CLAIRE
Founder, Blender-in-Chief
Claire Cheney founded Curio Spice in 2015 to source spices directly from farmers and share their stories through her unique blends. She hails from Massachusetts and Maine, where she learned to forage for wild foods and build her own curiosity cabinets. She graduated from Oberlin college where she taught her self to cook while writing essays about food history. Her career in coffee led her to see the possibility to disrupt commodity supply chains in spices. As Curio’s blender-in-chief she creates original blends for our Signature line inspired by her extensive travels to spice origins, and also studies time-honored blends for our Classic line. She lives with her family near Cambridge, MA.
SUSAN
Graphics & Education Manager
Susan joined Curio in 2017 to “help out” but quickly became an essential member of the team, and is now full time as our Graphics & Events Manager. She heads up our recipe development, creating and testing delicious dishes, feeding the team many varieties of cookies to get the ratios just right. She also coordinates our class offerings, helps manage customer service, and directs our graphics program for our 250+ offerings (she comes from a career in graphic design). Susan has been cooking since childhood and grew up in a family who gardened, cooked, canned, baked, and made things. She’s fussy about tomatoes and crazy about Kampot red long pepper.
SAM
Director of Manufacturing & Logistics
Sam comes from an extensive restaurant background around the Boston area. He has gained notable experiences from Blue Ginger, No 9 Park, Stir, and most recently as Executive Chef of Shore Leave, No Relation, Bar Mezzana, and Black Lamb. Sam is an avid researcher when it comes to ingredients and food history. As a Japan obsessive you may find his face buried into sansho although Bonga has become a recent affair.
CARMEN
Wholesale Manager
Carmen is our Wholesale Manager, tasked with sharing Curio spices with retailers throughout New England and across the country. Carmen’s passion for food started early; he grew up in a household that would plan lunch while eating breakfast and would map out dinner while eating lunch. Sunday dinners could take more than 8 hours between prepping, cooking, eating and the enviable resting. After studying business at Boston College, Carmen spent over 15 years working with small cheese producers and selling specialty foods in the Northeast. He now lives in Medford with his family, where they have started a new tradition: guessing the spices that his co-workers were blending that day. His family’s current favorite is Edo spice which they enjoy heaped on avocado toast and sprinkled on ramen noodles.
HOLLY
Director of Retail, People & Culture
Long before working here, Holly was a Curio fan who enjoyed popping into the shop to find exciting, inspiring spices for future bakes, like her all time favorite: Wild Sicilian Fennel Seeds. Holly comes from a background in retail management and corporate DEI advocacy and policy at fellow B Corp, Patagonia. When she’s not at Curio HQ, you’ll find her in the kitchen milling her own flour for baking bread and pastries, making single origin bean-to-bar chocolate, or tending to her bee hives on the North Shore. All of which she is usually doing with a dachshund under her feet trying to trip her.
COLLIN
Marketing Manager
An avid photographer, Collin joins us from the world of marketing everything from running shoes to furniture. Now in the spice world, he loves paprika and pasta (not necessarily together) and has a knack for making people laugh. He loves hanging with his wife and his dog Beowulf (seen here), hiking, Jim Carey movies and landscapes at dawn.
JOSH
Retail Sales Manager
Always a lover of the aromatic and botanical, Josh comes to Curio from a long history in the Greater Boston café and bakery world, namely Butternut Bakehouse in Arlington and Sofra in Cambridge, crafting seasonal beverage flavors with spices to match. With this experience, he brings a love for food, beverages and warm hospitality into Curio’s retail space, extending a greeting and a deep-dive into the world of culinary whimsy with customers and colleagues alike. When it comes down to it, his favorite Curio blends are Vadouvan and Rose Harissa, but for pure spices, nothing beats Guatemalan Green Cardamom & Turkish Maras Biber. Outside of work, he can be found tending to his (ever-growing) indoor plant collection, strolling around his Somerville neighborhood, looking for coffee, baking for loved ones, and smiling at passing-by dogs.
NIKKI
Vice President of Operations & Finance
Bio coming soon!
MIRANDA
Systems and Operations Analyst
Miranda has worked for Curio wearing a variety of hats since 2020. Her passion for solving problems, fiddly details, and making her fellow spicy colleagues jobs easier has led her to dive deep into the back end systems that get our spices to customer door steps. Being able to loop back around to a request for assistance with the response "This is fixed!" makes for an excellent day. In her personal time, Miranda enjoys running and going for rambling walks with her kiddo.
ITYNG
Marketing & Graphics Coordinator
Ityng found Curio a few years ago when she met fellow vendor Claire at a local market event and fell in love with the brand. An artist and graphic designer by training, Ityng started her own small business, Foxfire Creative Studio, as a way to pursue her own creative projects. Products include printed designs (mostly food themed!) on functional home goods such as flour sack towels and more. Food has always been an influential part of Ityng's life. From the days of her youth of making scallion pancakes or dumplings from scratch with her family on Saturday mornings, to more recently trying to perfect her biscuit recipe, food is one thing she doesn't like to skimp on. Originally from Taiwan, her family moved half-way across the world where she grew up in Puerto Rico. Her palate was expanded and enlightened and her interest in food was piqued. When an opening came up to work at Curio, she couldn't pass up the opportunity to learn more about the world of food. Current food obsessions: roasted sweet potatoes with paprika and thyme. She also can't stop putting Magic Salt on everything!
AARON
Wholesale Accounts Manager
Aaron is a lifelong eater who came to Curio as a devoted customer.He spent the first 13 years of his career in software sales before deciding he needed to be doing his second favorite thing in the world as a profession - talking about food (the first?eating said food).Growing up in New England his family took annual pilgrimages to Vermont to tour a maple syrup factory and interestingly enough, attending local Cajun food festivals (do not get him started on butter beans).Outside of Curio, you will find him at the beach in the summer and mountains in the winter.He is excited to spread the Curio Spice gospel.Current Favorite Spice: Wild Afghan Cumin.Live the Spice Life!
MAGGIE
Customer Experience Specialist & Brand Ambassador
An avid home cook, Maggie grew up helping her mom make blueberry pies and joining her grandfather for taste tests to determine which store had the best rotisserie chicken (it's BJs, FYI). Maggie's roots are in the food industry, having worked the wholesale side of things for over ten years in the baking and imported chocolate industries. Maggie's Curio experience started in the early days, helping to put some of the first label prototypes on tins in Claire's kitchen. After pivoting to elementary education six years ago, Maggie has taken a break from the classroom to be home with her youngest and is delighted to dip back into her customer service background. A forever lover of Fleur, she cannot get enough of Chili Today sprinkled on peaches or Vadouvan in a burger.
LENA
Inventory & Fulfillment Manager
Lena’s first job was with The Food Project, which introduced her to sustainable farming and local food systems that support and serve the community. She turned her love of food into a career and has worked in various parts of the food industry, from corporate R&D to specialty coffee shops. She found Curio first as a customer in search of harder to find ingredients and is excited to now work in the blending studio as part of the production team. When not working, she is herding a small dog and child while dreaming up baking experiments, like chocolate Sichuan Five Spice snickerdoodles (V1 was tasty, but needed more spice!).
EVELYN
Production Assistant
Bio coming soon!
ANNIE
Fulfillment Coordinator
Annie is a Massachusetts native who loves playing/watching soccer, growing her own food, and finding ways to laugh (and sometimes all at the same time). After spending years on farms and at other food establishments, Annie joined Curio excited to learn more about delicious food from incredible people. Her unwavering (and genetic) sweet tooth draws her to yuzu and lavender, and her love of grilling makes black garlic and any chile problematically appealing.
DAN
Spice Associate
Feeling the burnout from working as a construction project manager for the better half of the last decade, Dan recently left a full-time job to refocus his time/energy on his life’s greatest passion: music. Alas, in need of some part-time hours to help fund Boston’s exorbitant costs-of-living, Dan wandered into Curio one fateful day to discover a world rich with rare spices, arcane delicacies and— most importantly— really good people! He joins the illustrious Curio team while nurturing a budding interest in the culinary arts. Supeq is by far one of the most unique spice blends he’s sampled (the accompanying veggie chowder recipe is excellent), but you can also find him stirring some Kandy into his morning Greek yogurt (with fresh berries, nuts and honey), or pouring Edo over deviled eggs, fresh rice, or various other bites when a swift kick of tangy heat is called for!
SPENCER
Production Assistant
After over 15 years of working back-of-house in the restaurant industry, Spencer needed a serious change of pace. His passion for cooking, food science and true hospitality never left, however; so finding work at Curio was exactly the stroke of luck he needed! As someone who takes pride in the curation of his pantry and cooks at home daily, being surrounded by such a large (and dinner-inspiring) array of products from every corner of the world is an absolute treat to behold. When he isn’t finding yet another savory dish that Fleur Spice perfectly compliments (ask him about his Fleur Spiced Carrots holiday side dish), Spencer is a creative jack-of-all-trades. Writing lyrics and performing music in the MA metal scene, restoring antique kitchen knife handles, tattooing and stone carving are just a few of the creative endeavors he’s been engaged in.
BECCA
Retail Team Lead
Becca has been a fan of Curio since 2019, and has always been ready for an excuse to spend an afternoon in the shop looking for something new and interesting. With a passion for cooking, eating, and talking about all things food, Becca couldn’t pass up the chance to be a part of the Curio team. When not at Curio, Becca works as an elementary school teacher, teaching newly-arrived students from across the globe. You can also find her teaching and taking Pure Barre classes. It’s pretty impossible to choose a favorite spice, but if forced to, Becca would choose Baies Roses (on anything and everything) or Rose Harissa (try on marinated feta and chickpeas!)