Chowgirls Celebrates 22 Years of Creative Catering
- Christy Johnson
- 6 hours ago
- 14 min read
By Christy Johnson, Heidi Andermack, and Amy Brown
Twenty-two years ago today, two women with a passion for food and entertaining launched something special out of a home kitchen. Since then, Chowgirls has grown to become a multi-award-winning catering company with a mission of providing sustainable food from regional and organic ingredients that’s presented beautifully with genuine hospitality.
To mark this significant milestone, I asked our founders Heidi Andermack and Amy Brown to talk about Chowgirls’ humble beginnings, hard lessons, and how they’ve kept the magic alive for more than two decades. What follows is their story in their words.
First, tell us about yourselves!
Heidi Andermack: I grew up in suburban Detroit, and snuck into the city for urban exploration and night clubs with my new-wave and punk-rock friends as soon as we all got our driver’s licenses. Drawn to its creative, collaborative culture, I moved to Minneapolis in 1993 to get the hell outta Detroit and grow my career as a freelance writer. I wrote for national and local magazines while working as Minnesota Public Radio’s writer and editor in their marketing department. I left MPR to help my creative partner Chank start his font company, which bolstered my entrepreneurial drive.
I've been very happy to call Northeast Minneapolis my home since I moved here in 1993 (although technically I’ve lived in St. Anthony Village for the last 15 years). I’ve served on the boards of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association and the Northeast Farmers Market, helping both organizations get a leg up.
Yoga and mediation have become an integral part of my life. I guide virtual classes six days a week, and seek out retreats to learn how to enhance my practice and better manage my energy. I love to walk my dog Lola every morning, road trip with my 19-year-old son, and play games. Always looking for a reason to laugh, I love stand-up comedy — Mike Birbiglia, John Mulaney, Ronny Chieng, and Hasan Minhaj are my faves. You’re almost guaranteed to find me at the Parkway Theater whenever there’s a Story Slam with The Moth, though I haven’t yet mustered up the nerve to share a story myself.
Amy Brown: I was born, raised, and will always be from Paducah, Kentucky, though I’ve called the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis home since 1999, when I relocated here from Chicago. Before Chicago, I spent bits of my adult life in Louisville, Lexington, and Cincinnati, where I had fun jobs in childcare, food co-ops, and bookselling. I moved to Minneapolis for love and because my new career as a publisher rep allowed me to. The “love” part worked out great and now my husband, Eric, and I are about to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary and have three daughters, Frances (22), Lou (20), and Julip (17), and two dogs, Rudy and Honey Sue.
Before Chowgirls, I majored in English at University of Kentucky and had a fairly long career in bookselling and publishing, but had always longed for a place to share my passion for cooking, design, and entertaining. A lifelong dream was to write a cookbook, which did happen, but evidently, I first had to start a catering company with Heidi and run it for 12 years! During those first two years of Chowgirls, I still repped for Random House, selling and marketing books from state-to-state while she and I brainstormed, then ran our small business on the side.
Aside from work, I love biking, nature, and road trips. In December, Eric and I got a vintage VW Westfalia camper van to enhance our experiences with all of it. I’ve wanted one since I sold falafel on Grateful Dead tours in my late teens and early 20s (don’t ask) so I’m pretty pumped for summer this year! He and my kid Lou are both active in the Twin Cities rock scene, so I spend a lot of time with live music, both in our home practice space and at shows. I’m still super into books and reading and wordsmithing, and am an aspiring bird nerd as well.
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
HA: A DJ. I loved listening to the radio. After a stint at the college radio station, I discovered I liked people picking music for me more than I liked playing music for others. Probably because I tend to play the same bands over and over again ’til everyone else is sick to death.
AB: I always assumed I’d be an artist when I grew up, as I was the class artist from elementary school onward, but I ended up majoring in English with a focus on creative writing. Instead of pursuing an MFA, I turned to talking about other people’s books, which it turned out I liked better than actually trying to write them.
How, where, and when did you meet?
HA: Amy and I met at her house on April 18, 2003, the day she came home from the hospital with her first baby. Amy’s brother — whom I’d met when I entertained a move to her hometown of Paducah — invited me to her house. I was hesitant, but he insisted. “My sister’s cool. You two will be fast friends.”
When we arrived, she greeted us with lemon bars that she made before she went into labor. I didn’t really care much for lemon bars, but I didn’t want to reject an offer from a woman who’d just had a baby. So I politely accepted and couldn’t believe how delicious it was! I found out she used a Barefoot Contessa recipe with fresh-squeezed lemon juice in it, and I became a big fan of Amy and her lemon bars.
AB: I hadn’t even brushed my hair since my eight-hour labor! But I was excited to meet Heidi, as my brother had promised she would change my life. He wasn’t wrong!
HA: Amy’s hair was awesome! Super beachy and rocker-chick messy. So big! And, as a teen of the ’80s, I have a great affinity for big hair (have you seen my senior portrait?).
How did the idea of starting a catering business together take shape?
HA: Both newlyweds with all the fancy new kitchen wares, we shared passions for cooking and entertaining.
As president of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association, I was planning events and making food for my husband’s art openings. Amy worked for Random House Books and was hosting author events.
We would attend each others’ parties and cook for each other. We also loved to drink wine, eat cheese, and play Scrabble together — as good English majors do! We fantasized about working in food. Both in our mid-30s, neither of us wanted to work in a restaurant in a misogynistic kitchen culture. Opening a restaurant sounded fun, but the overhead and unpredictable business was risky. But catering…we could grow the business while we worked our other jobs and the deposits would cover the expenses!
AB: Heidi and I just kind of had the same style, but I could tell she was smarter than me and more organized, and just the right match for doing something as hard as starting a small business. It helped that she’d been helping Chank run his. That was experience I certainly did not possess.
HA: When the publishing industry started shifting and laying off staff, Amy reached out to me. She said there was a round of layoffs. She hadn’t lost her job, but wanted to have a back-up plan in place in case she did. So we met up for lunch that day, at Gardens of Salonica, and Chowgirls was born.
What is the story behind the name Chowgirls?
HA: With backgrounds in marketing, we knew we needed a strong brand. Amy threw out Ciao Baby. I countered with Chow Chicks. She blurted out Chowgirls. And we stopped right there.
We paired up my (now ex-) husband, a font designer, and her brother, a web designer, and they worked on a logo based on Amy’s mock-up. I went home to register the domain name, but hesitated, so we ended up with chowgirls.net because chowgirls.com was swept up by someone else, who tried to sell it to us for $5,000 (we’ve since been able to buy chowgirls.com).
AB: For me, the name Chowgirls came with a vision for what would become our original style and vibe — a vintage cowgirl feel that has morphed throughout the years into a more tailored, yet still feminine and modern brand. Originally “Chowgirls Killer Catering,” we dropped the latter two words in 2020, out of respect for current events facing our community: the George Floyd murder here in Minneapolis and the simultaneous pandemic.
Tell us about the first few years.
HA: We had a launch party at [the now-closed] Frank Stone Gallery in Minneapolis on March 12, 2004. We invited everyone we knew — our contacts in art, design, and publishing communities. And everyone came!
Our first event was a referral from the party. Minnesota Monthly’s Midwest Design magazine was hosting a reception to honor Locus Architecture in the Northrup King Building. Debbie Woodward, who managed the art building, recommended us. We asked Chank’s font intern and her friend, two elegant young women from the Czech Republic, to be our servers. We traded for ads in the magazine and everything snowballed from there. We worked out of our own homes for the first year. Inevitably, we’d show up on site having forgotten a few things. My first day back from maternity leave, I showed up without the food!
What do you feel makes Chowgirls stand out from other catering companies?
HA: Our use of organic ingredients differentiated us from the beginning. While there was a robust co-op culture in the Twin Cities, we couldn’t find that in catering. As business has grown so has our commitment to sustainability.
Another common bond between Amy and I was our affinity for Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We shared a love of their food, their marketing, their culture, and their customer service. We followed their model to differentiate our service style and create a collaborative workplace.
Those things still make us stand out — in addition to beautiful, flavorful food which we found lacking in the marketplace as we both planned our own weddings.
AB: I feel like our brand presence was an outlier from the beginning. Perhaps it was both our marketing backgrounds and interest in graphic design, but we knew that a strong and attractive website would be just as valuable to us in this realm as culinary pedigrees. Most catering companies had minimal web presences back then, and our stylish, fun look grabbed folks’ attention almost immediately.
As someone who had spent my college years working at co-ops and health food stores, I bonded with Heidi over the use of organic ingredients and a really natural and artful aesthetic for both food and tablescape that I think was particularly remarkable in the catering industry at the time. As sustainability became more and more a catch phrase, we can say we’ve been “green” from the get-go, and we continue to lead the industry in these practices. We recently won an international “ACE” award for Sustainability in Catering at the 2026 Catersource + The Special Event in Los Angeles.
What habits do you follow, programs you lean on, or actions do you take to help yourselves and the business be successful?
HA: I journal, guide yoga and meditation, and walk every morning. I love to learn so I’m always looking forward to classes, seminars, and conferences on progressive business practices and self awareness. I lean on a reliable network of entrepreneurs I’ve known over the years. A couple years ago, I joined a roundtable of business owners who share an affinity for Zingerman’s trainings. They have become great advisors and confidants.
Our best collaborators are our teams. We have a lot of people who’ve been with us for 10-plus years. They care deeply about the company and have shaped a culture that’s rooted in our values of community, inclusivity, and sustainability.
AB: I spend a lot of time in my home kitchen, not just cooking for my family but also researching techniques and recipes to help keep Chowgirls’ offerings fresh and on-trend. For the past few years, I’ve been training myself in the art of floral design and it’s been a delight to collaborate with our Sales team and clients to create work that fits our vision and theirs, helping grow our Concepts brand of high-touch events. Other creative ventures include dabbling in watercolor art, and constantly updating the Airbnb apartments my husband and I manage. In the warmer months, I’m an avid cyclist and sometimes runner, and I’ve recently found a lot of peace and relaxation through Pilates practice.
In what ways has the business changed over the years?
HA: Well, it used to be me and Amy doing everything: cooking, hosting tastings (in our homes!), sales, hiring, bookkeeping, scheduling, licensing…. Phew! Now we both have high-level eyes on growth, brand and marketing, as well as culture, sustainability, and finances through our respective lenses of Chief Executive Officer (me) and Chief Creative Officer (Amy).
AB: How has it not? I joke that I was never cut out to run a business this big. What I thought would be a part-time job in a kitchen running a small side-gig has morphed into a full-fledged grown-up of a company and stroked my entrepreneurial spirit in ways I never expected. Heidi and I did a lot of smart things from the beginning. Knowing and accepting our limitations in the early years, hiring smart folks to help us as we grew, and empowering them to help us make the right decisions has grown us from a party of two to 200 in the busy seasons. So many of those team members from the early days are still with us in leadership roles and contribute to the heritage of our brand and the way we do business.
In what ways have you changed as business owners over the years?
HA: A continuous work in progress, I’ve spent the past six years working on improving my communication and leadership skills. Our financial literacy has improved immensely since the beginning.
AB: I’ve gone from being a person with severe imposter syndrome, likely due to the fact that Heidi and I launched a catering company with virtually no restaurant or hospitality experience, to someone who’s slowly grown confident in my creativity and ability to trust my gut most of the time as an entrepreneur and leader.
What have been some highlights these last 22 years?
HA & AB: Let's see…
2006: Signing our first loan after we opened our kitchen in Dinkydale Mall. Heidi was so stressed she puked in the bank bathroom.
2008: Building out our kitchen on Second Street.
Also 2008: Feeding the crews for The Daily Show and PBS during the Republican National Convention. It was a trip dealing with the Secret Service and an honor to work with some of our favorite news sources.
2015: Opening our venue at the Solar Arts Building.
2016: Publishing our cookbook and touring for book signings and media appearances in Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Los Angeles, and New York.
2017: Finding the building on Hoover Street and transforming it from a sad hoarder space to a vibrant workplace.
2018: Seeing Sting, Gwen Stefani, Kevin Hart, and Justin Willman perform up close during Super Bowl events.
2020: Our COVID pivot with Kitchen Coalition. We had no clue how we were going to get through the pandemic. And with one phone call by our culinary director, Liz Mullen, we were able to find stability.
2023: Winning the contract for Guthrie Concessions.
What have been some of the biggest challenges?
HA: Because we were not watching the money carefully, the Super Bowl almost tanked us. We generated the most revenue in one month ever (we’ve since surpassed that substantially), but couldn’t pay rent or sales tax after. We had to let go of some people and brought in a new financial team, [which included our current accountant] Joanna Wentz. They taught us financial literacy and developed new accounting systems.
Getting a contract with Three Rivers Parks District was quite elusive for a few application cycles. For various reasons, we kept missing the deadlines. So we finally bought Joseph Catering and took over their contract. (It’s embarrassing as hell that Joseph Catering managed to secure a contract there and we didn’t.)
Who would be a dream client to cater for?
HA: My dream is to cook paella for the Foo Fighters because they are my favorite band. Every time they come to town, I try to maneuver a way for us to cook for them. It never pans out. Probably for the best — I can easily imagine I’d either make a fool of myself or burn the arborio.
AB David and Amy Sedaris. I’d do a totally stylized and kooky meal and tablescape relating to their family stories and host them at home. Though I guess that’s more a dinner party than a catering gig….
HA: OMG…can I change mine? That sounds incredibly fun. Amy and I have seen David Sedaris together. He makes me laugh ’til I cry.
What is your favorite Chowgirls menu item from the past or present?
HA: I miss the Fatty Melt. It was a mini burger held between two grilled cheese sandwiches. It was so fun — but a pain in the butt to make, and pretty wasteful.
AB: Rumaki with water chestnuts has been on the menu since Day One! But I miss a grilled cocktail sandwich we used to serve with pimento cheese, bacon, and pepper jelly.
HA: The Rumaki came from my Grandma Olmack’s recipes. We always had those crisp water chestnuts in the sticky-sweet bacon growing up. Amy had the idea to add dates, inspired by a [dish she had at a] tapas restaurant in Chicago.
What’s your favorite food/style of cuisine to cook at home?
HA: I love to cook Thai, Indian, and Sicilian food. I’ve taken a lot of cooking classes from chefs in each of these cultures. I love the memories of learning these dishes whenever I taste them, and I’m grateful that the chefs so generously shared their recipes. We catered a number of Indian weddings in the early days, and the families loved the traditional renditions I learned.
I also adore making my family recipes. My Grandma Molotky’s stuffed cabbage and chicken soup. And my Grandma Olmack’s fancy JELL-O and Christmas cookies.
AB: I love hickory-smoking meats in the western Kentucky style (IYKYK) and making pies, and am most often cooking Mexican food for my family.
HA: One of the first meals you made for me was in July. I remember it well. We ate al fresco, in your backyard. You created a beautifully composed niçoise plate with perfectly cooked tuna, niçoise olives, vine-ripened cherry tomatoes, jammy boiled eggs, and an herby French potato salad. It was so fresh and impressive! Then you brought out peach pie for dessert! I love pie so much. And peaches! When you handed me the warm peach pie, you said, “This is how I say ‘I love you!’” I was over the moon.
Squirrel note: My grandma — who was also a caterer! — was known in Santa Monica as The Pie Lady and made me peach desserts all the time. Amy really hit the sweet spot with that dessert.
What’s the best meal you’ve ever had, and where was it?
HA: I don’t know if I can pin that down, to be honest. It might be the meal I just had in Los Angeles [when I was there with our team for Catersource] at le dräQ. Between drinks (Fennel Crush!), food (English Pea Agnolotti!), and dessert (Pistachio Cheesecake!), we sampled about 20 dishes and not one disappointed.
AB: I have go-to dishes at Bar la Grassa that have never been beaten, anywhere else in the world, honestly: soft-cooked egg and lobster bruschetta, carpaccio, cauliflower gnocchi. And The Duke, their cucumber and gin cocktail, on the side.
Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would do differently if you could go back and start over?
HA: So. Many. Things. I’d invest in training — for the business, for the team — way earlier. I’d learn more about strategy and financial literacy earlier. I’d have figured out a way for us to have bought HQ instead of finding a landlord to buy it for us.
If you had unlimited resources, what would you redesign about catering?
HA: The waste in the events industry is such a bummer. I’d figure out a way to do it with only local, natural, and reusable supplies. It’s a tall order. And we do so well at addressing these issues.
What part of the business you created are you most proud of?
HA: Every single bit. Our welcoming culture, our thoughtful and dedicated staff, our sustainability standards, our beautiful food and beverage, and our creativity and innovation.
AB: Creating not just a business but a culture where folks are encouraged to learn and grow their own professional skills while simultaneously helping us grow the company. Consistently attracting smart, thoughtful, and diverse people, year-over-year, who stand behind Chowgirls and what we do. Oh, and making the prettiest and creative food and events in the industry with them year after year.
HA: Well said!