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75!
with
your host Ryan and Paul.
Cause we both give a little anger
Dale's Western Lanes.
A lot of Lanes.
This
World renowned chef Travis Tesca.
That's what I heard.
And I'm saying that because he's getting a pretty big promotion that we're gonna hear about.
Have you ever had his food?
Travis Tesca, the former executive chef of the Wright House.
Yeah, that's right.
No pun intended.
And recently took over the culinary program at NTC for the past number of years.
Cool.
Very, very successful chef.
One of Wasa's celebrity chefs, we call him.
But he's got a chance when I say world renowned, I mean, we're gonna hear about something big that's happening with Travis Tesca coming up.
Cool, can't wait.
And the World Horseshoe Finals were last week at the Greenhack Turner Center.
That went well.
Yeah, it was a big
event.
big
Can't wait to...
I smell some animals.
Let's see if you recognize it.
Can you name, here are the people at the grandstand, Paul.
Go ahead.
Artists at the grandstand.
Okay, this will be good.
It's not that money, I'll tell you that.
God rest his soul.
Chris Jansen, can you name one of his songs?
Can you name an Eddie Money song?
A lot of Eddie Money songs.
I can name his whole collection, to be honest with you.
August 6th is a band called Skillet.
We're moving from the country and Western genre to the food genre.
Looks like kind of a rock band looking at their picture.
Skillet.
Can you name any Skillet songs, Paul?
Yeah, no.
Okay.
Sorry.
And that's it for the bands this year at the Wisconsin Valley Ferris Grandstand.
Well, I like new music, and that would be new music for me, I believe.
Fine.
Eric Church, let's not forget.
Eric Church performed at the Wisconsin Valley Ferris once.
That's
The Rodeo is coming August
7th and 8th, and on the 9th is of course the iconic Demo Derby.
Yeah, the iconic Demo Derby.
So a whole smorgasbord of events coming up this week at the Wisconsin Ballet Fair, which we can't wait to check out with the kids.
Smorgasbord, we can't get off this food theme here.
The skillet, what is a smorgasbord?
Yeah, give it to me.
Do you know how much?
It's kind of pumpkin growing season now, too.
Okay.
Squash and all that.
Yeah.
Mark Holly, famous pumpkin tour.
Best...
pumpkin tooth, I know.
Mark Holly of Channel 7 fame, you know, he has got his famous world-class pumpkin that he does.
The biggest pumpkin in the world.
Yeah, I don't think he did it last year.
No, he took a year off.
He has the biggest.
Here's the trivia.
Go ahead.
Do you know how much Mark Holly's famous pumpkin grows per day?
Per day?
Per day, the weight.
I'm looking for, in pounds.
Right.
Or not necessarily pounds, whichever metric, whichever, whichever.
I gave you a little hint there.
Yeah, okay, which I didn't mean to it could be ounces It could be in the ounces.
It's a skill I have to pull hints out of you when you give me trivia.
Use whatever skill you want.
Okay.
How much does Mark?
I don't want to give it any away
How much does Mark Holly's famous pumpkin grow per day at kind of one of the higher grow days?
What do
I grew about 60 pounds yesterday.
Did you make a mistake?
What?
60 pounds?
She goes, yeah, no, 60 pounds.
I go, 60 pounds.
It takes a human like eight years to grow 60 pounds.
She goes, yeah, no, but some days it grows 100.
Wow.
Are you telling me that it grows 100 pounds in a 24 hour period?
Yeah, it grows up to 100 pounds in a 24 hour period.
Almost not believable.
It's right.
That's crazy.
It's insane.
Yeah.
We'll see if Travis Tesco knows about that.
Okay.
Several underappreciated iconic Wausau landmarks, Paul.
Okay.
I don't know if you know that there's one right by UWMC.
That kinda rings a bell.
And with a live report, here's brand new Wausau Business Show correspondent, Shay Reif is off today.
Rebecca Deimos, Rebecca.
Ryan and Paul, I'm on location at one of Wausau's most amazing and iconic landmarks.
Hello, Wausonians.
Imagine you're driving down Steward Avenue.
You pass UWMC or UWSP at Wausau, whatever they're calling it now, I don't know.
But you're thinking about lunch.
and you just rolled right past one of the most electrifying pieces of granite in the entire city of Wausau.
I'm talking about the historical marker at 8th Avenue and Stewart Avenue.
Buckle up.
Long before Wausau was known for insurance companies, paper factories, and questionable roundabouts, we were apparently the place in Wisconsin to learn how to teach children.
Yes, Wausau.
Not Madison, not Milwaukee, us.
This beautifully overlooked granite marker reads, and I quote, first teacher's training school in Wisconsin, 1899 to 1943.
The Marathon County Board appropriated $12,000 for construction of a building completed in October 1902.
12 grand in 1902.
Groundbreaking economics right there.
Yes, right back at ya.
Thank you so much for listening.
Classes began September 11th, 1899 with Professor Oliver E. Wells as principal at a salary of $1,800 a year and Miss Rosalia Bohr as teacher at $1,300 a year.
Over the next 43 years, the little school that sat on this land cranked out roughly 1,400 teachers
who fanned out across 365 rural classrooms.
So next time you're stuck in traffic by UWMC or UWSP at Wausau or whatever they're calling it now, just remember, you're idling next to the birthplace of the very first place for teacher training in the entire state of Wisconsin.
You're welcome, Wisconsin.
For this Wausau business show, iconic Wausau landmark update,
This is Rebecca Deimos reporting live.
Back to you, Ryan and Paul.
I'm listening
to the Wausau Business
Show.
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But most importantly, it takes an incredible local partner dedicated to helping you achieve your goals.
At Incredible Bank, we are that partner.
Let us help your business do the incredible.
Incredible Bank, member
FDIC.
yeah
Three and a half years.
But
Yeah, actually, 25 years.
25.
25
decades.
Doesn't look that old.
I appreciate that.
Thank
Well, I worked for a brief stint at a company that I don't think is in business any longer and just prior to that, I was in college.
it was in Rhinelander.
Fishing maps.
Fishing
Those come
go.
I sold fishing maps over the phone.
I was a telemarketer.
Yeah, I tried.
Yeah, I
that?
Less than one.
It was my job after college as I tried to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Oh, no.
No, that would have been bad.
No, I sold them over the phone.
So I was a telemarketer.
would call places like my favorite was to call Lake Okeechobee in Florida and sell
them
fishing maps.
And I would find out that I would often call during a drought and they would yell at me that.
Young lady, you need to call it a time when we have some rain.
Please don't call again.
Click it and be like, oh, awesome.
So there was no lake fall at the time?
No, because it would drain when it was not the rainy
rain.
And those are lessons that you learn
making phone calls.
math.
I was just giving a list.
have a degree in English with an emphasis.
in creative writing because I thought I was going to be, you know, the next great author
then I fell in love with the Boys and Girls Club and that dream went out the window
found a better dream.
Well, there wasn't one, I moved home after college as most people do for a little while to try to figure out my life.
And
Yep,
And when I went to college, I knew I wanted to work with kids, but I didn't want to be a teacher.
And this was a path to work with kids without having to go back to school to get my teaching degree.
So I was the team coordinator.
So
ran the skate park, which is now our elementary center.
I ran
girls with a purpose programming, restorative justice programming, that kind of stuff.
And over the years, I've had the opportunity to try everybody's role and some I'm not good at and I'm okay with that.
Other people are way better at it than I am.
And so they, when I had the opportunity to apply for this job, I took it.
I did.
Skateboards and rollerblades at the time.
Yeah.
It was wildly popular when I started.
Moasa at the time didn't have any outdoor skate parks.
were the only game in town.
Center.
We went to Four Seasons skate park in
I think in Appleton, that was the big field trip
the time.
But yeah, it was huge.
We had some really big ramps.
When we renovated the park, when renovated the basement, we had former club members who are now in their thirties come to dismantle the ramps to put them back together in their own spaces.
really interesting, though, because they didn't label any of the wood.
So we're trying to figure out how you're going to know where this 2x4 goes versus this 2x4,
sheeting.
But it was very, very traumatic for people that we were getting rid of the skate park.
Oh, and you put it back up somewhere else, though?
We did not, somebody else did.
Nope, I tried.
At the time though, the ramps were, they were six feet tall at the top.
to drop in on that, you have to be good.
I was not, I couldn't even sit on the skateboard to go down the ramp.
So I just did the fun box in the center and-
Yeah, the fun box.
That's always in the center of a skateboard park.
Always in the center of a skateboard park is something called the fun box.
Oh, I like that.
Do you use skateboard?
No, I don't either.
But my son does.
And Dave Beckman over at the Chamber of Conners grew up on skateboards.
Yes.
His parents used to own a skateboarding company.
That's right.
Which is pretty cool.
Yeah.
So then you get involved.
Well, Craig's here too.
And Craig, how's the.
Hey, Craig.
No, I'm enjoying the
conversation.
another check in.
Still on track.
Everything is going well.
Yes.
I
Yeah, everything is going great actually so far.
So
ahead of track or I would say on probably even a little bit ahead.
So they're they're doing well and everything's is going well at this point.
So
That's the beauty of this job.
It's all inside.
If it was the smoke and the hot, probably would have slowed us down, but not when it's inside.
What
Yeah.
So I mean, the Boys and Girls Club has been a big part of Myron for a long time.
so it really evolves from our corporate office.
And wherever we have our satellite offices, they're all involved in those different clubs and those organizations and those communities.
So when I moved here to Wausau, it was important that I really wanted to become part of the club.
And the Boys and Girls Club here in Wausau is such an integral part of this community.
So us being a part of that, we've been fortunate to do a lot of work for them.
When like Kim just talked about the elementary center renovation, we were able to do that.
We'll be doing the work in Merrill when we start working for the new Boys and Girls Club
So our mission is to enrich and transform the lives of young people.
Our national office has a version of that mission, but it started in the 1860s when a group of women saw some boys walking down the street following the men who were going to the coal mines and they thought they needed some place to spend time.
So they opened the first boys club and
the boys club until 1990 and then it finally became the boys and girls club and they welcomed girls in for the first time in 1990.
my understanding.
Hartford, Connecticut.
I think it's a couple of things.
I think when you walk into the Boys and Girls Club here in town, it's a place that is just for kids.
The whole building belongs to the kids, everything.
in it is designed for kids and teens.
It's their space.
They own it.
We are there to support them and to provide programming opportunities and experiences that they can't get anywhere else for a variety of reasons, whether that's access to things like transportation to get there or financial or their families are working.
So it's just, it really is a place that is just for kids.
So whether it's after school, non-school days during the summer.
We're there Monday through Friday.
Or, you know, because I know a little bit about the Boys and Girls Club and obviously I enjoy going to the Harvest Dinner.
That's a big fundraiser for you that's coming up on November.
What is it?
November 12th this year at the Roth Child Pavilion, otherwise known as the 400
Yeah, the kids and teens enroll to become a club member.
Our enrollment fee is $20 for the calendar year.
And if they don't come for summer, that's the only fee that they would pay.
But kids can walk through the doors and there's educational opportunities, there's sports, fitness, recreation opportunities.
health and wellness opportunities, cooking programs,
ton of field trips.
Our art studio
summer is crazy busy with different hands-on projects and activities.
And all that for
That's $20 for the year.
And that doesn't even include our workforce readiness initiative where we take kids on business tours, help them apply for college for their first jobs.
They can have club-based work experiences through a junior staff program.
That's a
question.
And the club is really community-funded, whether those are individuals, businesses, foundations, corporate sponsors.
Really, we were designed by the community, brought to Wasaha by the community.
Gary Fuels was actually our founding board president, and we continue to be funded by the community.
And those donations and investments help offset the cost for families.
So $20 is their enrollment fee.
But it's that's certainly not the cost to serve one kid for a year.
I think there's
a lot of people that have the perception that it's there's a lot of funding like state funding, federal funding, those types
Yeah.
And that's not the case.
So
Primarily.
Every
small percentage, but a majority of it is all community based funding.
And why
curiosity?
We do get a little bit from the state of Wisconsin has been supportive of Boys and Girls Clips across the state with a couple of initiatives.
Those contracts vary in amount based on budget and elections and those types of things.
Our meal program is a federal program.
So
we do get reimbursed about 66% of that program.
And then the rest of it is offset by things like harvest dinner.
So, you know, our annual meal budget is about $200 plus thousand dollars.
Yeah.
kids do you serve then?
For meals.
So far this year, we've served 25,000 meals in snacks at no cost to kids and club members,
Right now, there's about 1,200 enrolled members between all four sites.
No, we're not a licensed child care center.
So kids, there's much more fluidity, I think, in people's schedules.
So if you happen to take today off and you want to stay home with your kids, then we don't see your kids today.
If kids have other responsibilities,
especially during the summer.
We have a lot of club members that may be caregivers for their siblings.
They go out and have a job.
They're helping in gardens, whatever that looks like.
We might not see them during the summer, but we see them during the school year.
And the opposite is true too.
There's one family in particular that I can think of.
They were coming to stay with their grandparents.
in Merrill.
But grandparents are driving them down every day so that they have some place that they can go.
Organizationally, we serve third through 12th grade.
Each site is a little bit different by the age group that they serve, but the Wausau site is third through 12th grade.
Yep.
And kids can get there in whatever way is safe for them.
So if they're getting dropped off, if they ride their bikes, their scooters, if they take the bus, if they walk, whatever that looks like.
Well, I think it's license.
I think it's fees, right?
I mean, there's not a, I don't know of a child care center that's going to charge you $20 for the year
it's childcare.
in all reality, we serve kids that...
could be on their own, right?
Eight years old.
Some parents, they wouldn't consider leaving their eight year old home alone.
But some kids are home alone at eight years old.
And these are kids that have aged out of, typically have aged out of a traditional childcare setting because it is so structured.
There are so many restrictions on ratios and those types of things.
And so these are kids that can make choices on their own, can choose for the most part.
It's just a wide range of kids that walk through our doors every day.
We're a chartered boys and girls club,
we are held to a very high national standards, safety standards, organizational standards, charter standards, and we pay dues and fees to that national office to be held accountable to those things.
speak.
far less than 1%.
Okay,
So we opened, we were born and raised in Wassa, so our main site is here.
We opened at Greenhack Turner Community Center, formerly Greenhack Fieldhouse in 1999.
We've actually been out there since 1999.
The DC Everest Middle School, we've been there since 2012, and Prairie River Middle School in Maryland.
We've been there since October of 22.
right?
Yep, the Carolyn S. Marks site.
Definitely a significant part of the building, yes.
I wasn't around at the time, so I couldn't give you an exact figure, but I know she was very influential in not only the funding of the building, but the concept of choosing the Boys and Girls Club and those conversations as a community influencer.
She made a difference in many organizations in our community.
I
her philanthropic efforts.
I would be making a guess and I don't want to be wrong publicly.
it was...
And this is a public forum to be wrong on.
I'm M-A-R-K.
S.
It doesn't say what her background was though.
She died in 2002.
She has a lot to do with the community foundation of North Central Wisconsin, which we love.
Got a rest your soul.
She led with her heart.
She was a steadfast and influential humanitarian.
Her commitment through the community continues through the Legacy Fund.
No.
Okay, so we don't know.
There's really no information other than she was a philanthropist and a humanitarian.
Hang on.
Sorry.
Oh, no.
Hang on a second.
Now, here's something from Wassa Pilot and review about her legacy.
We'll get back to this interview shortly.
We're
Okay.
That's a beautiful portrait of her.
Yeah.
She supported the Conservatory of Music, the Wassa Conservatory of Music.
You're giving ladies.
Center for the visual arts.
Geez, she's something.
Yeah.
God bless Carolyn and S. Mark.
Okay.
Yeah.
So getting back to the kids of the Boys and Girls Club, then what capacity are you at in your facility right now?
Right
now we have about 200 kids every day throughout the summer.
240 would be our max.
We have not had turned anyone away yet.
We've hit, we bumped right up against that at our high of 236 this summer.
That gets a little uncomfortable when there's kids everywhere.
You know, when you serve a significant number of teens and tweens, they have a varying schedule.
So whether they have a job or they have responsibilities in the morning or they're, they sleep in.
So we don't have, you know, that 200 all day, every day,
varies.
And it just kind of depends on what the day looks like for kids.
No, when we do summer enrollment, we ask parents and caregivers to give us their best guesstimate of when their kids will be there, but we don't hold them to that.
You know, I think one of the things that the Boys and Girls Club does is provides that consistent place where kids can walk in and be a kid.
So regardless of what's happening.
in our world and their world, what happened at school, what happened at home, what's happening with their friend.
They walk through the doors and they can go into the gym and they can run it off.
They can hang out with other people.
They can step into the art studio and create something and express themselves.
It's just a place for them and they don't have to manage that other stuff.
Yeah.
So in just a couple of weeks, we are getting ready to send our 2026 Youth of the Year off to college.
She's got accepted to UW-Milwaukee, and she's going to start her first day of college.
She's been with us for the past four years.
When she started with us, she actually wouldn't speak to the staff.
And she will tell you that she made some pretty
poor decisions in her behavior choices.
And since then has grown with the support of club staff, of her grandparents, of school people.
She's got a really fantastic mentor who she connected with at the club through our IT program and has just found that support.
And now she's actually giving back to the club.
She's one of our youth development specialists and she's working there this summer.
in our elementary art room, and she wants to pay it forward with what she got out of the club.
going into eighth grade, I believe.
Yep.
There were all sorts of influences in her life that were impacting her negatively, just personally, mentally, and through her grandparents first and foremost, and then the support of people around her and them choosing to bring her to the club.
She's found this really great community of support
supporting, caring adults that have just helped push her forward, lift her up and be the resources that she needs.
And I would think like when she came in eighth grade, I mean, college probably wasn't even remotely close
your
thought
process at that time.
And now to know that she's been accepted and going to go to a four year school is amazing.
She is part of a program that we call Be Great Graduate.
So she's had a one on one mentor with one of our club staff members for the past several years.
And she will tell you, and I know she doesn't mind me sharing this, that she was not doing well academically.
And now she's got all A's and B's.
because of the support of this program.
So our staff goes in and meets
with her
once a week.
Well, he used to, now she graduated.
So
she's got this, has had this support.
And that support for her, if she chooses, will continue into college.
So our graduation specialist will continue to check in on her.
I know her mentor is already trying to figure out ways to go down to Milwaukee to see her.
And it's just, it is not one person.
We are part of the solution for a lot of kids.
And it's even cool.
I know another quick story, but when you talk about we had a
person that was in the program went off to college, graduated and now came back and is working for the club.
That's a really great question.
And I would hate to guess at that.
We only know when kids tell us, you know, by the time our club members are in junior or senior year, we see them less because they're out doing those things.
The kids that ask for help and ask for support or that we reach out to and help support them.
Those are the kids that that we know are going off to college.
There's a few, but unfortunately, just a few, just a few.
But if they were listening right now and struggling, you know,
I can imagine myself in eighth grade, if I was going through some hard times, I probably wouldn't, my first thought wouldn't be, I need to get to the boys and girls club.
So what do you say to those kids when they come in to kind of put them at ease?
Because, you know, to keep a kid coming back over and over again, day after day, regularly is a real art form, I would imagine at that age.
I will tell you, it's our staff.
you know, our youth development specialists, this summer we have about 40 of them, and they are a wide range of experiences of backgrounds, about 20% of them are former club members.
So, and that ranges anywhere from 20 to 30%, depending on the year, but it absolutely comes down to our staff, the staff that show up for them consistently that are present for them, that have fun with them, that provide those programs, activities, and it really comes down to the structure and accountability that kids are looking for that they get with our staff.
they walk in the door and they're like, I don't know about this.
And they're embarrassed.
And obviously, their guard is up.
And you just kind of say, well, if you want to go play ping pong, go play ping pong.
And then your staff takes over from there kind of deal.
That's 100% exactly what
is.
Um, and it's the same with our elementary kids, you know, a parent bringing in an eight year old that
nervous to be there for the first time.
It's a big building.
There's a lot of space, a lot of noise, a lot of kids.
And so there are many times that if a parent says this is his or her first time, our staff will walk them downstairs and give them a tour and introduce them to another, another kid
and a
staff member is, you know, with kids and teens, it's not instantaneous friendships, but it is with our staff.
If they are with our staff, that is their job is to reach out to the kids, get to know them, learn something about them and build that trust in that ongoing really.
relationship and rapport.
Or how does that work?
Because I would imagine if they went home and they're having a tough time at home that they might feel the desire to reach out to the staff at Boys and Girls Club.
How does that work?
It's like, we'll just see you tomorrow or...
Yeah, that's where our safety standards come into place.
We can't do that outside of club hours, with the exception of our graduation specialists who can do that at school during the day.
But our club staff will call home if there are issues or if we have concerns, we reach out to our community partners, whether that's social services, law enforcement, counseling services, anybody that we can build in a support network for kids.
And not every kid needs that support network, right?
And some kids are people ask, you know, what is a typical club member?
And there isn't one.
Kids show up today with a certain
set of challenges and that could change drastically tomorrow.
It just depends on their situation.
Yeah, you know, what what you see in a school is what we see at the club.
just a smaller, a smaller version and a wider range of ages in one building.
Absolutely.
The club is open to all kids and our age group, all kids and teens.
And it really all there's no restrictions based on income, based on zip code, based on family style, anything like that.
So we do have on an annual basis, we serve about 35
different zip codes because somebody might work in, you know, parent or guardian might work in town.
They are living with grandparents for the summer.
There's foster families, different placement situations.
And so we want to make sure that the club is consistent, is affordable, and that caregivers consider us a reliable resource for their families.
1997.
year is 30 years.
big planned?
We are working on it.
are looking forward to unveiling our 30-year
celebration.
Two harvest dinners.
And Ryan, I was just going to mention from a board perspective and you can appreciate this because you've been very gracious with your time over the years and serving in a lot of different boards.
But we can sit
talk about that in the loss of
though.
Craig, go ahead.
to say, as a board member, I mean, again, it's just the people that we have running these organizations, right?
I mean, you look at an executive director like Kim and her staff, the things that they do are just amazing and wouldn't be possible without them.
So again, I just give kudos to Kim and all of her staff and the amazing things they're doing with these kids here and the opportunities and the things that they're giving them are pretty amazing.
to keep the operations going?
Our budget is 2.2 million dollars.
So
That's a great question, Paul.
Way
to help
First, we have our online donation system is always available, and that's right at bgclub.com.
But we strongly encourage people to come in and take a tour.
This is a great platform for us to talk about this.
But seeing the club in action is really where it becomes reality.
You say you have a building that's dedicated just for kids.
Come in and see what it looks like to have a building that is dedicated just for kids.
See the interactions of our staff with our club members because it is a game changer.
And for a lot of kids, this is the thing that keeps them going.
The other thing is we have three fundraising events coming up on Thursday, August 6th.
Is our high tea event that is at the Hilton Garden Inn.
It's celebrating our club girls.
Thursday, November 12th is our largest fundraiser that is a harvest dinner at the Rothschild Pavilion.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So do I.
up a lot.
Perfect.
Perfect.
You love hearing that.
That supports our meal and snack program.
And then every April, we host winemakers dinner again at the Hilton.
And that supports our character and leadership development programs.
So that youth of the year that we talked about, somebody like her is our highlight speaker at that.
That's kind of their, they're coming out their celebration event.
And that is the second Thursday in April.
Absolutely.
We're always looking to sell tickets.
our sponsorships
careful.
Bring some Kleenex.
time?
Yep, that's a great question.
So at my, I love living in Wausau.
There is just so much to do.
So playing outside, kayaking, running, hanging out with my kid, my dog, my family, my friends.
I have not.
Kayaking takes a
I have been and I did go this year.
I will shamefully admit I was only there for two performers and Leanne Rhymes was better than the other
Hardy there this year?
So I only saw Leanne Rhymes and Old Dominion.
okay.
I think she showed up for the crowd.
Did you see Duff Deimos at all?
No.
Oh, darn it.
Oh, yeah.
Hey, Duff.
Hey, Duff.
Yeah.
Every year he does it, I think it's his last year doing the whole thing, and he comes back another year, which I'm happy about.
Yeah.
So that's awesome.
Well, what have we learned?
We learned a lot about Kim.
We learned that she's a whole day, and we learned a lot of great stuff about the Boys and Girls Club.
We've learned that my own construction is guaranteed to finish on time.
Did he use the word guaranteed?
Yeah, I heard
there.
My guess is I'll be back on the show
it doesn't open.
Correct.
We'll
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I'm
car with Nate.
Yeah, you're exactly the two people that we wanted to talk to.
Yeah, the two interns.
Ben and Nate, the two interns.
Hey, guys.
Should I push on speaker?
Sure.
Yeah.
Are they the only two?
Two interns that we have this summer.
I think so.
Oh, guys.
Hey, welcome to the Wausau Business Show, gentlemen.
Hey, guys.
You are honorary rocket industrial interns.
And we know that was national intern day yesterday.
And we want to talk to you about what you're doing today as an intern.
Where are you guys?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So today, as interns for rocket industrial, we went to the paper mill up in Menominee, Michigan.
there.
We went to the by origin paper mill.
Okay.
We got to see the product.
We got to see the process of paper being made from the pulp all the way to the finished product of the, the food paper that you see in.
Yeah.
educating the future.
Okay.
Yeah,
Oh gosh, Nate, you want to start here?
this is your test.
I don't want to
work in a paper mill.
Okay.
Oh yeah, finance.
Marketing and sales.
Yes.
I learned that I learned just, I say the process about making the paper and how
It's very complex.
Like on the surface, it might seem pretty simple.
You just take the pulp and you heat it up and then you flatten out the sheets.
But there's a lot of chemicals that go into it.
It's a very, very complex process.
Yeah.
So just like Rocket, they're SQF certified.
And so a lot of their paper is going to restaurants and big dining establishments.
And it's the paper that you find at the bottom of your restaurant.
I'm a UW Green Bay.
Oh, God.
I think here I go again by white
that's
I went to West.
I went to West too.
I was like right above Bennett.
Also a warrior.
you.
Were you in the pop concert, Nate?
Oh, yeah.
yeah.
I didn't sing very much.
I wasn't a solo guy like Bennett.
Yeah, we just did some group stuff.
I don't even remember what we did.
Oh,
Right now, I'm still navigating that and trying to figure it out.
I've always thought of myself as a leader, and so I really like to take a management role and lead a group in some fashion.
sales team
team?
Hopefully a role that I can do that.
Well, I'm majoring in finance and accounting at Green Bay.
And I'm studying to get my CPA.
take it easy.
And I don't want to go into public accounting really.
I just know that with those...
hedge fund with that certification it's a lot easier opens a lot a lot of doors to do a bunch of different things
finance though
finance bro.
We'll see about that.
what's the new wall for all?
Well, I won't get caught.
It's not a trick
do you hope to live?
Well,
hope to have a nature outdoors guy myself.
So I'd really love to spend a few years out west.
All right,
Sorry, my phone never.
I was waiting for it to ring and I've been working around the house doing packing and stuff and not paying attention.
right.
The right place.
Yeah.
I was just going to start at the beginning.
Please do.
So it actually is ironic.
It's 20 years ago, almost to like
like the week that we started the right place.
So the right place that I was trying to remember and I tried to find it, but I already packed all that stuff up.
I believe it was like August 6th is when we opened.
So, and that would have been in 2006.
So I moved here in May of 2006.
I've been here 20 years, almost exactly.
from?
Well, so originally I'm from Auburn, Dale.
And I worked for the owner of the right place, Patty, in Marshfield at Castle Loma Fine Dining and Be sure I worked there for two years.
And then she had the idea of starting a restaurant in a house and she wanted to do it in Wausau.
So we actually, we started that business together.
I owned a small portion of the restaurant with her.
that place.
And the idea was always that I was going to purchase it from her and run it as my own restaurant.
When that time came, we just couldn't come to an agreement on the price.
And so she sold it to another chef.
And then we all know he didn't, unfortunately, didn't do so well.
different vision for customer service
that.
And that sadly didn't end well.
Oh, well.
Yeah.
You got to move on, right?
With life.
Yeah, exactly.
So then...
Then I actually worked in the automotive industry briefly for a few years just kind of, you know, I was looking for for chef work, but it was not, it was not a friendly market here in wasa that, that had a pay scale that could match what I had made when I was at the right place and I had a mortgage and you know, whatever.
So the automotive industry helped me out a little bit and then.
I was kind of approached by an old food vendor who worked for North Central Technical College, and he was a dean there, and he was like, hey, we're going to start a culinary program.
I know you always talked about wanting to be a part of that.
And he's like, so here's the dean's name that's going to be in charge of it, and you should reach out.
So I did.
And she said, cool.
We're not ready to hire anybody yet or whatever.
When we are, I'll let you know.
A couple months later, whatever, I got an email from her and I applied and interviewed and they liked me and so they hired me to start the culinary program.
When I was hired, it was a list of classes and that was the only thing that existed
Uh, yeah, there was, there was no students yet.
There was nothing yet.
It was just a list of classes.
So I started at the tech in January of 2016.
Yeah.
And they actually hired me to start the corner program that fall.
So I actually worked there for like eight months, but now the getting everything ready.
Yeah.
There was nothing, right?
Like the kitchens didn't exist
when
I started
literally
nothing in the classes.
They had the list of classes and they had the approval from the state to start that program or to run those classes, I should say.
So I wrote all the curriculum for the first year and picked out all the textbooks.
Where
I went to Johnson and Wales University in Denver.
And is
No, chef Adam from Chow.
He went to somewhere
in Colorado.
chef Nate from RedEye did a bunch of work in Colorado too.
cool.
But chef Adam was yeah, out, out.
It's like in Maryland, I think, where he
then Chef Nate went to the Art Institute, I believe, in Minneapolis
Yeah.
Yeah, so we had...
Uh, anywhere between, uh, you know, the capacity of the program was 15.
Uh, and there were many years where we took 15 and then there were some years where we took less.
Um, COVID was a little difficult.
Open was hard on us and we had a
couple of years where enrollment was very light
right
after COVID.
Um, we had actually grown the program.
So I, so I got it off the ground, got it rocking.
Um, like I said, designed the kitchens, wrote the curriculum, kind of got all that rocking.
And then that next year, we hired another chef and then he came on and started teaching the second year after the first year was going.
So then there were two of us and we did that with an assistant for a few years.
And then actually in 2019, our enrollment was so strong that we needed a third chef.
We were going to have two sections every year because it was really good.
brought on a third chef and then COVID happened.
the enrollment went back down, but we kept the third chef and added a hospitality program.
And then four years ago, they asked me to start the butchering program.
did the same thing.
I started the butchering program from the ground up
designed the cold lab space and the slaughter trailer and kind of gathered all the knowledge that we needed to get that thing rocking.
And then I taught that for three years.
So cool.
I taught the butchering program just.
Just me taught that we did.
I mean, I had an assistant occasionally.
I had a help, but that was kind of like my program to start and run.
So how
So we had we had pretty good enrollment in the butchering program too.
especially for a new program.
It's kind of a niche thing.
So you're not going to get a thousand students.
You know,
Good enrollment.
I don't know what this fall looks like.
it?
Yeah,
So, yeah, back in March, I was just scrolling around on LinkedIn one afternoon or one evening, and the Culinary Institute of America was hiring for chef instructors, and I thought, well, I'm a chef instructor.
can do
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