We were lucky to catch up with Andrea Uzarowski recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Andrea thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?
This is such a good question. I am not naturally a person, who hopes to be remembered (outside of my kids/family). I do try to make each and every person I come in contact with at the store feel seen/heard/cared for. I recently learned about “love languages” and one of mine is definitely giving/giving back.
Legacy to me speaks to greatness, which I don’t think I can be called ” someone great” But in my life, and as I am writing this, I’m celebrating my 49th birthday, I cannot help but think about how many more years I have ahead and how can I best use those years left to make a difference.
I firmly believe in the rule of “why not.” I’m a person who dreads regret, so even when something daunting or scary comes up in my work or personal life, I take a moment to assess the risks. And more often than not, if I know I won’t “die from this” I tell myself, “why not” go for it. (that’s how I ran my first ever half marathon, taking the wrong turn in a 5K and stuck on the half marathon course. So why not finish it, right? )
As a chef, I always try and teach my clients and communicate to our guests the same thing: “what’s the worst that can happen if you try something new: cooking/ trip/class/experience? You might fail at first, but you won’t know until you try, so why not give that something new a try.”
I’m a mother to three kids. My daughters are now both married, creating their own lives and homes. I hope they will remember me for how much I love them, for how much I always chose to get backup when life gave us challenges.
I divorced my daughters’ father when they were little and left an abusive marriage, a house on a golf course and all the trappings of a gilded life behind with nothing but $20 to my name and a suitcase of clothes. I hope my daughters will remember the grit and will power I showed to create us a new home as we started over with nothing. I hope they will remember that no matter how bad things got at times, I always put them first. I hope they will live their lives being helpful to those who have less than them and that they will never forget where they come from. I hope they will stay humble, because life can very quickly take away what it gives .you. I hope they will always show empathy and compassion, and will want to understand other’s view before they make a decision about that person.
My son is almost 11 years old, and he brings a very different element of love and care into my life. He is my surprise baby and I am so happy he chose me to be his mom. I hope my son will remember that despite being a single mom, there is no shame in hard work, always trying your best and being compassionate towards people who don’t have as much as he does.
I hope he remembers to not take anyone or anything for granted. I hope he remembers that hard work does pay off, and how you treat someone else comes back to you threefold. I hope my son remembers how he is the center of my universe and that when I come across way overprotective and lovey with him, it’s all because I want to shield him from all the craziness in this world.
In my work life, I meet so many new faces at the store each day. The store and the brand is tied closely to me/my history, so it is a very personal experience for both myself opening up a piece of my life to the public, and our guests who enter this world while they are with us at Süti.
When I’m gone, I hope the community would remember that everything I did was for bettering their day. Each moment someone is here, I want them to feel cared for and loved. I want them to know a transaction isn’t just a transaction for us, but a choice they made to spend with us. And that alone means so much.
I want everyone to feel safe here, and protected, and to feel like we are their second home. So, if the community remembers me like that, “Andrea was so fun and made us feel like she was sharing her own table at home with us” that would be the best possible outcome.
Andrea, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Where do I begin? I was raised by a father, who firmly believed that a girl/woman should be able to support themselves, and be as independent as they wished to be. My father was an air-force pilot, who instilled in me hard work ethic, structure and discipline.
When I started college I originally wanted to study architecture, but ended up focusing on something more “practical” that being finance. I earned my MBA in finance and simply followed the path of expected career of becoming an investment banker. But simply put, I was miserable. While I love working with numbers, I didn’t like the predictablity of each day: meetings after meetings, sitting behind a desk each day.
I wanted to be creative. I wanted to “not know” how each day would unfold. I wanted to keep moving and I wanted to be challenged more. I finished many work days at the office by drawing out how I would plate my dinner at home, or would talk to my family endlessly about how to pickle or cure something. Finally the moment arrived when my mom said “look, all you talk about is food, all the time. You are still young enough to decide if banking is your life or if you want to change things up.” That’s all I needed to hear. I left Goldman Sachs, enrolled in CIA at Hyde Park and never looked back. While not always the most financially rewarding decision to move into the culinary field, I’ve never regretted my decision.
Making food for a living for the last 20 years has been rewarding. Not only I had the privilege to work with outstanding chefs around the world, teaching me techniques/methods, but I also learned so much about how to be a more well-rounded person. Kitchens are a collection of all sorts of personalities and characters. Navigating this environment is difficult as it is. Add to that the constant high pressure expectations of service, and you are quickly forced to learn how to work as a team, have each other’s backs and trust that the person next to you will do their job well, so you can do yours too. I think my early years of being raised with high discipline served me well during those years or high stress, high volume, high expectation kitchen jobs.
Over the years, I learned who I was as a woman in the culinary industry: the type of leader I wanted to be, they type of chef I was proud to be. In time, I became an executive chef overseeing entire kitchens and teams in various high volume/fine dining establishments around the world. The lessons learned from those years still are with me today, as a small business owner: compassion, patience, hard work, setting an example, loyalty, seriousness, grit, focus, passion. And also knowing, it’s ok to be goofy sometimes.
When COVID hit and shut the world down, I felt a deep sense of panic: suddenly my fast way of existing was shut down. Staying at home should have been a welcome change, but for me it was agony at first. My capacity to do a lot all at once was hindered to simple daily tasks of folding clothes, watching TV with my son, etc. As time went on, I learned to embrace this new, slower pace. I loved that I could pay attention to small details, small moments, that would otherwise been overlooked. So when restrictions were slowly being lifted, I decided to start looking for a small space for my own little catering company. May 2022 I found our little cottage. The space was light, with old wooden floors, 1800’s details, old door mouldings and so much charm. I signed the lease on the spot, but I knew I wouldn’t put catering offices in the space.
My mind was in a different place now. Spending time in slowness, seeing stress reduced so much made me want to savor those days more. Life and traffic returning to pre-pandemic levels made me anxious and all I kept thinking was I don’t want this old life to come back. I want safe. I want calm. I want peace. I want warmth. I want simple.
The cottage was meant to be mine…it was sitting vacant for over a year when I found it. I knew I would build something here that I’ve put off my entire life: a space dedicated to all the simple pleasures we tend to forget about when life gets in the way. I love coffee and pastries, but nothing in Boulder felt like what I grew up with. So, I thought why not open a little shop with European style coffee (no fancy 3000 calorie macchiatos sorry) and simple, not-overly sweet European treats.
I grew up having something sweet at the end of each day, but I didn’t want it to be overwhelming. I wanted the sweets I made to be like what I had growing up. In April 2022 I took my son home to visit my mom and grandmother, and on this trip I was able to read through and ultimately bring back with me our family recipe book. A collection of recipes handwritten by my great-grandmother and grandmother are family treasures. And these recipes are all the basis for the shortbreads and pastries made in house at the shop.
As the concept of the coffee shop began to grow, the blank walls of the cottage kept staring back at me. I’ve always loved heirloom quality items, beautiful things which are well made, but won’t break the bank. Something, you feel good to have and even better to give. My kitchen shelves at home have polka dot mugs from my great-grandparents’ vineyard, pillow covers are still used that I grew up with. The moment struck like a light-bulb: homewares. But not the trendy ones you can find any any other store. I want to bring beautifully made items to share with guests, that continue to evoke the feelings of peace, calm, happiness. In my private life I’ve purchased over the years from various makers whose work I loved, and it was time for me to reach out and ask these artists if they would consider making their work for us, to carry in the shop. Luckily most of them said yes.:)
As the shop came near to opening date, I felt so happy: I wanted to create a space for everyone to come in and use a space of safety and a place where they can recharge and reset a little. Over time, we noticed many who visit us read actual books. or play cards, paint watercolors, knit or have actual face to face conversations. Seeing this make my heart so full.
If you are a guest, I always want you to feel welcome. I always want you to walk in and know how much you matter to us. We do this by ensuring the space is always tidy. Merchandise is always faced and placed in a neat way, and if you are a returning guest, after the first handful of times, we will likely know your name and drink/food preference. I want our guests to feel like they are coming home, and many of them I think do feel like that. I am privileged to be trusted with stories of heartache and success, sadness and joyful moments from our customers’ lives. I think I am most proud of the trust people placed in me as a person and the shop as a space.
What I do want everyone to know about us is that the guests’ choice to visit us does not go unnoticed and I will never take it for granted. I always tell our team, in a world where a person has so many choices of where to visit and what shop to support, those who walk through our doors deserve the best. They chose to support us and we cannot take that for granted. I, as the owner will never stop trying to raise our own standards and to always offer something sweet, something new to those who visit us.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
I developed my management skills working in very high pressure, Michelin kitchens and other fine-dining establishments. Many of these environments tend to forget during high stress times that we are all humans. Work must get done, and get done perfectly, therefore there isn’t much room for emotions, hurt feelings, being in pain, etc.
Most of the environments I worked in was a culture of bullying or trying to break you/break you down. While in some ways it was necessary to accomplish goals, in the long run, all it leads to is burnout, higher turnover and leaving people feeling like they are shells of themselves. I knew, if I ever get to run my own business, that is now how I want to lead.
I’ve always been a “people’s chef”; being the one advocating for my team, for better pay, better work conditions, better treatment. While not the most popular thing to do in the prior decades, now as the owner of Süti, I am able to use these skills to build and manage great teams. I think it is very important to listen to your team, as a whole (which we do during out staff meetings where everyone has the time and space to share ALL feedback.) During our meetings, I do go over business related issues/concerns, but I also feel it is very important to allow your team to make their voices heard. I alway like to tell everyone, don’t just tell me what’s going well. I specifically want to know what’s not working. What’s making your job more difficult, so we can find a solution together? Criticism and negative feedback is crucial and can be very affective moving your business in the right direction. But you have to be able to not take it personally and see where your team’s input is coming from. For me, as the owner, my number one goal is to ensure I create as good of a work environment and space for my team as I possibly can. If they don’t have unnecessary obstacles in front of them, their job is that much easier.
To me it is also very important, that my team knows they can trust me to address concerns individually. I’ve had team members asking me to help them getting into new housing. partnership advice, health concerns and what they should do to address it, to “guess who is going on a date this weekend.” I feel very protective of our team, and their personal well being is important to me. Again, there are many other shops in town folks can work at, so each person working here choosing to be here and part of the Süti family means a lot.
To maintain high morale….hmmm, you mean taking the team to various culinary excursions around town, to not only explore other small businesses, but also trying new things out. Or creating our own “dork town” at work, where we each decide what job we would have. Or having funny nicknames for everyone, and making sure I remember everyone’s birthdays with little present, Chrismtas gifts or even brining everyone something small but meaningful each time I travel somewhere. My team at Süti is part of my family, many of them being at my house for Christmas Eve dinners. So, I take care of my family. :)
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I feel like most of my life has been a very long, winding road. I always felt like, getting to my end-point took dozens of extra turns, which were often very frustrating and definitely tested my patience a lot.
My most recent test of resilience was back in July of 2020. Covid was raging everywhere, businesses were shutting down or severely downsizing their staff. I too became victim of that, without any advance warning or discussion, one day after work, my boss at the time called me in his office and said, due to the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, and people still not eating out much or booking events, they no longer could afford to keep me on staff as their executive chef. I was let go just like that. That was July 7th, 2020. The next day I took a whiteboard and drew up a sort of business plan for my own, boutique catering company. Because starting a small catering business in the smack middle of a pandemic was a great idea. Haha.
It’s funny what we are capable of doing when we are in survival mode. The month before I was laid off, I also filed for divorce from my husband. We always shared expenses equally, and suddenly I was out of a job, and knew I couldn’t ask for any help from a soon to be ex-husband. To fail was not an option. To fail meant, my son and I would not have a home.
I knew what I wanted to do with my catering company: focus on all the small details that often gets overlooked when event planners plan an event, but culinary won’t always execute those plans exactly. I saw way too many clients who were told one thing during the planning process and got something slightly different the day of their event. I hated that for them.
Having a small catering company, and building it from the ground up meant I could be in control of every aspect of the client experience. But it also meant I had to be in control of every aspect of their experience.
I suddenly became the sales person, event planner, event designer, rental company, day of coordinator, customer service rep, accountant, etc.
I setup our website, registered the business name, crowd-sourced the logo and brand design, and bought as much used kitchen equipment and tools as I could find and afford. Listed the business on Thumbtack and answered every single request. Hauled all my pots, pans, cooking tools in the back of my car. Cooking for customers in their homes for 2-15 people, wearing often 2 masks on top of each other. Setting the tables, cooking the meals, serving the dishes, talking about each course, letting guests watch me cooking and answering any questions. At the end of the day, cleaning everything up, loading all the crates of tools back into my car and driving back home often 2am, only to getup at 5am to do it all over again.
Failure was not an option. I knew I wanted my son and I stay in the house we bought, which meant buying my ex-husband out of his share. I was now the sole provider to my child, and the sole person responsible for maintaining an entire household, which took 2 of us before the divorce.
My daughters helped with watching my son, so I could work and have sometimes 2 cilents a day. I did not turn work down, because I never knew when work would stop coming in. This relentless pursuit of financial safety led to my catering company growing. My first big client was a woman who was a very well known business coach and asked me to be her private caterer for all of her business events. This put the business on the map and led to other, similar clients reaching out. This led to clients asking if I could travel out of state for their own, multi-day business seminars/events and cater those too. I spent most of 2021 on planes, arriving 24 hours before an event, sourcing everything locally, setting up kitchens on site and cooking hundreds of meals over the course of 3-4 days with my assistant.
The business grew to where I was asked to be the caterer to Tom Cruise in Telluride, then to be the “relief” private chef for Kyle Richards at her Aspen home while her own private chef had the day off. North Face reached out and asked us to be their exclusive caterer for all the executive board meetings a dozen times a year. Private clients asked us to host holiday parties with Russel Wilson, Ciara and Peyton Manning being just a few of the guests. Work was non-stop, clients kept coming back and referring us to their friends as their best kept secret.
Sitting in my office now at Süti writing this, I can reflect how all the 18-20 hour days, the emails and very hands on guidance I gave early on to each client, has prepared me nicely for what running a business like Süti is. There are always good days in business, but most days are filled with challenges: missing items from orders of deliveries, last minute call outs, broken pipe in the basement flooding everything 30 minutes before a private event, loosing power in the middle of a production day due to high winds, etc. I always have to think about backup plans for backup plans, so when things get bad, I can try and minimize the “bad.” You can take a moment here and there, heck even a day, to feel sorry for yourself. But after I’m done feeling like a little baby, I roll my sleeves up again and get back at it. Because I can’t fail. Failing now means I let my team working here down, who count on me for their paychecks. Failing now means I’m letting my community and guests down.
Failing now means, I would have to work for someone else on their term. Failing is just not an option.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sutiandco.com
- Instagram: @sutiandco
- Facebook: @sutiandco
Image Credits
Andrea Uzarowski
Lauren Defilippo