Our story

Drumlin Supper Club is a project that Michael (now my husband) and I (Sarah) launched in 2018. It has changed — and then changed again. Here’s (most of) our story… minus a lot of details.

We started Drumlin Supper Club when we were 22, in a tiny one-bedroom apartment on Addison and Western. Michael was working in restaurants, and we found ourselves hosting every minute that we could. Creating experiences for the people we loved — it was our favorite thing to do.

In that spirit, we listed a ramen class in our apartment online. To our surprise, 11 strangers signed up. And even more surprising — it worked. Like, it was really good. You know those things that happen in your life that just make everything make sense? The things you do that just click and make you go, oh wait, this is the thing I’m supposed to be doing. That class was that for us. It felt kind of magical. Rough around the edges, but it was clear that the core idea was a good one.

From there, we grew it. We hosted a pop-up in my aunt’s apartment on Michigan Ave (thanks, Peggy!) and listed more classes in our apartment. We booked private events. We moved to a bigger apartment and hosted more dinners and more classes. We were on a roll. We got engaged and started planning a wedding.

September 2018 through February 2020 were a whirlwind of events and growth. We found our voice and vibe, and our community. We were learning and pushing ourselves in what we were creating. In February 2020, we hosted a Pozole night in our apartment. Fifty people gathered in our (not-as-tiny) apartment for a night of good food, music, and community. It was fun, easy, and delicious.

Cue a global pandemic. Turns out the whole “gathering with strangers to eat dinner in someone’s apartment” thing is not a great business model when everyone is isolating. So we postponed our wedding and pivoted to take-home kits and virtual classes. Our community came through so strongly for us — selling out meal kits, taking virtual classes, and supporting us in ways we’ll never forget.

When things began to shift again, we started planning and cooking micro-weddings. Intimate dinner-party-style gatherings with families in backyards under string lights, cooking food over open flames, became our jam. We built a greenhouse at Rustic Falls and partnered with community organizations to expand their gardening programs. Everyone was looking for meals and programming outside, and Michael’s passion for growing our own food lent itself perfectly to the moment.

This thing we started with a ramen class in our apartment kept evolving and changing, and we decided to lean into whatever version of it felt right for the moment.

As life moved toward a new normal, our interests shifted too.

We hosted our wedding at Rustic Falls and had friends cook. We used vegetables from our garden and arranged the flowers ourselves. A few months later we bought a little bungalow and did a full DIY renovation on the kitchen so we could continue hosting events out of our own space. We moved from planning small weddings to doing the same for larger ones too.

In 2024, the opportunity came up to join Sarah’s family in opening a nonprofit café in Skokie. Named after Sarah’s cousin Will, Will’s Place was a labor of love — and a project we never saw coming. Sarah designed the branding and restaurant storefront, and Michael signed on to design and run the kitchen. It was a huge shift in the Drumlin universe, but in the spirit of how we’ve always done things, we went with the changing winds. The mission at Will’s Place is to create meaningful employment opportunities for adults with disabilities. In July 2023, we opened our doors with 24 employees and a line that ran around the block all day. It has been almost three years since this day and we are still growing and changing and learning all the time.

That November, we welcomed our son Frankie to the team. like everyone with kids knows, everything changed again and we were so excited for the challange.

These days, we still do a lot of what we started doing — dinner parties, private events, weddings, cooking classes — but a lot of our focus is towards our work at Will’s Place and Rustic Falls and the way it is connected to this project.

This thing we created isn’t just a catering company or an event planning service or anything that specific, really. Someone asked me recently what our elevator pitch is, and honestly, I don’t have a good one. At our core, this project is about exploring the relationship between food and community. It’s about creating experiences for people that feed the soul. It’s about celebrating being together and making life beautiful. We do lots of different things, (and you should check out our services page to see if we’re a good fit for the thing you are looking for), but we are not just one thing. This project is ever evolving.

If you’ve been here with us since the beginning, we appreciate you being on this journey with us more than we can really put into words. So many of the moments that shaped Drumlin exist because people showed up — around our table, in our classes, in our kitchens, and in the in-between spaces where ideas became real. If you’re new here, we can’t wait to get to know you. We hope you find something that feels welcoming, a little unexpected, and rooted in connection- — and maybe even stay long enough to help shape what comes next.

 However you found us, we’re really glad you’re here.

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