Desire for creative outlet leads stay-at-home mom to high-demand business 

Cheryl Hentz

Contributor

August 18, 2025

RIVER FALLS – Brianne Rehak – Brie, for short – said she had worked in the transportation industry for 10 years, managing a staff of 40 truck drivers.

Then, along came the COVID-19 pandemic, and she was laid off.

Suddenly, this full-time working mother said she was a full-time stay-at-home mom.  

“It was a great blessing at that point because my kids weren’t in school [because of the pandemic], so it was nice that I was able to be home with them,” she said. “But I also enjoyed getting out of the house and having a creative outlet.”

To that end, Rehak said she started making charcuterie boards with a friend as a hobby.

However, as word spread, she said what started as something fun to do during the day quickly became an in-demand opportunity.

And just like that, That Girl Brie was born.

“It went from a hobby to a business very quickly,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to be as big a business as it has turned out to be in any capacity.”

At that time, Rehak said she decided if she was going to do charcuterie boards as a business, she was going to do it right – and formed an LLC, obtained the necessary license and rented a commercial kitchen in the Twin Cities. 

But when a friend of hers, who owns Guv’s Place in Hudson, offered up the small commercial kitchen for leasing in 2021, Rehak said she jumped at it.

She said the businesses continued to gain traction each time she created a board – as she would post it on social media explaining its size and what was featured on it. 

“People would see the photo and message me [about purchasing that one or one like it],” she said. “I would make them in the basement of Guv’s, and people would meet me upstairs at the bar to pick it up.”

Being part of a smaller community, like Hudson, Rehak said as soon as she received a little support from someone, “everyone gets on the bandwagon.”

“That opportunity in the basement of his bar afforded me a really incredible following,” she said. “All of a sudden, I had all these people looking at my social media to see who I was making a board for next or what I was doing.”

Before she knew it, Rehak said she had repetitive customers, and the business just gained momentum.

“That is how it grew into what it is now,” she said. “That small-town support is the reason, I think, it’s been as successful as it is. I think I might have had a harder time growing in a bigger community. And all of my business has come from word-of-mouth.”

Something bigger, better

Rehak said That Girl Brie eventually moved from Guv’s to the St. Croix Valley Business Innovation Center – which is part of the Small Business Development Center at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls (UWRF).

“They have a commercial kitchen inside the innovation center,” she said. “I wanted to get out of the basement at Guv’s, because I wanted more space. I’d also gained popularity, and I wanted to be able to have a little bit better spot for my clients to pick up.”

Rehak said she stayed at the center for about a year before deciding to find a place geared more toward retail, where people could come in to make purchases. 

That, she said, led her to a friend who owns an organic juice company, and set up shop with her.

Rehak said the two of them shared a kitchen space in River Falls for the last year – however, as both of their businesses continued to grow, they were soon tripping over each other. 

By chance, Rehak said her landlord came in one day and said a spot at the end of the building was going to become available soon if either of them wanted it.

After seeing it, she said she decided to take it. 

So, 115 W. Cascade Ave. is where Rehak said That Girl Brie has been for a little more than two months. 

Thus far, she said, business at the new retail location – currently open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturdays – has been “incredible.”

Once her children go back to school this fall, Rehak said she plans to extend the store’s hours. 

“I’m directly across the street from UWRF, and it’s a high-traffic area,” she said. “The beauty of where we’re at is I can see the Food Sciences building from my store, and that’s where the dairy plant is. They literally walk fresh curds over to me on Fridays – it doesn’t get better than that.”

Rehak said her landlord was willing to do a month-to-month lease, which is comforting as she gets the solo retail location up and running.

“That’s a lot of cheese I’d have to sell [and boards and grazing tables I’d have to create], and [signing a multi-year lease] made me nervous,” she said. “As soon as my landlord – who is a wonderful human – said he’d do a month-to-month lease, I knew it was the right place.”

Feasts to remember 

Though growing in popularity, Rehak said there are still people who don’t know what a charcuterie board or grazing table is.

Simply put, she said charcuterie is the meat that appears on a board. 

“Technically, it would be a beautiful display of this wonderfully fabulous meat,” she said. “But, I think, since we have changed the way we’re doing things and the way we present [our boards] on social media, my definition of a charcuterie board is a display of meat and cheese and a few pieces of fruit.”

Fittingly, Rehak said every one of her charcuterie boards gets a wedge of brie in it.

“I always add in a goat cheese, depending on flavor, and I like to pick that seasonally,” she said. “We recently used a honey goat cheese in the bulk of our boxes, because we were featuring green pepper jalapeno jam from Lakeside Gourmet – those pair beautifully together.”

Rehak said she also always includes a “good Wisconsin cheddar,” saying it’s a “non-offensive” cheese that almost everybody can enjoy. 

“Those are the basics I kind of include in everything,” she said. “The rest then comes down to what is in season or what we’re really into at the moment.”

Rehak said she describes grazing tables as “a show-stopping food display that’s both gorgeous and ‘delish,’” which features a vast and tasty array of charcuterie, cheeses, vegetables, fruits, jams, spreads, olives, cornichons and anything pickled, chutneys, different kinds of honey, crackers, breads, an assortment of macarons and other dessert-type items.     

“The sky’s the limit as to what you can put on them, depending on the client, their budget and what you’re doing,” she said. “I’ve done some pretty elaborate tables with some really gorgeous floral and a wide array of food.”

Traditionally, Rehak said a grazing table will include a nice selection of charcuterie, a very wide variety of cheeses with different milks and different textures and then “whatever you can pair with those things to make it an experience.”

“That’s what a grazing table is – an experience,” she said. “Everything brings out a different flavor, and then people start layering, and it becomes an experience, for sure.” 

Rehak said she offers a wide variety on a grazing table to provide people with a sampling of as much as possible. 

When doing grazing tables, Rehak said everything gets prepped in her commercial kitchen, then taken in coolers or cooler bags to the venue and set up there – something that takes, on average, between 45-90 minutes to set up, depending on the size of the table. 

A business with ebb and flow

Rehak said she has four people working with her to help make boards and set up grazing tables on catering jobs – a team which includes family members, friends and sometimes independent contractors.

“It’s kind of hard [to hire someone full-time], because I don’t have consistent volume all day, every day to dictate hiring employees,” she said. “That’s why I’m using independent contractors and family help until we can figure out the ebb and flow, especially now with the retail space, because that’s going to change things.”

Rehak said that inconsistency can also cause problems in maintaining food freshness. 

“Once you make a board, you have maybe a 48-hour shelf life,” she said. “After that, berries start to get mushy, cheese dries out, flavors absorb into other things, crackers get stale and things just don’t look as fresh. And even though it’s still fine, and you can consume it, it just isn’t aesthetically what you want to put out there. So, 48 hours is my max shelf life.”

When she realized her business had an ebb and flow to it, and how it could negatively impact the shelf life of her products, Rehak said she decided she either needed to find a different way to keep things fresh longer or she needed to find another stream of revenue that would help her build the business.

She said she went with the latter.

“I decided I wanted to have my own cheese,” she said. “Cheese has a longer shelf life – it can last on a shelf for quite some time. So, I started private-labeling cheese. I found a dairy plant that allowed private labeling, and after inquiring about it, I started private-labeling my own cheese. So, That Girl Brie now has its own line of cheese – which extends my offerings  and diversifies my portfolio.”

So far, Rehak said the cheese line has been successful – growing from one style to 10 types of cheese in a short period of time, some of which include portabella and chive Abergele, aged double Gloucester and merlot-infused white cheddar.

All of her cheese, she said, can be purchased through a link on her website, thatgirlbrie.com.   

Expansion part of future plans

Rehak said she has some clear-cut plans for the future of That Girl Brie. 

One of her goals, she said, is to open a minimum of two more locations in the next two years, and hopes to have three successful locations within the next five years.

Though she has an idea of where she wants those locations to be, Rehak said she doesn’t want to reveal them just yet.

She did say, however, they would not be in her current area, but they’d still be in the state.

“It’s important to me that I remain a Wisconsin business,” she said. 

Rehak said she does not see herself doing any franchising of the business – fearing that franchising would take away some of the control she has and would likely cause her to lose some of the personality emphasized at That Girl Brie – neither of which she wants to see happen.  

Another goal for the next few years, Rehak said, is to grow her private-label options. 

“I want to continue to grow the brand and want it to be very recognizable,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of pride that goes with that.” 

Rehak said she plans to continue using Facebook as her platform of choice for getting the word out about what she’s doing.

“My intention is all Facebook,” she said. “My current relevance is due to the audience I’ve grown on the Facebook platform.”

Carefully monitoring people’s engagement on Facebook, Rehak said she was flabbergasted when 600 people, for example, liked something she posted.

“I don’t even know 600 people, but because of social media, 600 people know me,” she said. 

That Girl Brie serves clients within an hour’s radius of River Falls for delivery and set up, but Rehak said she’s had people drive two hours to buy a charcuterie board.

She said she loves knowing that the popularity of her products has reached that far.

“It’s really gratifying to know that people from so far away appreciate what we do,” she said.