After over five years running his popular local meal delivery service, Fresh Chef Meal Prep, industry veteran Austin Vetter will be adding a brick-and-mortar cafe to his business.
Fresh Chef Cafe, a counter-service eatery, is slated to open inside Summit Place at 6737 W. Washington St. in West Allis. The Cafe will feature breakfast and lunch items including breakfast sandwiches, protein bowls and lunch sandwiches and wraps. And – if all goes well – Vetter is hoping for an opening by mid-August.
And yes, for those who are fans of Vetter’s meal prep business, that will remain in operation as well.
From Taco Bell to Fresh Chef
Vetter has spent his entire career working in the food industry. He cut his teeth early on with jobs at Taco Bell and Boston Market before moving on to Bravo at BAYSHORE where he started out as a dishwasher and worked his way up to a position as line cook.
“From the beginning, I liked the pace and the rush of cooking at restaurants,” Vetter says, noting that he enrolled temporarily in a culinary program, but decided that he learned better on the job than he did in the classroom.
“For years, I continued to work in higher volume restaurants, where I learned the systems that kept things running smoothly,” he recalls. “By the time I was in my early 20s, I’d worked my way up into a management position. And then, from there, I took jobs with local restaurants… I opened Dandan in 2016 and later moved on to work at Hollander Cafe.”
In 2019, he started casually sharing his personal meal prep on social media. He didn’t suspect it would generate as much interest as it did. But friends and family continued to encourage him to launch his own business. So, in July of 2019, he posted a menu on Facebook that people could order from.
“I was still working part-time in restaurants, but the business took off pretty quickly,” he says. “My last position was opening Egg & Flour Pasta Bar in Bay View. But when we had to close just a week later due to the pandemic, I refocused my energy on building the Fresh Chef Meal Prep business, offering no-contact delivery and growing the business organically, mostly through word of mouth. We wanted to earn people’s business, so we didn’t do much marketing. But our core value was delivering high quality meals and it didn’t take long for the word to spread.”
A healthful success story
By the end of 2024, they’d launched corporate lunch catering, a revenue stream that earned them business from Marquette Mens Basketball, UW-Milwaukee Mens Basketball and The Chinooks.
Fast forward to 2025 and Fresh Chef has 20 employees. They’ve also grown from delivering 300 meals to 10,000 meals every month.
“I’d dedicated my life to work in kitchens, and there were moments when I really felt like my life didn’t have a purpose,” Vetter admits. “But Fresh Chef gave me that purpose. I had worked under so much bad management, but that taught me what not to do. And ultimately, I learned how to efficiently operate my own business.”
Vetter says his wife, Maria, was also a big contributor to Fresh Chef’s success. “She’s been so supportive throughout the process,” he says. “And we make a great team. She handles all the logistics for the business and delivery while I handle the food and management of that side.”
Vetter says his goal wasn’t really to open a cafe. But when one of his customers, who also happened to work as an electrician at Summit Place – a shared workspace with about 90 tenants – told him that they were looking for a new tenant to run a public-facing cafe in the building, his interest was piqued.
When he took a look and found that it would essentially offer him a turn-key restaurant space, he began planning how the business would look if he added a casual restaurant to his already buzzing business.
What to expect at the cafe
“The goal will be to offer a menu of breakfast and lunch options with personality,” Vetter says. “We’ll have a seasonal menu with made-to-order food along with some grab-and-go items and catering for folks in the building.”
Vetter says that Fresh Chef Cafe will offer a full coffee program, along with smoothies and various beverages. From there, the menu will feature breakfast offerings like avocado toast, a breakfast ciabatta (egg, Jones chicken sausage, cheddar, spinach, garlic aioli) and coconut overnight oats.
Lunch will include sandwiches such as a smoked turkey pesto panini, a ham and brie sandwich, a chipotle chicken wrap and potentially even options like a tofu banh mi.
There will also be protein bowls including a Southwestern bowl with chicken, corn, black beans and cilantro lime vinaigrette; a Mediterranean chickpea bowl with tzatziki, tomatoes and cucumbers; as well as offerings like a Cobb Salad.
Vetter says cafe will be fast casual, offering counter service Monday through Friday from about 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. He says they will have a casual seating area for those who’d like to stay for lunch. There will also be outdoor seating to accommodate al fresco dining during the warmer months.
As a passionate champion of the local dining scene, Lori has reimagined the restaurant critic's role into that of a trusted dining concierge, guiding food lovers to delightful culinary discoveries and memorable experiences.
Lori is an avid cook whose accrual of condiments and spices is rivaled only by her cookbook collection. Her passion for the culinary industry was birthed while balancing A&W root beer mugs as a teenage carhop, fed by insatiable curiosity and fueled by the people whose stories entwine with every dish. Lori is the author of two books: the "Wisconsin Field to Fork" cookbook and "Milwaukee Food". Her work has garnered journalism awards from entities including the Milwaukee Press Club. In 2024, Lori was honored with a "Top 20 Women in Hospitality to Watch" award by the Wisconsin Restaurant Association.
When she’s not eating, photographing food, writing or planning for TV and radio spots, you’ll find Lori seeking out adventures with her husband Paul, traveling, cooking, reading, learning, snuggling with her cats and looking for ways to make a difference.
