Our Story

It all started with two neighbors taking walks to the park with babies in strollers and dreams of starting a restaurant in Albany serving the kind of food we wished was available for our growing families. Once we committed to the concept for Picnic, we got to work. We started renting commercial kitchen space at Forage Kitchen in Oakland in 2017 and began selling our sausage and charcuterie at the Ecology Center’s downtown Berkeley Farmers Market and the Kensington Farmers Market. In 2019 our Chicken Liver Mousse, a farmers market favorite, won a Good Food Award recognizing our craftsmanship and flavor as well as environmental responsibility. Now our little babies are little kids and our dream restaurant is a reality. We’re humbled by the amazing support we’ve received along the way to creating our restaurant and look forward to welcoming you into Picnic.

Susannah is our sausage queen and brings her years of experience as a butcher/salumist at local restaurants including Cafe Rouge in Berkeley and Clove and Hoof in Oakland to Picnic. Leslie brings business administration, finance, and facilities experience to Picnic from her background working at tech start ups and labs at UC Berkeley. Each day we learn something new from each other and we love working side by side in all aspects of running Picnic.