Arts & Culture
The language of food: entrepreneur Kendra Baker (Crown, ‘01, language studies) is this year’s Humanities Alumni Award honoree
Kendra Baker, co-founder of the Penny Creamery and The Picnic Basket, is this year’s UC Santa Cruz Distinguished Humanities Alumni Award recipient, an honor that highlights a career shaped by the study of language and culture.
Kendra Baker
Kendra Baker, co-founder of the Penny Creamery and The Picnic Basket, is this year’s UC Santa Cruz Distinguished Humanities Alumni Award recipient, an honor that highlights a career shaped by the study of language and culture.
“I’m truly honored—and a bit surprised!—to receive this award,” Baker said. “UC Santa Cruz played a formative role in my life, so being recognized by the Humanities Division feels especially meaningful. It brings up a deep sense of appreciation for my time there.”
Baker will receive the award at the Celebrating the Humanities event on Wednesday, May 27th from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. at the Merrill Cultural Center. This is an event honoring excellence across the Humanities Division, from undergraduate award recipients to faculty, alumni, and experiential learning fellows.
“Kendra Baker’s career demonstrates how a humanities education can inform entrepreneurship, creativity, and community engagement in deeply tangible ways,” said Humanities Dean Jasmine Alinder. “Her work shows how humanistic training can move beyond the classroom and into the world, creating spaces that connect people, culture, and place.”
Throughout her career, Baker has come to see food as a form of art that is creative, expressive, deeply rooted in human experience, and closely connected to the humanities.
“Working as a chef and restaurateur allows me to engage with craft, storytelling, and connection in a tangible way,” Baker said. “My experience in the Humanities Division fostered curiosity and adaptability, both of which have been invaluable. Phonetics, semantics, and syntax were certainly lessons in problem-solving, and I still encounter real-life puzzles every day! More importantly, UC Santa Cruz helped shape how I think about building something that reflects values and creates meaningful, shared experiences.”
Baker didn’t come to UC Santa Cruz with plans to enter the food world. She began as a chemistry major, with little interest in cooking or agriculture, before an encounter with the university’s farm program shifted her perspective.
Seeing firsthand how food is grown—and the environment and community surrounding it—sparked a new way of thinking about food as something expressive and interconnected.
She eventually moved into language studies, focusing on Italian and Spanish. Those experiences, she said, helped her recognize food as a powerful cultural language—one tied to identity, place, and human connection.
“While my path may not appear linear, and didn’t always make sense while I was on it, my degree in language studies ultimately shaped the direction I took and who I am today,” Baker said.
Through the program, Baker studied in Italy and later traveled and worked in other parts of the world.
“Those experiences revealed how central food is to culture, identity, and community,” Baker said. ‘It was during that time that I fell in love with food as a meaningful way to bring people together, and as a way for me to contribute.”
After graduating, Baker began working in Santa Cruz kitchens, including Gabriella Café in downtown Santa Cruz, an early leader in sourcing ingredients directly from local farms. She later pursued formal culinary training on the East Coast and refined her craft in both the United States and France, where she trained in pastry making and developed an appreciation for the precision and discipline behind it.
Her career took her through several high-profile kitchens including the MIchelin three-starred restaurant Manresa in Los Gatos before she returned to Santa Cruz to start her own venture. In 2010, she and Zach Davis co-founded The Glass Jar, launching The Penny Ice Creamery, which opened in a former hair salon and quickly gained a following for its seasonal flavors and commitment to local ingredients.
Baker and Davis got a taste of national fame after they recorded a heartfelt YouTube video, thanking President Barack Obama and Congress for passing the Recovery Act, which helped make their vision into a reality.
In the video, they tell the story about wanting to open a shop that made “really great ice cream from scratch; the kind of ice cream that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Ben Franklin used to enjoy.” Because of the Recovery Act, they were able to secure a $250,000 small business loan.
That YouTube spot had an impact far greater than anything they could have predicted. Vice President Joe Biden called Baker and Davis to thank and congratulate them, and told them he would come to Santa Cruz when he could to try their ice cream.
Shortly afterward, Baker and Davis ended up flying to Washington, D.C., to sit with First Lady Michelle Obama during the State of the Union address. The visit was surreal, to say the least, especially when the ice cream impresarios were riding in a motorcade speeding through the city with sirens blaring all around them.
Ice cream lovers celebrated The Penny Creamery for being one of the few ice cream shops in the nation that makes its own base from scratch, rather than relying on a pre-made base bought from other companies. Baker and Davis also received a high-profile mention in the New York Times column, 36 Hours.
Since its foundation, The Penny Creamery has expanded to seven locations – five in Santa Cruz county and two in Santa Clara County. The Penny Creamery also participates in two farmers markets and countless events throughout the year.
The Picnic Basket, a cafe located close to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, opened soon after the success of the Penny Creamery, expanding Baker’s vision into an informal restaurant rooted in community and place, with a focus on local ingredients.
Baker’s college experience also instilled in her a deep appreciation for engaging with creative disciplines, from music, literature, and poetry to the visual arts, which continue to inform and inspire her work.
“The Penny and The Picnic Basket are as much about people, storytelling, and community as they are about food,” Baker said. They celebrate and reflect the uniqueness of Santa Cruz, its people, its flavors, and everything that makes it what it is.”