Three years after Harbor General closed, market to open in downtown Gig Harbor
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- New specialty market with charcuterie and other grab-and-go items coming to Gig Harbor.
- Owners seek city approvals to finalize details of their business at 3126 Harborview Dr.
- A building in the back of the property planned as a community event space.
If all goes according to plan, Gig Harbor residents will have another place to pick up sundries and to-go items while strolling the waterfront by the end of this year, though a long-awaited supermarket has yet to appear.
A new specialty market, gather Gig Harbor, with plans to offer custom charcuterie and other pre-packaged items, is expected to move into 3126 Harborview Dr. this year. It will be next to the former Heritage Distilling Co. space that will soon host a new bakery-deli-market of its own.
Pouneh Minovi Kaufman and Mandy Minovi, a mother-daughter duo, purchased the property earlier this year and have plans to open the market, called gather Gig Harbor, by fall, though they’re still finalizing approvals with the city of Gig Harbor.
“Really, we want to make it your local market,” Minovi Kaufman said in a phone call Feb. 2. “You go in there, we want boaters and visitors (to) grab whatever they need. They can come in there for sunscreen. They can come in there for food. They can come in there for anything that they’re looking for.”
BlueWind Boutique, a furniture store with home decor, currently rents the property. It’s not clear when gather Gig Harbor will open and BlueWind Boutique will close its doors, but the boutique’s owner Amy Ericksen said in a phone call Feb. 4 that she is working with Minovi Kaufman on timelines.
“We’re all working together to create a space to complement and support Gig Harbor’s waterfront,” Ericksen said. While speaking highly of Minovi Kaufman’s concept, she expressed sadness to see BlueWind Boutique go — the store opened just last May. She hasn’t been able to find another spot to move into with the limited space available in Gig Harbor, and is “moving in a different direction,” she said.
Besides Finholm’s Market, options for grocery shopping are limited in downtown Gig Harbor. After the departure of QFC from the Peninsula Shopping Center in 2011 and the closing of the Harbor General Store in 2023, few businesses have cropped up in recent years to fill the void.
Market to offer quick bites, community gathering space
The property at 3126 Harborview Dr. has two buildings. The front building is occupied by BlueWind Boutique; the back building has office spaces and is used for storage, Minovi Kaufman said.
Though they’re still working on specifics, she offered an early version of their concept for the property.
The front building will be the specialty foods market, and they’re thinking of offering high-end charcuterie as well as soups, salads, sandwiches and ice cream, Minovi Kaufman said. Her other business, a charcuterie catering business called Harbor Bites and Boards, will supply the pre-packaged food. They’ll also have Band-Aids, sunscreen and other items catering to boaters who “may not have a vehicle to get into the grocery stores” further away, she said.
The back building will take longer to fix up and open (she estimated the process taking at least a year), but the eventual plan is to turn it into a community event space to “host cooking classes, book signings, workshops, mom gatherings, and celebrations that bring people together in meaningful ways,” she wrote in an email.
Above the community event space, they hope to furnish a space that will serve as “low-income, transitional housing for mothers and their children who need a safe place to land while they rebuild,” she continued. “It’s a quiet, stabilizing space that reflects our own journey and the belief that no one should have to start over alone.”
They also plan to support local families facing food insecurity and have a community mural “where anyone can pick up a brush and add their mark based on the events and seasons of Gig Harbor,” she wrote.
Owners seek to foster community through market and event space
Minovi Kaufman realized that she wanted to pursue her dream full-time after she and her mother visited Italy last fall, she said. There, they had the opportunity to cook alongside Michelin‑starred chefs at Castello di Potentino in Tuscany and “were deeply moved by the traditions of cucina povera — simple, soulful food meant to be shared,” she wrote in an email.
Hospitality and creating spaces to gather has been a passion for Minovi Kaufman and her family for years. Minovi Kaufman, a former technology executive at Microsoft, worked in her family’s restaurant in the past and founded Harbor Bites and Boards after moving to Gig Harbor three years ago. Her mother, Mandy Minovi, has owned restaurants, salons and retail shops in Newport Beach and Redondo Beach in California over an entrepreneurship career spanning over 50 years, she told The News Tribune.
“Our family came to the United States right before the Iranian revolution, carrying little more than hope and the determination to start over,” she wrote in an email. “We rebuilt our lives from the ground up, supported by the kindness of strangers and the strength of community. That experience shaped everything we believe in today: when people open their doors to one another, healing and possibility follow.”
She wrote that: “gather Gig Harbor is our way of giving that same generosity back to the place we now call home.”
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Minovi Kaufman recalled moving from California to Washington state eight years ago. Initially, they moved to another city in the Puget Sound area, but Gig Harbor was where they found a real sense of community, she said.
“It changed everything for us,” she said. “We no longer wanted to go back. We wanted to stay here. We enjoyed seeing people gather, and I just thought, this is a perfect name (for the business).”
The plan is to allow groups to use the gather Gig Harbor space for free as long as they’re customers of the business, she said. She described their vision of an “open concept” for the back building, including a deck with seating, and said they hope to make the property “look beautiful” with “lots of flowers and greens.” They’re still working with the city on approvals and will comply with the design requirements for the historic downtown area, she said.
This story was originally published February 5, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
