Woman in front of Curd Girl food cart on Capitol Square on fall day
The Curd Girl cart's new owners started slow during the pandemic, but have been ramping up service.
Despite its name, the Madison-based “Curd Girl” cheese curd cart is under the ownership of not one, but three girls — sisters — who became owners when they were only 12, 17 and 18 years old.
Customers regularly tell the sisters that the name should be changed to “Curd Girls.” Alejandra Butcher-Salazar, the oldest of the sisters, says their response is always “We know.”
Jessica Wartenweiler started Curd Girl in 2013 with friend Kayla Zeal and eventually assumed sole ownership. When she was looking to sell the cart in 2020, Wartenweiler thought of the sisters, who had all worked at the cart. Because running Curd Girl had given Wartenweiler the confidence to pursue opportunities she previously believed impossible, she wanted other young women to experience this. Wartenweiler says it was clear the sisters had the determination, work ethic and maturity to take on the business.
“The ups and downs of running your own business teaches you so much, not only about logistics and problem solving and what it takes to be successful, but you also learn so much about yourself and your own resilience.”
When Wartenweiler approached the sisters in the spring of 2020 about taking over Curd Girl, Alejandra — now 21 — had just decided to pursue a business degree at UW-Madison. She thought running the cart would be a good opportunity to apply what she was learning in her classes to her own business.
While they’ve faced challenges in learning how to operate a business, the sisters say running Curd Girl as a “family unit” has made them closer. Taking on a new business is nerve-wracking at any time, Alejandra says, but doing so in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic was extra stressful.
Under Wartenweiler’s ownership, Curd Girl only appeared regularly at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, but the Butcher-Salazar sisters wanted to do more events. They served at a handful of events in 2020, but Alejandra says these weren’t successful. Instead, they spent most of the year planning for 2021: contacting organizers to understand what public events would be happening and booking more private events.
“The lesson that we learned was just trying things out and being okay with it not going so well,” Alejandra says.
Since taking over Curd Girl, the sisters have doubled the number of events they do in the summer and added new homemade lemonades and sauces, including ranch and blackberry basil jalepeño, to the original menu.
Customer service was a skill the sisters already had mastered before 2020, but Alejandra says learning the back end of the business was the real challenge: acquiring a food safety license, hiring and retaining employees and deciding which events to attend.
The sisters spent this past summer working at a variety of events, including the Dane County Farmers’ Market nearly every Saturday, festivals like Taste of Madison and Willy Street Fair, and weddings, birthdays and graduation parties.
Hazel — the youngest of the sisters — says her favorite aspect of the business is being a part of Madison’s food truck community and trading samples with other vendors at the Farmers’ Market. Witnessing customers try cheese curds for the first time is also always a delight, says Hazel.
During one early-morning Farmers’ Market, Hazel recalls when a customer tried cheese curds for the first time at Curd Girl and came back to the cart again and again throughout the day.
“Every 30 minutes they came back and more and more people joined them each time,” Hazel says.
The sisters hope to eventually expand Curd Girl outside of Madison, but are focused now on their current operation. They are feeling especially encouraged after winning second place in the Best of Madison’s Food Cart category this year.
Alejandra will graduate from UW-Madison in 2024, but she says she sees herself staying involved with Curd Girl and imagines the same for her sisters.
“I think that's so valuable as sisters as we get older and explore different life paths that we always have this one thing.”
