of community seems to have grown around La Niche’s handful of wooden-topped bar stools. Befitting the culinary arts-centered, French-Italian ambiance, patrons are there to savor the experience. For Sharon Barton, Schaffner’s friend and co-worker, it’s “the people” and “visiting for a few minutes at the espresso bar” that makes working at La Niche so enjoyable. Regulars are not only locals, but visitors — some who come in for coffee, a hostess gift or the latest “Barefoot Contessa” cookbook — and the sweet-toothed faithful, who have made it a habit of stocking up on the shop’s biggest seller, old-fashioned lollipops.
“I think that every friend I have, literally, I have met because of this store,” Schaffner says. Perhaps it is because of those friendships that Schaffner is able to keep her merchandise in tune with her market. Her rule of thumb is choosing items for the store that she would like in her own home. She’s constantly adding fresh items to her inventory, switching out lines that other local businesses have started to carry and making sure that the boutique’s offerings are both seasonal and interesting.
“She has such an eye, and she’s an excellent buyer. The bottom line is that she knows her customers and what they like,” says Vana Hart Sutton, who has been friends with the 61-year-old Schaffner since high school. The two have also been partners for four years in an online retail business, French Country Farm.
Though La Niche is Schaffner’s first and only store, she has worked in retail since she was a teenager. A fourth-generation Moabite, Schaffner lived and worked in Las Vegas for 15 years. She managed several departments at Saks Fifth Avenue and assisted the celebrities at the now-defunct but then “it” store, Joseph Magnin. She also owned and operated her own interior design business, Lady Jane’s. Schaffner still relishes the rare moment she has to return to interior design projects and has been known to swing by a customer’s home to assist with a design conundrum.
Aside from heading to “market” (retail shows held in cities across the country), Schaffner spends almost every day working at her store. With her nose to the grindstone, she has captured European ambiance without ever having gone to Europe. “She has never been to France, and I keep telling her that she has to go because she would love it, but all she does is work, work, work,” explains Sutton.
In addition to working hard for her own business, Shaffner has taken a role in community efforts, serving on Ballet West’s guild and as former president of the Main Street Business Alliance. In the mid-’80s she suggested the “Halloween on Main Street” concept (now a beloved local trick-or-treating tradition) to fellow Old Town business owners. Her latest community project began last summer with a July 3 “Great American Bake Sale.” Soliciting goodies from customers, friends and local chefs and caterers, the first annual event raised $400 for the Share our Strength organization, which fights hunger in America.
Whether whipping up a fundraiser or a latté, it’s apparent that Schaffner is a hands-on entrepreneur. She puts together the immaculate displays of Provençal linens and tableware or serves a steaming cup of espresso with the quiet grace of a dinner party hostess. Her customers play their part in molding the shop as well. The name, La Niche, actually came from a French customer who suggested it to Schaffner with the explanation that it means “a small place where special things are kept.”
“In hindsight, it’s kind of difficult for people to remember, to spell, or to pronounce, but I like it,” says Schaffner. And given Schaffner’s reputation for good taste, if she likes it, her customers will too.
Jane Gendron is a Park City-based freelance writer and a hopelessly last-minute, don’t-mind-my-fluttering-about-the-kitchen-just-pour-yourself-a-glass-of-wine-while-I-get-dinner-ready hostess.
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