Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Store Had The Absolute Best Return Policy

For the last 25 years, Ina Garten has been hosting the dinner party that everyone wants to attend. She's invited the public into her kitchen via the release of 13 cookbooks featuring recipes that take the stress out of entertaining (our favorite Garten cookbook, "Barefoot Contessa: Foolproof," is the ultimate celebration manual). Two Food Network shows made dining with the domestic deity as easy as turning on the TV. But her hospitality began long before those projects — when Garten owned the specialty grocer Barefoot Contessa. Unlike most stores, which require pesky receipts and enforce eligibility rules for refunds, it had a return policy that was generous yet smart: Every customer was fully reimbursed and received a replacement product free of charge.

Barefoot Contessa, the 400-square-foot shop in Westhampton Beach, New York, that Garten purchased in 1978, closed more than two decades ago – she actually sold the business in the mid-'90s. But details about the business previously unknown to the wider public are coming to light in her memoir, "Be Ready When Luck Happens," which hit stands on October 1. The store's return policy may not be among the most stunning revelations in Garten's book, but it is a telling detail nonetheless — one that speaks to her magnanimity. According to the memoir, all employees knew that customers with returns automatically got their money back. Those shoppers were then asked what dissatisfied them about the product — if it were a cake that was too dense or overbaked — they received a new item that wasn't flawed.

At first glance, Barefoot Contessa's return policy might seem too generous — a drain on store profits and a way for unethical customers to score free goods. However, Ina Garten's reasoning behind its implementation proved to be a savvy business move. "People were stunned!" she wrote. "A serious problem turned into a happy customer for life, and the cost to us was minimal."

Garten's success with the store — and later her cooking and entertaining empire –  belies her level of previous experience as a business professional and chef. As the memoir documents, she left her job writing nuclear energy budgets for the White House to embark on an entirely new career as owner of Barefoot Contessa for the next two decades after spotting a newspaper ad for the Hamptons shop. According to her website, she gave the owner a lowball offer, which, to her surprise, was accepted the very next day, making her a first-time small business owner, quite literally, overnight. 

After nearly two decades of selling everything from roast chicken to baguettes to the Hamptons elite, she decided to write a cookbook, which became a bestseller. An offer to host a show at the Food Network followed, and as we all know now, that elevated Garten to national-figure status. And for that, we are eternally thankful, as are the guests at our dinner parties, picnics, and brunches whose quality would surely suffer without her sage how-to-entertain advice.