Bella Kitchen & Home staff members didn’t expect to win any awards, at least not so soon.

The store at the Uptown Gig Harbor Shopping Center has only been open for 2 1/2 years, but it already has received a major honor with its recent first-place finish in the Best Housewares category of KING-5 TV’s annual “Best of Western Washington” contest. Owner Terese Garrett-Miller couldn’t believe her store was in the running, let alone that it could win.

“I didn’t even know initially that we were nominated,” Garrett-Miller said.

She was driving home when her husband called to tell her that Bella was on the KING-5 website as an official nominee, after two of her customers submitted the store for consideration. Then she and her staff watched as the store shot up the online rankings.

“It really went viral, and my customers were really excited about it,” Garrett-Miller said.

Salesperson Tara Cady was among the staff members who eagerly watched Bella pass nationally known stores and go neck-and-neck for first place with Sur la Table, a Seattle kitchen store giant.

“We were high-fiving each other all the time,” Cady said of the weeks during the competition.

On the evening the winners were announced, Bella’s staff and many customers, some of whom were in the store for a cooking class, gathered around the computer to watch the results come in.

“We were refreshing and refreshing, and then it finally came up that we won,” Garrett-Miller said. “We went crazy!”

Cady said the excitement came from Bella’s brick-and-mortar status and its relative newness on the local scene.

“It’s really an accomplishment for a small store,” she said. “Our customers really went all-out for it.”

Bella’s stature has risen quickly since it was founded in May 2010. Garrett-Miller had been a partner in an industrial-chemicals distributor, and when her association with that business ended, she was approached by some who managed Uptown Gig Harbor about opening a different kind of company.

“What Uptown desired was a place where customers would say, ‘We want to go to that store,’ ” Garrett-Miller said. “We have a lot of national chains, and from a business perspective, you can go to other malls and find the same experience in terms of national stores.”

Uptown needed destination stores, she said, and a kitchen- and home-supply store fit the niche well. Bella also provides items not found in the area, Garrett-Miller said.

“The store is completely unique,” she said. “There’s nothing like it in Seattle. There’s nothing like it in Olympia or Tacoma.”

She thinks the demanding nature of running a kitchen and home store, due to its large inventory and diverse nature of products, including cooking classes, has led to a decline in the number of similar stores.

“We cover a rather broad spectrum,” Garret-Miller said.

Bella offers at least one class a week, in an expanded kitchen space in the back of the business’ original storefront. The expansion occurred just six months after the store opened, a testament to its rapid success, after Garrett-Miller showed her landlord a list of customers who had requested the store offer cooking classes.

The extra space also provides Garrett-Miller a chance to host charity events like the current holiday gift-wrapping program to benefit the Mary Bridge Brigade, a fundraising organization that benefits the hospital. Uptown has allowed the group to use a space next to Bella for free, and Garrett-Miller has provided all the materials for Brigade volunteers to wrap gifts. Holiday shoppers from any local store can take their gifts to the gift-wrapping station and donate to Mary Bridge, with all proceeds going toward hospital programs.

“It’s a real opportunity for people to give this time of year,” Garrett-Miller said.

Cady also works with the Brigade, and Bella has hosted fundraisers in the past for other community groups, such as the Greater Gig Harbor Foundation. Garrett-Miller hopes to continue to grow her business, and there’s always more things to do to expand her customer base. The store recently launched an online retail shop, which had been a goal for the past year.

“That’s my next project,” Garrett-Miller said. “It seems like every year, I have a new project to work on.”