Dana Spandet never dreamed of running her own business, but after working various food industry jobs for over a decade, COVID-19 awoke her to a new reality.
“I was executive chef at a catering restaurant, and when COVID hit, we had $3.5 million in weddings on the books that just evaporated,” Spandet explained. “I started scooping up those tiny backyard COVID weddings. And we made a scene in Milwaukee.”
Spandet is chef and owner of Flour Girl & Flame, a restaurant and mobile food truck business based in West Allis. She visited “The Larry Meiller Show” to talk about pizza, ice cream and keeping business local.
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Flour Girl & Flame’s origin story remains a huge influence on how Spandet operates her business today: The brick-and-mortar restaurant is operable during the fall and winter months, while during the spring and summer, Spandet and her staff can work festivals, gala events, and yes, weddings.
Spandet said she has a loyal customer base that’s used to her business’s atypical schedule, while the seasonal approach suits her love of events: “We’re able to do a grand reopening every year!”
An unfortunate turn of events
In 2022, Spandet suffered a setback that could have put a stop to the annual reopening celebrations.
After crashing her moped and enduring a traumatic brain injury, she lost the senses of taste and smell, both essential to her line of work. Since then, Spandet’s been working to get back in touch with those crucial culinary tools.
“I’ve been doing some smell training,” Spandet revealed. “I’ve got basil and tomato down pretty good.”
Pepperoni Girl & Flame
Though Flour Girl & Flame specializes in unique ingredients like dill pickles, arugula, and foraged mushrooms, Spandet admitted you can’t go wrong with classic toppings.
“My personal favorite is pepperoni,” Spandet confessed. “There’s a lot of ways we can go with pepperoni. We just did a combination of pepperoni, apple and black garlic. And it worked.”
Don’t be fooled by her love of the conventional, though. Spandet and her staff employ a variety of diverse flavors: “We do a Korean pizza with kimchi, we’ve done a Ukrainian pizza, we collaborated with a Puerto Rican business to bring their food to a pizza, and we have a pepperoni and chili crisp pizza that’s a little bit Asian-centric. That’s a popular one for sure.”
Thinking locally and globally
Spandet also strives to keep her business as local as possible, and her location helps her to do just that: “We’re right down the street from the West Allis Farmer’s Market,” Spandet said. “We’re able to bop down there and just kind of cook with the seasons as we go. We grow a lot of what we put on the pizzas in house. And we’re proud of that.”
Spandet is also proud of being a woman-owned business and being part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Flour Girl & Flame’s mission statement stresses their support of women growers, LGBTQ+ producers, and farmers of color.
Fire and ice (cream)
Spandet’s dessert menu reflects her desire to keep things local, as it features small batch ice cream from several Wisconsin creameries, such as Purple Door Ice Cream from Milwaukee, Scratch Ice Cream from Brookfield and Sassy Cow Creamery from Columbus.
But customers don’t need to indulge in ice cream to fill their sweet tooth cravings.
“We’ve got four beehives on our rooftop,” Spandet revealed. “We finish the pizza with a little ring of local honey. So, you get a little dessert on your crust.”
