WILMINGTON — Two hundred egg bites, bubbling with mozzarella and basil, were baking in the oven Monday as Mandy Moore helped prepare weekly meals for Weezie’s Colorful Kitchen clients.
“The egg bites are amazing — such high quality,” WCK owner Louise Davenport told Port City Daily.
Eighteen orders of eight egg bites will be included in Davenport’s meal delivery service program this week. WCK launched in 2024 in its current Anderson Square location.
But by Thursday, a new retail area is also opening in front of the WCK kitchen. Called “Convene,” it will launch at first three days a week, Thursday through Saturday, from 7 a.m. to noon, with the goal to expand hours.
Davenport found the 4107-J Oleander Drive space in September 2024. Once home to Boundless Boards, the charcuterie shop closed a year earlier, in August 2023.
“Since I’m not a restaurant, I didn’t need a dining area, just a really big kitchen space,” she said, noting this location fit perfectly. “But I also thought it would be nice to be able to rent out the front space to another local business.”
Moore, who went to culinary school in New York before she married and began rearing children, said she always dreamed of opening a retail shop to serve homemade healthy food: “But the timing has never worked out.”
Convene will serve coffee — hot and iced options, lattes and espressos only — as well as grab-and-go, single-serve quick bites. This includes Moore’s egg bites, of course, but also homemade tahini granola, pimento cheese (both regular and Calabrian chile flavor) pesto hummus or lemon-garlic hummus, pico de gallo and the like.
“Her dips are great, especially if you’re going to entertain or take people out in the boat or have people over,” Davenport said.
“Eventually, I’d like to add lunch items, too,” Moore said, admitting with her kids’ busy schedule, the goal is to ease into operations.
She is looking at mid-October to expand hours and serve varied salad jars and bento boxes featuring smaller portions of hummus, pimento cheese, celery, carrots and crackers and other items.
Introduced through friends, Moore began helping Davenport prepare WCK weekly meal plans roughly a year-and-a-half ago. The two had a lot in common: a love for healthy food, working with local and regional purveyors and growers, and focusing on sustainability.
A burgeoning work partnership has since evolved. In Convene, Davenport plans to also feature some of WCK’s signature items, such as the dragonfruit chia pudding and overnight oats, as well as breakfast powerballs.
“They’re made with whole grains, healthy fat, protein, and it’s just like an easy bite that you can take with you,” Davenport said. “And there are cacao nibs in there for a little crunch, flax seed and fiber.”
They sell out quickly weekly through the WCK meal plan delivery service and also include a lot of one-off orders. Davenport has wholesale clients in town, including Cafe Mata at Yoga Salt in the South Front District and at the Skyline Center in downtown’s city hall, which carry WCK items as well.
The WCK concept started when Davenport was a health coach. One of her clients, who worked full-time but also had twins, was concerned about having time to cook healthy recipes Davenport provided as part of her coaching.
“She said: ‘Those all sound great, Weezie — but I don’t have the time to get in the kitchen. Is there any chance I could just pay you to do it for me?’” Davenport recalled.
Before long, other families were requesting the same services.
While she exited the health coach industry, Davenport continued the meal delivery service “to bring healthy and delicious meals to busy people.” It’s in her blood, actually.
Her father ran a community grocery store, Ellwood Thompson’s, in Richmond, Virginia, where she grew up. It centered on organic foods, which always became a staple in Davenport’s lifelong dietary standards.
Weezie’s Colorful Kitchen meal delivery service rivals national platforms, a la Hello Fresh or Blue Apron, in that Davenport works with local farmers. She sources chicken from Joyce Farms in Winston-Salem, vegetables from Red Beard Farms, eggs from Dream Big Family Farm, micro greens Terra Vita, and honey Lotus Haven Hives, among others. She also works with Seaview Crab Company for seafood items.
“I’m really big into community and helping local businesses grow and local farmers,” she said. “And I just didn’t see that in other meal delivery services at all — it didn’t have a real seasonal, local feel.”
WCK meal plans remain gluten-free and avoid processed goods, including bread, tortillas and pasta — zoodles or spaghetti squash are used instead of the latter. As well, everything is cooked ahead of time for clients to merely reheat and serve.
And unlike national meal-delivery programs, there isn’t a subscription required. Meal plans include breakfast, two salad jars and two dinners, one also vegetarian option, to feed two people. A family-size also is available via upcharge, or if someone wanted to add chicken or turkey meatballs to a vegetarian meal.
They’re also scaled to one’s liking, according to Davenport: “I have some families that do dinners only, or some people get a breakfast and lunch jar. You can mix and match whatever works for your family.”
When she started WCK, she set up in a commissary kitchen in Porter’s Neck in 2020 before it grew into Burgaw’s Incubator Kitchen in the town’s Train Depot. Davenport then moved into a kitchen closer to home in Wilmington to work out of before landing the spot in Anderson Square.
New menus for the meal plans drop every Wednesday for delivery the following Tuesday. The meals are dropped off in glass containers tucked inside a red cooler bag. Customers are asked to wash the containers when done and place them back into the bag for WCK to pick up and refill for the next week.
“It’s basically like an old-school milkman concept,” Davenport explained. “It’s a swap so there is very little waste in the process, which is very important to me because I’m trying to help the environment and get away from single-use plastic and styrofoam.”
Plans must meet the $35 minimum for delivery. However, people can order a la carte and pick items up at the store.
Davenport, Moore and three other ladies huddle in the kitchen weekly to put out WCK meal plans. Though now with a retail storefront opening, those outputs could increase.
“There is a pilates studio across the way from us,” Moore said, noting she imagines their offerings could appeal easily to the clientele. “And people in the neighborhood seem to want coffee.”
Anderson Square consists of other area businesses including Pie’s On, Cape Fear Games, Tanglez Hair Salon and the soon-to-be-opened Red’s Crab Shack.
Davenport said working with Moore is simpatico, in that they both create food items they feel good about eating themselves and serving to their families and others.
In addition to the WCK meal plans and the Convene storefront, Davenport does catering, too, and continues expanding. She offers culinary classes in the WCK/Convene space — brightly colored and designed by Big Sky. As a former elementary school teacher, she said culinary classes naturally feed both her passions of educating and healthy living.
Davenport held a children’s camp in the space over the summer, has done a cooking and art class with a local artist, a yoga and soup-making class during the winter, and works with the local nonprofit Coastal BUDS — Bringing Up Down Syndrome. Twice a year for six weeks, she hosts cooking classes for both children and adults with down syndrome.
“Right now we are in the middle of a program where we travel the world and we learn about different cuisines,” Davenport said.
She brought in local business Empanada Fusion as guest chefs to teach proper dough-making and how to stuff the handhelds.
Tackling more adult cooking classes is next on Davenport’s list: “Mandy has taught those before so I hope it’s something else we can take under our wings.”
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