A month-long hospital stay at the Cleveland Clinic, where an equally rare and innovative surgery will treat a rare congenital condition, might be too much for most patients to bear, but that wasn't the case for Christina Kalfaian.
Instead, from her hospital bed, she planned a business called Papa's Kitchen, which now produces gourmet salad dressings and honors her father, Jimmy Papadopoulos.
Papadopoulos was a restaurateur for more than 40 years and created the signature pink Greek salad dressing at her restaurants, Sophia's Family Dining in Troy and Ocean Breeze Family Dining in Shelby Township. Her father retired in 2015.
Kalfaian remembers lying in her hospital bed in the middle of the summer of 2019 and wondering, “What could I do to honor my father without him having to lift a finger?” “So I came up with the idea to carry on his legacy by reviving the pink Greek salad so that people could experience and enjoy it in their own home every day,” she recalls.
Soon after, she sketched bottles and labels for the dressing, created two of her own flavors, and added one from her great-grandmother's recipe. She says she became the 64th person in the world to survive the surgery she endured and be released from the hospital.
“After I got out of the hospital, I started researching and developing the knowledge of how to make products and partnered with the Product Center at Michigan State University, which really helped me understand the process and helped me get from my idea to an actual bottle,” she says.
Kalfaian founded Papa's Kitchen with her mother, Cleo, in 2021. The female-approved startup sold 10,000 bottles within six months, thanks in part to a social media campaign.
The local food distributor currently supplies four unique salad dressing varieties — Dill, Greek, Harvest and Vinaigrette — to more than 120 retail stores and restaurants in Michigan, and Kalfaian said it recently entered the Ohio market.
Detroit metropolitan area markets that sell her products include Fresh Thyme, Nino Salvaggio International Marketplace, Papa Joe's, Bush's, Hollywood and Meijer.
“Our story is a true testament to where the American Dream meets miracle,” she says.
Kalfaian's business acumen began to take shape at an early age: “I was four years old and receiving cash from Sophia's register. I think I was the only four-year-old who could count money properly,” she laughs.
Just founding Papa's Kitchen was a big undertaking, but Kalfaian managed to do it while working as a licensed real estate agent for Berkshire Hathaway.
“I took what I learned in real estate and applied it to the world of salad dressing,” she says. “I partnered[the two worlds]together, and the final gift for my clients is a salad dressing for their first meal in their new home.”
