 Hello, I'm Betsy Alice, Executive Director of the Sheboygan County Chamber, and I'd like to welcome you to this edition of Love Where You Live, a monthly magazine of the best things that we have in Sheboygan County. And speaking of some of those best things, our first guest today is Matt Weersbach. He is Program Director of SEAS, the Sailing Education Association of Sheboygan. I'm so used to calling it SEAS, Matt, that it almost eluded me what the actual name is, but it does have some meaning. Welcome to the program. Thank you. Good morning, Betsy. And yeah, the name slips me up a little bit once in a while, too. Yeah, yep. Takes a little getting used to. Well, it's a busy place these days, and I would guess that probably a lot of people in our county don't know much about it. So if you could share with us maybe the mission, the vision, what is SEAS today, that would be really helpful, I think, for me as well as for our audience. Of course. Sailing Education Association of Sheboygan, SEAS, was formed a few years ago, and it's kind of a conglomeration of the non-profits that have already existed in Sheboygan for a while. The Sheboygan Youth Sailing Center started 25 years ago. Sales Sheboygan has been around since about 2000, and a lot of these organizations have started some really good projects in the sailing and boating realm. But moving forward, we were trying to help organize that a little bit better. They were all individual organizations, and they still maintain their own non-profits to this day. But we're trying to help share resources, we're trying to help actually move programming forward and do more for the community than was currently being done. Our goals are very large, and we want to get a lot accomplished. I love that. That's a great, great place to start. So our actual mission is boating for everybody. And our goal is to get anybody who wants to go on Lake Michigan out on the water. And we think it's a real shame if you've lived in Sheboygan and you've never been on Lake Michigan. It's such an amazing resource, and it's right there in our backyards. I completely agree with you. When I first moved here, I had to talk a few people into going swimming. They hadn't been swimming in 20 years. So, yeah, I'm a huge Lake Michigan fan. So tell me a little more about your adaptive sailing program. That's fascinating, and it sounds like it's growing and doing some amazing things. Yeah, adaptive sailing is one of our newer programs, and that's something Seas has started to take on in particular. While Seosha Boygan does a lot of major regattas, including world-class events, and New Sealing Club's done a great job teaching youth and adults for, as I said, 25 years, nobody had really been working with people with disabilities. And that's something that Seas actually took up in 2014 when we hosted the World Blind Match Racing Championships. So everybody on the boat was blind. So we had three blind competitors. Their coach was on a boat following behind, and they were using soundmarks to get around the course and to find out where the other boat was. There was a group in Houston, Texas who had originally decided they were going to host that event in 2014, and they backed out. And I'm not sure the reasoning why, but I think part of it was some of the other organizations were intimidated. So World Sailing was looking for a place to host this event, and they came to us because our reputation was great, and we do have a little bit of a reputation of trying new things around here. So we hosted the event. After we agreed to it, we realized, well, we've never actually worked with anybody who is visually impaired or with any sort of real needs outside of the traditional sailing structures. So we looked for partners with the local Lions Clubs, and we learned a lot as we went, and we've continued that on to this day, and we'll actually be hosting that same event again this year in the fall. Wow, that's exciting. That was a great event. I remember, because they used the sound, there was a construction truck on South Pier during one of the events that had the reverse beeping sound, and it kind of created a little bit of havoc, but they got over it quickly. Yep, and Coast Guard Helicopter did a training mission not too far away, too, and then they couldn't hear anything, so there were some obstacles to overcome that week. Well, pretty amazing event, and what a great community service for you to provide. You recently announced the building kind of across from the Chamber of Commerce down the way a bit, the old Alliant building that's right on the river across from Spreckers that you're going to be developing something there. Can you tell us the plans for that property and what you can expect? Our plans are to tear the old building down. We had originally hoped to use it as is, but it's just too big of a project to fit it to our needs. So hopefully in July we're going to tear down the old building, and in the next year or so build a new facility that's specially designed for all the things that we're trying to accomplish. We really are looking for a space that meets our needs, which are a little bit unique to sailing and boating and programming. So the goal is to have a new building by the spring of 2017, but as anybody knows that could happen or it could take a little longer, it is building. There is a lot happening in the spring of 2017. That's when a lot of the apartment complexes downtown will be completed as well. So we'll have a lot more people downtown. Yep. Tell me a little, I'd like a little more detail on that building if you can share. The kind of spaces, will there be public spaces? Will it be primarily for boat storage? How does it look? So we're looking at classroom space, some conference room space. It will be open to the public. Everything we do we want the public to be engaged in, and we don't want anybody to be afraid of coming down and meeting us and being engaged in the voting community. We are not a private club by any means. While we're friends with the Schwergen Yacht Club, we are not Yacht Club-affiliated officially. So there's no reason that somebody can't walk in and ask us what's going on. Space will be available to groups if they need anything. The administrative offices will be there as well as some classroom space. The boat storage is probably the more complicated part, and we're working on developing that. The actual work zones are, that's the biggest challenge, developing some spaces so we can do our own maintenance in our own shop. Okay, well great addition to downtown, as are many of the developments that are happening here. So we're, you know, this year a new project for SEAS, well there are probably several new projects for SEAS this year, right Matt? Oh yes. I believe Sherboyton County has probably the best Independence Day celebration of any that I have ever experienced, not just in our area, but I think even nationally. I think we have a phenomenal set of things that goes on that weekend. And I'd like you to tell us how SEAS is going to be involved in that this year. Yep, I'm sure a lot of the viewers are familiar with the Art Armada, which a lot of locals have called the Garbo Borgata for years. The Art Center came to us and said they weren't interested in doing it again this year, and our chairman Leslie Kohler decided that we would try to make it happen, and we have. We are going to be hosting the event much like last year. We've changed the name, it is now going to be SEAS Water Sports, and we're sticking with themes just like the Art Center used to do. This year's theme will be the Salute to the Military. Okay, and tell me how that's going to look. Yep, we're keeping a lot of it the same as we used to. The open class will still be the class designing and building their boats before the actual day of the event. We're inviting them to take their boats out into the parade as well, just like in the traditional sense. We are making some space available in our storage facility on Monday and Wednesday nights in June. So if people need space to work on their boats, we'll be down there, and they can use our facilities and store them there while they're in the construction phase. Saturday mornings will be the same, and we're really hoping to get some community clubs and churches and organizations like that involved. Kind of a different spin. They used to focus on getting industries and companies involved, and while we still invite them to, we thought it might be more fun to try to get some of the more civic and social groups together and see if they'll build. And a lot of them are involved in the parade that day, so that is the kind of thing they enjoy doing. Yep, it would be great. It's a great showcase with a lot of people down there. We're also doing the traditional, what do we call it, the Drifter division, which is the build it as you come down. So that morning you come down, we'll have the supplies ready, and in about an hour and a half, you have to build your own boat. Which is always my favorite, as a spectator, because they sink pretty fast. But it's a lot of fun, and they always have a lot of smiles on their faces. And so does the audience. Exactly. Last year I was across the river in a crowd, I mean a crowd of people watching that from the other vantage point, the year before last. It was fabulous. So I'm just going to play this out a little bit. If I have never done this before and I have no idea what it entails or how to participate, how do I get started? Well, all our information for the event is on our website. It's at ccheboygan.org slash watersports. The guidelines are there, the registration is there, and our contact information is there. So if anybody wants to get some insight from a human being rather than just a document, they can send us an email. One of us will respond from the staff and we'll help you through the process. My advice first, find a team. I've seen a few people do it by themselves, but it seems to be a lot more fun when you get a team together of a couple people. Could be a big family. Yep, a family would be great. For your first time, I might recommend doing the Drifter Division because come down that day, all the stuff's there, and you'll kind of get an idea of what it's going to take to build one. Yeah, and you'll learn how to go into the water so that you're prepared for the advanced level next year. We'll provide life jackets. We'll provide the paddles. We'll do everything we can to make it a safe, fun experience. We have chase boats in the water that'll pick you up if you sink and don't want to swim back. Most people swim back. Well, you know, if you're not going to participate, watching it is really fun. So bring your family down, come to see all that's going on down there with that event. It's a great event. So we're really pleased that you picked it up and that you're expanding it and making it a little, putting your own twist on it. But thank you for that. The biggest addition this year is going to be our partnership with EOS, too. We're going to do some paddleboard racing this year as well. Kind of having noticed over the years that there's usually a little bit of a gap between each flight of the Carver boat we've got. Well, in those little gaps, we're going to use a little relay team with the paddleboarding. Wow, that's great. Great stuff. So I know, you know, there's this event. Let's go back a little bit and talk about your programs. And what's coming up in the future, even into the wintertime? What happens with SEAS during those seasons? Yeah, we've got a lot of programming going and we're trying to be year-round. We have really taken an initiative into powerboat training. We have one of the few powerboat courses that offers on-the-water training as well as meets national standards for safe powerboat operation. So basically what we do is prepare people if they want to get their state certification. We're not officially authorized to provide the certification from the state yet, but if you take the course, everything that's going to be covered is covered and there's on-the-water time. Part of that requirement is eight hours of on-the-water training and a written test at the end. That proves you've met national standards with U.S. powerboating. Are there boats available for this? Is that how it works? Yes, you just signed up for the course. We provide everything. You come down and get out on the water and learn how to be a safe powerboat operator. Wow, that sounds great. Our other big initiatives, especially in the winter when we have a little bit of time and we want to do something but it's a little cold to go sailing, will bring in speakers. Rochelle Pennington, who's an author who's written on a lot of great topics, is one of our favorites to bring in. But we're open to many different maritime topics. Anything that ties into nautical history, especially if it's regional, those are some of our favorites. And definitely some of the community favorites as well, especially now with the marine sanctuary potentially in our future, that will become more and more important. One of our favorite topics that Rochelle's done for many years is on the Christmas tree ship, which would actually fall within that nautical sanctuary. Nice, very nice. Yeah, I've seen the notices for that. And speaking of that, how do you publicize these events? How will people find out when they're happening? Yep, we try to get it out through all the local sources. It's usually in any of the community connections, sort of radio advertisements or in the paper. We also have it all listed on our website and we have a monthly newsletter that goes out. So anybody who's interested in finding out kind of our data, well, month to month, we ask that they sign up and they'll be enrolled on our automatic newsletter. Oh, that's a great way to find things out about organizations. I know. So any other plans in the future that you can share with us? Any new programs that are out there that you're trying to work on? It's really trying to get more people on the water right now. One of our initiatives this summer is to get 100-plus adaptive sailors out for an experience. I've got about 70 signed up at this moment. So what we're really looking for are groups to come together and come as a group, but we'll also take individuals if they really want to experience this and we can handle whatever needs are required. We've got some equipment developed already. We had a gentleman with ALS out sailing last year. And after that challenge, I think we're ready to handle a lot of different things. And moving forward, we want to expand that offering. We really want to have a vibrant sailing community for just everybody that wants to participate down here. Absolutely. And I've heard, you know, I have heard Leslie Kohler talk about the importance of everyone, you know, from the smallest children to the oldest adult getting out on the water, learning to do it safely and having a lot of fun. Yep. It's in that classes. I always tell people about the sailing classes that we offer in this community because they are so inexpensive and accessible. Yep. I actually learned through the Shiboygan Youth Sailing Club as a young kid. I've had some family who have sailed, but my parents weren't boaters, not particularly at least. And I learned through the Shiboygan Youth Sailing Center, became an instructor when I was a teenager. And it all kind of developed where I started working for seas a number of years later, of course. Yeah. And I'm very, very proud of what we've got here in Shiboygan. It's a very high level program that kids can start at seven or eight years old. Right. And really, it's a sport that you can do the rest of your life in all different directions. Racing is just part of it. And we have a great racing heritage here in Shiboygan with sail Shiboygan, but you don't have to be a racer to enjoy the water and go sailing. You can just go out and go for a sail with your friends and family. And I like to try to remind people that. You don't have to be rich to own a boat. You don't have to even own a boat to get out on the water. You just have to find a friend, either come down to our programming or meet somebody over at the Marina or the Aqlub. A lot of boat owners love to take people up for a ride. And that was a wonderful surprise for me too when I moved here, finding that kind of camaraderie and being able to go out and watch the sailing competition with some instruction. So I knew what the heck was going on. It was a wonderful experience. So I encourage everyone to consider at least exploring the sailing lessons, looking at participating in the new name for the Armada. Seas Water Sports. The Seas Water Sports activities around the fourth. And also coming up for some of those speakers, because I've been to a couple of those and they're very well done. This is a wonderful resource in our community. I thank you and all the staff at SEAS for providing that. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate you being here today. Thank you for having us. You're so welcome, Matt. Thanks. So we're going to be taking a short break now. And I would like to invite you back when we are here to talk with Stefano Villietti, who has recently been named the Culinary Star by the Sheboydon County Chamber of Commerce. And as you know, operates a number of fine restaurants in our area. Look forward to talking with Stefano when I see you back here. Welcome back to Love Where You Live, a monthly magazine of the best parts of Sheboydon County. I'm Betsy Alice. I'm the executive director of the Sheboydon County Chamber. And this is our way of sharing the news that we find in the community. I am very pleased to welcome today one of our Chamber champion award winners, our Culinary Star. Stefano Villietti and his wife Whitney, one walked away with the big award of the year for the restaurant business this year in February. And he's here on our program today. Thanks so much for taking some time out of your prep time. Probably. I'm guessing this is morning that we're recording this. So yeah, we're happy to always run away from work, though, and come to do something fun like this. So happy to be here. Okay, good. Thanks for being here. You know, as a regular customer of yours, I can almost recite your menu by heart and then you change it sometimes. But that's okay. It always gets better. And my favorite, I have to say my favorite thing is that even if I don't think I'm going to order a special, I always have them express those to me because I love to hear them say them. Absolutely. So you have some magic going there with that kind of presentation. Could you please tell the audience a little bit about each of the restaurants that you own or operate in Sheboydon? Yes. Traderia Stefano would be the original location. And we've been there for 22 years. And it seems it has flown and the city has changed a lot. And that's kind of a multi-regional Italian restaurant. So we don't really say we're Tuscan or we're Sicilian, but we sort of grab from all regions of Italy. So I would call it multi-regional Italian food. Very authentic. We only sell Italian wine. So we're very specific about trying to match our cuisine. We then did the fifth certified Neapolitan pizzeria in the year 2000. Fifth in the nation. Fifth in the nation. Correct. So we were adhering to their standards, which are a wood-fired oven, only certain ingredient requirements, things like that. So we wanted to do it. It was what I enjoy. I like all pizzas, but this is the one that inspired me. So we did that one in the year 2000. Brought a pizza maker and we do pizzas, wood-fired pizzas and paninis and things. And it joins a small store, which leads you over to our third place called Field to Fork. So between Il Retrobo the pizzeria and Field to Fork, which is a daytime cafe, we have a small store. Field to Fork is really a breakfast and lunch place serving familiar foods. The difference being these are sourced locally. We spent almost a million dollars last year within about 75 miles sourcing ingredients, whole stear, whole pigs, fresh eggs, fresh lamb, pastured lamb, produce, things like that. So that's a really great thing for us. And then the Duke of Devon is an English gastropub, which is down on the river, a beautiful location along the Sheboygan River. And we've been doing that. So it's kind of, we've got the classics, the fish and chip and the bangers and mash and all those great English things. But it's just a great atmosphere to sit and have a pint of beer and watch the boats go by. Even mushy peas. Even mushy peas. You gotta have that post-World War II mushy pea. And July 3rd, the evening of July 3rd, my husband and I always scrambled to get there to get a site out on the deck to see the lighted rig out on the creek. It's a great vantage point. It's a beautiful location. It really is. It is a fabulous location. So how'd this all start for you? At what point in your life did you kind of develop a passion for cooking or feeding people so well? Well, I would probably say that growing up in a household that really valued family meals together, had a big guard. My mother was a great provider in the home. She eventually became a nurse and worked, but she was really there for us every night. We came home to a beautiful meal. And so that was the beginning. My father ran a company here locally that had some business in Italy. So at a young age, I was very fortunate to be able to travel to Italy several times. So I kind of had this love for all things Italian at a pretty young age. I was either going to teach. I thought maybe going to teaching after college. I was a history major with a minor in economics and I thought about possibly teaching or maybe going into business. I wasn't sure. But I always found myself running home to cook and getting more excited about that than anything on earth. So when I was doing real estate in Chicago, I was running home, running to the store, running into cook. And I said, wouldn't it be neat if I could do this, which I seem to love and make a living? So that was kind of the beginning. It was probably high school college starting to think about it, but really after college is when it really hit me. Wow. And really the other question I had just naturally is from what I heard, you really didn't have experience running a restaurant before you opened one. None, yeah. I don't know if that was the right or wrong move. I think it was refreshing in a sense that it felt sort of like a dysfunctional home when you came to a restaurant. Maybe that's a good or a bad thing, I'm not sure. But with my lovely wife Whitney, who is my business partner, and she was able to, we just decided to try it. And I had to learn a lot very quickly. I did hire a chef initially to help me learn. But we decided that there was something refreshing and unique about doing it that way. It didn't feel like a concept or like too polished. So it was kind of a neat thing. It was really like coming to our home. We lived upstairs. We had a toaster in our bed and that was about it. You lived upstairs. We lived upstairs above the Traderie for the first couple of years and got up at 4 a.m., went to bed at midnight and did that for, we didn't miss a shift for seven years. Oh my gosh. So it took good early sacrifice, but it was well worth it. Yeah, because you really have become a destination restaurant. Yeah, it's been wonderful. But Sheboygan has become that destination too. So we're lucky to sort of coat tail along with that. But when you look at some, there's so many reasons to come to Sheboygan. We just became another one. There were so many reasons, whether it's the lake or the Kettle Marine or the Gulf or all these other things that are going on. So we sort of slid in there and said, well, hopefully we'll be the destination too. Yeah, we'll feed all those people. That's right, exactly. So sourcing locally, you mentioned it before. Tell us why this is so important to you and what you think this adds to the experience. Well, you know, a lot of people have a lot of reasons for doing it. Some, you know, they get sort of politically motivated. There's sort of a, I don't know, there's a lot of reasons to do it. For me, it came purely through my mouth and my taste buds. And I would travel to Italy every year. We've taken 55 people to Italy. We've done a lot of different things over the years to try to learn and teach and sort of have continuing education in that sense. But I would come back and I would try to recreate these dishes with conventional foods that came through the normal stream of distribution. And they never tasted the same. And so I would start, I started going to Madison to the farmers markets and talking to farmers and people. And I kind of said, what's wrong? And I won't go into exactly what the pork farmer told me, but he said, if you laid around on a barn lying in X and Y, you wouldn't taste very good either. So we began sourcing things that were done the way they're done in Italy. My cousin raises the pigs. My friend over here raises steer. This guy grows vegetables for me. So we started really, in Wisconsin, had so much going on. We didn't realize, well, Madison being sort of the focal point of it all. But wow, what an advanced farming culture here. And even on a small, not just big farms, but small, diverse farms. So we started to tap into that. And once we did, it just, everything was different. So for me, it was a huge source of inspiration. And why should I give money to someone five states away and truck something when I can give it to a farmer who's 20 miles away and they come and eat my restaurant and it tastes 50 times better? And it's actually cost competitive. When you do it the way we do it by buying whole animals and doing it a certain way, you can achieve economies of scale, which can actually make you very competitive. And the economics of it are so broad-based because those farmers benefit by this too. Absolutely. So we all do, ultimately. Right, it creates an economy in itself. I couldn't see any reason not to do it. Yeah, no. It was a very simple decision. It's a little more work, but it's worth it. When I moved here, I was amazed at the bi-local ethic that already existed here. I came from an area in Michigan near Traverse City where they used it as a huge marketing piece. And over here, people were just used to it. It was part of life that you sourced locally. Just makes sense. Yeah, it's wonderful that you do that. And it does make a difference. Sure. So what now, Stefano? You have four restaurants, a food truck, anything else in the works? We're always kind of looking and thinking, and we're sort of almost outgrowing our bakery facility right now. So a little part of me wants to... We've brought the smell of roasting coffee back to downtown, which we used to have. And we've, you know, to drive up each morning and smell bread, baking, and coffee roasting is a pretty wonderful thing. So I've kind of got this itch to do a bakery. And we've been looking at some spots. I've got a few ideas of maybe being able to connect to a local educational facility and maybe do some things with a school here locally to tie into their culinary program. And at the same time, have something for all the citizens of Chaboygan while improving the education of bakers and bread bakers and sweets bakers in the city. So there's a little, I think we need that still. There are a couple of great bakers here in Chaboygan, but I think one more could probably fit in. And right in that downtown area would be great. I think it'd be great to have a downtown. I mean, when you're in Europe or in Italy or France, I mean, if there's a bakery in every single downtown, so I think we should maybe be looking at that. So that's maybe percolating in our minds a little bit. Well, fun to know, good. Now the audience knows and now it's out on the table. Right. But boy, I congratulate you for the award, but most of all, we congratulate you for the kind of investment that you've made in this community. It is phenomenal. We are very fortunate and we know that. So thank you and keep up the fabulous work and the culture that you've created in your restaurants, because they are just a joy to visit. And thank you for being on the program today. Thank you, Bessie, and thanks for all that you do and the energy you bring to Chaboygan. Well, you're welcome. Thank you. Thanks, Stefano. And I encourage everyone in our audience to give a try to these restaurants. If you have not been in one of them, you're in for a real treat, not just for special occasions, you know, but they're an everyday pleasure. I want to thank the station and I will see you again next month. I appreciate the time here. Again, I'm Betsy Alice with the Chaboygan County Chamber of Commerce and this is Love Where You Live.