As a young girl, Mavis Linnemann-Clark worked in bakeries, candy stores, and coffee shops, and practiced perfecting her baking skills at home with chocolate mousses and layer cakes.
After college, she fell in love with cooking while living in Philadelphia near the historic Italian Market. When she wasn’t cooking, she traveled, visiting five continents and taking cooking classes in Umbria, Italy.
In 2010, she enrolled at Kendall College, a Chicago culinary school, where she was classically trained in French technique and participated in a Mexican master class with renowned Mexican chefs. In 2011, she graduated with a certificate in catering and personal chef.
In 2012, Mavis moved back home to Northern Kentucky and established The Delish Dish to bring globally inspired dishes and artisan jams to her hometown.
The business has grown steadily since then and in September, she was named the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Person of the Year for Kentucky.
In 2016, Mavis took over a 5,000 square foot kitchen on Madison Avenue in Covington, and the next year, she launched Kickstart Kitchen, which provides temporary leased commercial kitchen space to food entrepreneurs to launch or grow their small businesses. In addition to the storage space and commercial kitchen equipment, Kickstart Kitchen offers complimentary assistance with business planning.
Mavis currently has 12 full-time employees and 30 part-time employees, and rents out Kickstart Kitchen to 10 small food businesses.
The new award is just the latest for her and her business. In 2018, Mavis and The Delish Dish team were awarded the Small Business Administration’s Kentucky Woman-Owned Business of the Year and the Small Business Development Center’s 2018 Pacesetter Award.
In 2019, she was awarded the Next Generation Leader Award in the Entrepreneurial Category by the Northern Kentucky Young Professionals branch of the Northern Kentucky Chamber.
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