ABOUT US
Step Outside the Ordinary With Every Bite
About Our Pretzel Bites
At Outsiders Kitchen, we’re all about bold flavor in every batch. Our small-batch gourmet pretzel bites take the humble pretzel and turn it into something unexpectedly craveable—sweet, salty, and packed with personality. We hand-coat hearty sourdough pretzels with the highest-quality ingredients we can get our hands on, from freshly ground coffee beans to imaginative spice blends. Each flavor is a little outside the norm, and that’s exactly how we like it. Step outside the ordinary with every bite and join us as we keep pushing the boundaries of what a pretzel snack can be!
About Our Kitchen
Outsiders Kitchen began as a roadside café in May 2017, serving up creatively crafted sandwiches and from-scratch baked goods in the heart of the Catskills. We loved that little café and the community it nurtured, but after two years, life threw us some tough curveballs: The unexpected loss of a loved one, job transitions, and a cancer diagnosis. In true entrepreneurial spirit, we pivoted, said goodbye to the café, and poured our energy into a new vision: Outsiders Kitchen, a pretzel bite snack company built on bold flavors and handcrafted quality.
Until the fall of 2021, every product was made and packaged by hand in our cozy commercial kitchen nestled in Margaretville, NY. As demand grew, our space couldn’t keep up, so we partnered with a third-party manufacturer. That partnership helped us scale for a few years, but in the summer of 2024, everything changed again when our manufacturer filed for bankruptcy.
Faced with another major decision, we looked inward—and homeward. With a nudge from our youngest daughter, we chose to bring production back to the Catskills, retrofitting a space we owned on Main Street into a full-scale commercial kitchen. By January 2025, we were up and running, once again making our boldly flavored pretzel bites in the same mountain town where it all began.
We’re proud to be back where our journey started, doing what we love, in a place we love. At Outsiders Kitchen, every twist and turn in our story has shaped who we are, and we bring that same spirit of creativity, resilience, and heart into every batch we make. Step out of the ordinary with every bite...and taste the difference that comes from doing things a little differently!
Our Story
We’re Austin and Julie—high school sweethearts, parents to two amazing teenage daughters (and one very spoiled dog), and the founders of Outsiders Kitchen. We both grew up in Southeastern Pennsylvania, where pretzels are practically a food group. There was always a bag in the house! But flavored pretzels? Never our thing, until we started dreaming up ways to make them better...but we weren’t just craving better snacks, we were craving a different kind of life.
After growing up in close-knit community where everyone knew our story (and could play more than a few rounds of “the Mennonite game”, iykyk), we wanted to be known simply for who we are, not who we’re related to. So we traded steady jobs, square footage, and the comfort of familiarity for a little cabin on the side of a mountain in the Catskills. It was a move toward simplicity, creativity, and a new beginning. We became “outsiders” in the truest sense and we embraced it for a solid decade.
Entrepreneurship runs in our blood. We both come from multi-generational family businesses, and we’ve always understood the power of working hard, dreaming big, and showing up for your people. Outsiders Kitchen started as a leap of faith, and it’s grown into something so much more, thanks to an incredible team, a community that’s cheered us on, and a small circle of dear friends who co-own this dream with us. These friends have walked with us through the highs and lows, and their dedication and belief in what we’re building means the world to us.
Time has a way of changing things, and now we're back in PA to be closer to family and friends, but we've brought our hard-earned mountain-tough mentality and ability to pivot with us. Life is nothing but an adventure and we're here for it! Our hard working and dedicated pretzel team continues to keep up with our growing snack biz in the Catskills and we love to come back to visit.
Today, Outsiders Kitchen is proud to be a woman-owned business, creating small-batch pretzel bites that are anything but ordinary. Every flavor is thoughtfully crafted, every ingredient carefully chosen, and every bite is our way of inviting you to experience something unexpected. We’re building more than snacks—we’re building something meaningful. And we hope you taste that heart and hustle in every bag when you step out of the ordinary with every bite!
