Hiawatha Chef Supply

Hiawatha Chef Supply in its 67th year as a family business
Hiawatha Chef Supply, Inc. is in its 67th year of operation as a family business, according to owner and president Tracy Thompson—“big enough to serve you, small enough to know you.”
The Michigan-based foodservice equipment and janitorial supplies distributor was founded in Escanaba in 1955 by Tracy’s mother, the former Lois Murker, and

her business partner, Doug Wescott. The company took its name from “The Song of Hiawatha,” a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem set in the Upper Peninsula. It now has stores in both Escanaba and Appleton, Wisconsin. Two days after opening in an East Ludington Street storefront, Hiawatha Chef Supply reportedly sold its entire inventory to the new K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base in nearby Gwinn, Michigan. The goods went to equip the first dining hall at the facility still under construction. With cash in hand, Lois said, “I spent that entire night typing orders to replace the inventory and add more.” She would spend the next five years “building inventory by reinvesting all the profits” and “traveling the Upper Peninsula and explaining who I was and what Hiawatha Chef Supply could offer.”
As the business grew, the company moved to ever bigger quarters. It relocated first to a building farther down Ludington Street, then to its current location in the former National Guard armory at 400 North Lincoln Road. A warehouse was added there in 1986. Lois also changed partners. Doug left the company in 1956; in 1958, Lois married a factory representative, Ralph Thompson. He became co-owner. Together Lois and Ralph continued to grow the business. They expanded the company’s product line to include not just commercial foodservice equipment and supplies, but also janitorial equipment and supplies, chemicals, paper and disposables, when they purchased Northern Chemical Company in Escanaba. For eight years, 1978-1986, they operated a branch of Hiawatha Chef Supply, Inc. in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1978, the company also began manufacturing its own high-volume chemicals and compounds under the Hiawatha name. The company continues to furnish foodservice equipment and supplies to thousands of businesses, schools and organizations in the Upper Peninsula and Northeastern Wisconsin, and now also sells to customers across the United States, thanks to the Internet. Ralph Thompson died in 1987, and Lois in 2012. She’d been retired for 17 years. By 1995, when the company’s ownership was transferred to the Thompsons’ sons, Terry and Tracy, the business was valued at more than $1 million. Tracy became sole owner and president, when Terry relocated to Fort Collins, Colorado, in 2003 to start his own foodservice supply company. Tracy opened the Appleton store in 2010; its current location is 2604 West Wisconsin Ave.
“We have a great team here at Hiawatha,” Tracy said. “Our longevity is due largely to them, as well as to our customers and suppliers, and to the support of the community as a whole.”
Hiawatha Chef Supply, Inc. is a member of the Excell Foodservice Equipment Dealer Network and the Foodservice Equipment Distributors Association.