Bridgette Weber
Tahini sweet pots are in Weber’s culinary repertoire.
Before Bridgette Weber worked in the kitchens of high-end Madison restaurants like Graze and L’Etoile, she tended crops on organic farms in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley area. A graduate of UW-Oshkosh with a degree in environmental science, she’s passionate about sustainable agriculture and local food systems. So when she decided to leave the restaurant industry last year in pursuit of a job with a more forgiving schedule, she was hopeful she could find a way to continue working with food and farms.
“I realized that I didn’t really want to work weekends and nights the rest of my life,” Weber says. “And if I was still passionate about culinary arts, how could I fit this into my life in a better way?”
Weber’s answer is a startup called Singing Bowl Chef, a personal chef service that specializes in creating meals for customers using local, sustainable, organic produce and grass-fed meats. Building on prior relationships, Weber sources directly from growers including Squashington Farm in Mount Horeb, Odyssey Farm in Sun Prairie and Trautman Family Farm in Stoughton. Named for Tibetan singing bowls — a type of bell used in meditation — the business takes a holistic approach to cooking and food quality, prizing things like soil quality and livestock treatment. “People are looking for healthy food,” Weber says, “but they want it to still taste good.”
Weber launched the business in 2016 by posting an ad for personal chef services on Craigslist. “I had three clients within a month,” she says. “I realized this was something that could work.”
Bridgette Weber
Like other personal chef services, Weber works with clients to create a menu based on the client’s dietary preferences and their budget. She then comes into a client’s home, usually once a week, and prepares meals that are stored as leftovers and eaten throughout the week. Prices vary based on the number of meals, number of servings and who does the shopping. For example, five meals for a two-person household costs $210 if Weber shops and $160 if the client shops. Food cost is not included.
While there are plenty of stores in Madison that carry grass-fed meats and locally grown produce, Weber notes that there’s not a “local-specific food distributor in Madison.” Community-supported agriculture is a popular way to get farm-fresh produce, but people still have to prepare the fruits and vegetables they receive. Some people enjoy that aspect of CSA boxes, but others shy away. “I’m kind of taking the CSA and taking it to the next step — preparing it for you in your home,” Weber says.
Weber, who also works part-time at a daycare, is hoping to bring Singing Bowl Chef to a wider audience next year. She and a partner are taking a business class in February and plan to launch a more generalized meal service sometime next year. Weber will still offer personal chef services, but she sees an opportunity to capitalize on the “growing trend of prepared meal planning.”
“People are wanting gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free,” she says. “These are huge trends right now in food and meal planning.”
