The Chowgirls Story

Almost 20 years ago, catering history (if there is such a thing) was made when founders Heidi Andermack and Amy Brown first met. Amy had literally just given birth to her first daughter two nights prior, but her visiting brother from Kentucky just couldn’t wait for them to meet, so sure was he that the two would become fast friends.

Shortly after their introduction, Heidi and Amy realized how many similarities they had. Both were the oldest of three children and were born during the same year to young parents. Each had moved to the Twin Cities in the 1990s and had career backgrounds in marketing. Both had recently been married. It’s that last similarity that became the nucleus of their business — while planning separate weddings, both had been struck by the lack of creativity in the catering realm and felt the world could do better. In addition, both Heidi and Amy had spent their adult lives with the desire to express themselves creatively through food, though neither had taken this path up to that point.

Fast forward almost exactly one year and we get to the official start of the Chowgirls story. On March 12, 2004, they launched the business in a small Northeast Minneapolis gallery space with about 100 of their closest friends and acquaintances. Heidi and Amy both brought along their day jobs as the uncertainty of starting a culinary company with no real restaurant experience offered no guarantees. Two things they did know: their website was adorable and the food was delicious. Soon after, they took their careers as caterers full-time as Chowgirls grew quickly in popularity with an annual growth rate of 10 percent, year after year.

Nearly two decades, three kitchens, thousands of events, dozens of awards, and more than one hundred team members later, Chowgirls has become a household name in the Twin Cities, not only as a catering company, but as a sustainable, progressive, and community-oriented business.