A baker and a chef met at a restaurant. Now they supply foods to restaurants.
Working in restaurants helped Andrew and Stephanie Fisher find each other. She’s a baker, he’s a chef.
Like everyone else who has worked in professional kitchens, they’ve seen a lot of ups and downs over the past two years.
When Andrew heard about the owners of specialty food distributor Clover Distribution, 2018 S. First St., retiring, he almost jokingly asked Stephanie if she wanted to buy the business. On Dec. 10, the Fishers officially stepped into their new roles as business owners, delivering spices, olive oils and specialty foods to chefs throughout southeastern Wisconsin five days a week.
Taking over a business during a pandemic has its own challenges, but leaning heavily on their own kitchen backgrounds, the Fishers feel uniquely qualified to step into the distribution arena.
Question: How did you get into the food world?
Stephanie: It started with baking with my family when I was a kid. When it came time to get a job at 16, I found a job at Cookies By Design, putting together cookie baskets and bouquets. When they had an opening for a baker, I fought my way to get that job and never looked back.
Then I worked at Embassy Suites as an assistant pastry chef, then I took a job at a deli making cookies, the Wisconsin Club, then Eddie Martini’s. That’s where Andy and I met.
We opened Parkside 23 together, then I started at Simma’s Bakery. I was there for the past nine years. We both left our jobs to do this.
Andy: I graduated from high school thinking I was going to go into the business world. I went to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for three years trying to achieve a major of accounting. I also needed to work and got a job at Noodles and Co. I started as a cashier and slowly learned every position in the restaurant.
I was always interested in cooking. My grandfather was a great cook. I remember watching all the cooking instructional shows on PBS, Paul Prudhomme and Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, the Galloping Gourmet. My grandfather would take very detailed notes in college-ruled notebooks and we would cook those recipes.
After three years at UWM, I was falling out of love with the idea of being in an office. I had an opportunity to move to Reno, Nevada, and attend a new Le Cordon Bleu program. After a year, I came back. …
I continued my culinary education at MATC, found a position at Eddie Martini’s for a line cook. They only needed part time. I continued to work full time at Noodles while going to school full time at MATC, weekends at Eddie’s. Eventually, that became my full time job.
Then Joe DeRosa decided to open Parkside 23. I was sous chef. …
There was an opportunity to work for Bartolotta’s restaurant group. I went from sous chef to executive chef at Harbor House. … I then took a corporate chef position at Alto Shaam.
Q: What was the reason to make the leap from being in the kitchen to providing for them?
Andrew: I worked for Alto Shaam for three years until the beginning of the pandemic. …I’m good friends with Dane Baldwin at The Diplomat, consider him a mentor. He was the first person I went to speak with after I lost my job.
He had to close his doors the next day. I was let go Friday the 13th of March. He closed the restaurant the 14th.
As soon as the opportunity arose, he hired me. We developed the curbside menu and served that for a bit more than a year. We were able to reopen The Diplomat in June for in-person dining.
Then one day, Gary (Schlapinski), who Stephanie and I have worked with pretty much our whole careers, it came up he was looking to sell the business and retire. Immediately I reached out to Stephanie kind of joking, should we buy Clover?
Q: What did you know about distribution before making the switch?
Stephanie: We both knew of Clover and worked with them when we worked at Eddie Martini's. All the specialty baking, nuts and chocolates, and I’d order from them. ...
We had a meeting with Gary, he gave us this basic overview and brought us into the warehouse.
You think about the Syscos and Reinharts, so how big is this warehouse? Is it manageable? Seeing it firsthand it was, yes, this is something two people can do.
Andrew: Clover Distribution has been around for 30-plus years.
Stephanie: We take orders via email, text, voicemail. Everybody just orders how they feel comfortable.
Andrew: We deliver all the way up to Kohler, as far west as Madison, and our farthest south is Lake Geneva.
Q: How have you adjusted to working together every day?
Stephanie: There was a point where we didn’t see each other except maybe Sundays. … Having worked at the restaurant together before, we knew we worked well together. That’s one of the biggest perks, to work with Andy every day.
Q: Is there a minimum order?
Andrew: No, we don’t have any order minimums and we deliver five days a week. There isn’t a set delivery day either.
If you place an order as a chef at a busy restaurant, maybe you place an order at 10:30 p.m. after service. We receive the message at night and deliver it the next day.
Q: Reading your menu, you have everything from kosher salt to urfa biber. Are you seeing more interest in specialty flavors and worldly influences or comfort food staples right now?
Andrew: There are a lot of new ingredients and techniques. Scrolling through Instagram you see those plates. The urfa biber (a Turkish chile pepper) was in fact a special request. We keep it in stock for that particular chef. I will admit, I didn’t even know what it was until about a year ago.
Q: How central is food to your relationship story?
Stephanie: Food is our entire life. One thing is great is he has a massive sweet tooth. It is a huge skill I have that would be lost if he didn’t like sweets. He’s a fantastic cook. That’s why we trade off.
Table Chat features interviews with Wisconsinites, or Wisconsin natives, who work in restaurants or support the restaurant industry; or visiting chefs. To suggest individuals to profile, email psullivan@gannett.com.
Sign up for our Dish newsletter to get food and dining news delivered to your inbox.
Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.
DOWNLOAD THE APP: Get the latest news, sports and more
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Longtime restaurant couple buy Clover Distribution food business
