products. “If you’re going to test cheese, what better place to go than here?” asked Gamperl. So he drove up to Mars with his cheese-melting pot by his side. After testing several products, he found a cheese that melted well and had good flavor, but it was a bit sharper and more orange in color than the original. “It's a big thing for us to not rock the boat with menu staples,” said Gamperl. “When you're in business this long, the majority of people know what they want to eat before they walk in the door, and they want consistency.” He tried seeing if his longtime supplier could work out a blend using the sharper cheese and mel- lowing the flavor and color, but they were dragging their feet. Through Mars, Gamperl had found a man- ufacturer that was willing to work with him on a recipe specific for melting. “They told me, "if you de- velop a recipe for melting cheese, we’ll produce and co-pack it for you,’” he said. After many tweaks over several months that included adding more cheddar, trying different whey pro- teins and testing for creaminess,
Michael’s own Premium Melting Cheese was born. “I worked out a recipe for a cold pack cheese that’s superior for how we use it than the product we had been buying for de- cades,” said Gamperl. It was so important to get it right, as the melting cheese is used all over the Michael’s Grill menu; the cheeseburgers, cheese fries, baked potatoes, roast beef sandwiches, tater tots, mac and cheese and hot dogs all depended on it. Cheese problem solved, but now Gamperl had to purchase the prod- uct in very large quantities to get the price he wanted. Cheese was com- ing into Michael’s Grill by the pal- let. Gamperl finally asked himself, “What am I going to do with all this cheese?” AND ON TO DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS Coincidentally, the president of Sysco North America lives nearby and had been coming to Michael’s since he was a kid. “We were meet- ing about a different issue, but I told him the story behind the cheese and gave him a taste,” said Gamperl. He
had a lot of nostalgia for the restau- rant and was impressed with the cheese, so he connected the restau- rateur with the rep who runs Home Grown by Sysco in the Midwest. The program supports small busi- nesses and local vendors that are introducing products to the market. Sysco soon became a distribu- tion partner, bringing the melting cheese to restaurants and retail stores in the area. “We got pulled into the market rather than me try- ing to push it into the market,” said Gamperl. He feels the brand has legs to go beyond Chicago’s North Shore suburbs—reaching into Ari- zona and Florida where Highland Park’s snowbirds relocate in the winter. “There’s a lot of nostalgia for Michael’s Grill by the genera- tions that have grown up with the restaurant,” he said. Gamperl is excited that the melt- ing cheese he helped create is now available at golf course halfway houses, a bunch of restaurants and grocery store shelves. “But at the end of the day, if we can just serve our customers consistent, quality food on a daily basis, I’m most hap- py,” he said.
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JANUARY 2025 RESTAURANT BUSINESS
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