Two-Floor Beverly Hills Kitchenware Store: Crate and Barrel

Crate and Barrel, at 438 N Beverly Dr in Beverly Hills, is a two-story housewares store that has stood on this block since 2003, one street east of Rodeo Drive. It opens at 10 am every day and closes at 8 pm Monday through Saturday and 7 pm on Sunday. Treat it as the Westside's broadest single stop for everyday kitchenware: plates, glasses, bakeware and serving pieces share the building with furniture, lighting and rugs, and an escalator and elevator connect the two floors.

The name comes from the first shop's furniture, or lack of it. Gordon and Carole Segal opened the original Crate and Barrel on December 7, 1962, in a 1,700-square-foot corner of an old elevator factory on North Wells Street in Chicago's Old Town. Gordon had just finished at Northwestern and Carole was a schoolteacher. With no money left for display tables, they stacked imported plates, glassware and cookware on overturned packing crates and barrels, and the makeshift fixtures became the brand.

The idea behind it was simple: well-made European kitchen goods at prices a young couple could afford, shipped straight to the store rather than through a department-store buyer. Gordon is said to have come up with it while washing a piece of imported German china at home. Six decades later, the Beverly Hills store still leans on that same mix of glass, porcelain and cookware, even though furniture now shares the building.

Start with the tabletop and glassware tables, which are the reason most people walk in. White porcelain dinnerware is stacked by the dozen so you can lift a plate, feel the weight and count out a full set on the spot, and stemless wine glasses and tumblers are shelved in long rows by size. This is the easiest place on the Westside to replace two broken glasses from a set without ordering online and waiting a week.

Bakeware, enameled cast iron, knives and small appliances fill the cookware section, along with the seasonal tables that change through the year. Those seasonal tables are where to look first if you are hosting a holiday dinner for the first time and need serving pieces in a hurry.

Be honest about what you need before you wander. The furniture, lighting and rug displays are where an hour disappears when you came in for a sheet pan. If your list is all kitchen, skip the sofas entirely and you will be out in twenty minutes.

Registries are a big part of what happens here. The store hosts private registry events with light bites, and two are on the calendar for Sunday, November 1 and Sunday, November 8, each running from 10 am until noon, before the regular crowd arrives. RSVP through the store's page on the Crate and Barrel site. Staff can also set up a registry with you in person or over video if your partner cannot make it to Beverly Hills.

Free design services are run from this location too. The store's design team will answer a quick question at the counter, build a mood board, sketch a room layout or take a virtual in-home consultation, and free fabric swatches are available to take home. For shoppers who prefer an empty floor, the store books in-store appointments outside business hours for vulnerable guests, including older shoppers and people with underlying health conditions. Call ahead to arrange one.

In the past, the store has also run cooking and baking demonstrations and flower-arranging classes. Watch the events section of the store page, where these are listed when they return.

Weekday mornings shortly after the 10 am opening are the calm stretch, when staff have time to pull a stack of plates from the back or walk you through a registry scanner. Weekend afternoons draw the Beverly Drive shopping crowd, and the kitchen tables get picked over. If you want to see a full set on display, go early in the week.

For pickup, small online orders are held at the store. Go to the checkout counter and an associate will bring your order from the back. Bigger furniture purchases are routed to a warehouse, where you choose a pickup date and time and a warehouse associate helps load your car. Do not drive to the Beverly Drive store expecting to collect a sofa.

If a piece you want is sold out, the nearest second option for cookware is Williams Sonoma at the Original Farmers Market on 3rd Street, about a fifteen-minute drive east. Its larger cutlery case and Sunday classes complement what Crate and Barrel does best, which is tableware and glass.

The store sits in Beverly Hills' Golden Triangle, the grid of shopping streets between Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard. Walk one block west to Rodeo Drive for the window displays and the cobbled Two Rodeo lane that runs down to Wilshire, or one block east to Canon Drive, where the public Beverly Canon Gardens make a good place to sit with your bags.

Head north up Beverly Drive and you reach Beverly Gardens Park, the long ribbon of lawn and roses along Santa Monica Boulevard, with the Beverly Hills sign near the corner of Beverly Drive. On a weekday morning the loop from the store to the park, along Rodeo and back down Canon takes about forty-five minutes at an easy pace.

Address: Crate and Barrel Beverly Hills, 438 N. Beverly Dr, Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Hours: Monday to Saturday 10 am to 8 pm, Sunday 10 am to 7 pm. Store opened in 2003 and has two floors, with an elevator and escalator to the upper level. Services: design consultations, registry consultations, free fabric swatches, in-store pickup for small orders.

Beverly Hills runs metered street parking and city garages throughout the Golden Triangle, so plan on a garage if you are buying anything heavy. For more ideas around Beverly Drive, ask Karpo in the Karpo APP to plan a shopping and lunch route nearby.