It isn’t every day that a business takes off during a pandemic, but Susan Ehler isn’t complaining.
“It all sort of started by a fluke,” she says. “Last fall, my husband and I decided to start a micro-wedding business out of a converted horse trailer. We were gonna fix it up and do the cake, flowers, and grazing table to a couples’ elopement location. We did a bridal show in January, and I put up a grazing table display. People like the micro-wedding idea, but more people came by the grazing table. I had tons of people asking if I’d do the grazing table without the micro-wedding.”
Susan took Amazing Graze on Live at Five at Four on WBIR in March, a move that worked out in her favor. There was immediately a lot of interest, and suddenly she was booking events for upcoming months. Then, COVID-19 shut everything down, and the cancelations started rolling in.
“I decided to keep the name relevant and started offering small grazing boxes the first week of April. I sold six. By Mother’s Day weekend, I sold 60 of them,” says Susan. “It exploded from there, and then I turned in a two-week notice at my full-time job.”
Susan is mostly self-taught when it comes to charcuterie, but she’s also a graphic design graduate, so some of this is born out of innate creativity and experimentation.
“It’s really been amazing. From the get-go, I’ve had repeat customers. During quarantine, I had people pick up grazing boxes from me and take them to a friend’s house for Zoom parties,” she says. “I’ve always liked to entertain. I want people to look at [the grazing tables] and think it’s too pretty to eat but it also looks so good that they’re gonna eat it.”