Seward Co-op has hired Chad Snelson as director of operations at Seward Co-op’s Creamery Kitchen and Co-op Creamery Neighborhood Café. At this point, with the café still under construction, it’s been a lot of planning and forecasting for Chad.

“Planning is fun,” says Chad, “but actually doing it is way more fun.”

Chad is familiar with both planning and doing in the restaurant world. In 1991, at the age of twenty-one, he opened his first restaurant, Good-bye Blue Monday in Northfield, Minn. He then worked at commissary and bakery businesses and ran a fresh-dough facility for Panera Bread, before it went national.

“Their sourdough was good back then,” he says.

Chad also ran a wholesale bakery in Chicago called Little Miss Muffin before opening the award-winning restaurant Fika here in Minneapolis at American Swedish Institute.

“Our focus at Fika was on service and being the best we could be at what we did,” says Chad. “We’ll do something similar [with Seward Co-op’s Creamery Café], focusing on P6, organic and sustainable food, and fresh produce. But we’ll be the best, while still sharing co-op values with the community.”

As for Chad’s immediate plans, hiring a chef for the Creamery Café is his top priority. He says he feels quite confident that Seward Co-op can hire “top-flight” talent for the position. “From a chef’s perspective,” he says, “This is going to be a very attractive job.”

Chad says the other aspect of planning for the Creamery Café is determining what the dining experience is going to be like and preparing Seward’s grocery shoppers for a change in what they’ve expected from the Franklin store.

“Staff will clear the tables. There will be linen napkins,” Chad says. “It will feel more like a restaurant.”
But the main focus is to bring everything back to the Seward Co-op’s reputation and high-quality.

“How can the café shine based on what it does best?” Chad asks. “I think we can hit that bullseye.”