Now Open: The New Function Junction store

Wilkie and Merola ladle up the soup

​Was it nearly six months ago that Fat City reported that the the owners of Function Junction, Mary Merola and Rebecca Wilkie, were making plans — big plans — to greatly expand the culinary store on the third-floor of Crown Center?

It was the last Function Junction in the city after Merola closed the flagship store on the Country Club Plaza in late 2008; the city had once been home to several Function Junctions — long before rivals like Crate & Barrel moved to town.

After the Plaza store closed, Crown Center executives encouraged Merola and Wilkie to expand into the vacant retail space (formerly occupied by a toy train store) adjacent to their shop. Since Merola had long wanted to have a demonstration area — the best way to display and sell cooking products — blueprints were drawn up for a full Viking commercial kitchen to be installed in the newly expanded store.