La Crosse-based grazing board business owner wins 2024 Entrepreneur of the Year

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

January 20, 2025

LA CROSSE – Emily Boland – founder and owner of Hunt + Gather Grazing Boards – recently won the La Crosse Chamber of Commerce’s 2024 Entrepreneur of the Year award.

“On the surface level, I’ll tell you I started the business because I love meat and cheese, and that’s how I coped with COVID-19,” she said. “I think on a deeper level, I would tell you I started this business because I have three daughters. I wanted to be a woman they could look up to, not just a mom.”

After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Boland said she and her husband, a nurse, decided to homeschool their three children.

“Upon homeschooling them, I realized I am not a homeschool parent,” she laughed. “That was not something I was built for. So by February of 2021 – which would have been kind of close to that year mark of COVID – I needed something that I could do for myself.”

Around that time, Boland said she recognized the growing trend of charcuterie and thought it was something she could capitalize on.

“I think at that point, cheese and wine is how we were surviving,” she said. “So I was just trying different cheeses and pairing things together, and (thought), ‘You know what, our area is really missing a business like this.’”

Boland said she consulted her husband who encouraged her to give “meat and cheese” a try.

“I started on my very first board, we called it the beige board,” she laughed. “It was crackers and white cheeses – they had no color at all – and then I learned a little bit more about color theory and how things looked on the board.”

A growing team

Following her brief experimental period, Boland said she decided to “casually” post on Facebook, offering her charcuterie services to the area, just before Valentine’s Day.

“It was just for friends and family, and I had three orders that weekend,” she said. “I think it was at that point that I realized there was a little validity to the concept, and there were no other businesses in our area that were only specializing in this one product.”

Two weeks later, Boland said she formed her LLC, and two months later, she moved Hunt + Gather into its first commercial kitchen.

“We’re now fully licensed, fully insured (and) we built out our own kitchen,” she said. “We were originally in a shared space, and now we have our own private space that has a back office, a back stock space and our own bathroom, which feels really significant – just the simple pleasures.”

Now, Boland said her former one-woman show has grown into a team of four part-time prep staff and a director of operations and marketing – Hannah Amann.

“She’s been such an integral part in growing the business,” Boland said. “She’s taught me so much along the way about owning a business, systems, functionality and how to present yourself better as a business person.”

‘Fair, reasonable, attainable’

When she started selling charcuterie through Hunt + Gather, Boland said she made the decision to charge a “fair, reasonable and attainable” price.

“We know that we’re providing a luxury product, but we also wanted it to not be so far outside that standard that people didn’t feel like they could have access to it,” she said. “So we have always tried to make it at least less expensive than if you were to buy all of those items separately.”

Boland said the charcuterie spreads that the Hunt + Gather team creates vary in size – ranging from small five-inch-by-five-inch boxes to boards as long as 24 feet.

“We have our regular sizes and pricing on the website, and then we do inquiries for events and things like that,” she said. “Our most common setup size – which we come set up for you – would be an eight-foot setup. We do those for a lot of weddings and cocktail hours.”

An eight-foot setup, Boland said, can typically feed up to 200 people, and costs between $8 and $16 per serving depending on what is included in the board.

The smaller, five-inch-by-five boxes, Boland said, usually cost around $15.

“That’s about what you would spend on a large snack or a small meal, which is kind of what those boxes are,” she said, “And then as our serving sizes go up, the price goes up slightly, but that individual serving size price goes down.”

Working with local vendors, Boland said, is something she does intentionally to showcase the “many different flavors” found in the dairy state.

“I’ve tried really hard to keep things local, so we work with a lot of local businesses to have (their) products on our board,” she said. “We know the folks we’re ordering from, they know who I am, and it’s just kind of this really cool thing that we’re getting these really eclectic flavors on the boards, and they’re coming from people local to us – when the cheese curds still squeak, you know that it was local.”

Confidence, community, charcuterie

Through starting her business in the midst of a global pandemic, Boland said she made it her goal to contribute to people’s special gatherings following the lockdown.

“Our mantra for the business is ‘gather with confidence,’” she said. “I wanted people to not have to worry about what they were going to be bringing to their gatherings when they started having them again.”

Boland said “food is such a beautiful way to connect with people,” and post-COVID, she wanted to contribute to her community.

“We have been able to provide boards at no cost to places like the Good Fight and Big Brothers Big Sisters,” she said. “Our director of operations is deeply involved with the YMCA, so we try to give as much there as we can, whether it’s donating to the Y Giving Day, just direct funds or doing discounted products for seniors.”

Understanding that anyone can source the same food products as she does, Boland said she prioritizes giving her customers an experience and is confident in her skills as a designer of charcuterie spreads.

“If anyone really wanted to, they could find the skills, tools and resources on the internet or from other folks to make boards on their own,” she said. “I wanted to give them an experience – that has been my entire hope for the business. When people pick up a board as an experience for them, between the different flavors and the cheeses they can try and the art that they’re looking at… we wanted it to be fun for folks so that the experience is what they were investing in.”

Boland said she’s also proud of being a woman-owned and -operated company – setting an example for not just her three daughters but for young female entrepreneurs everywhere.

“I wanted to be an entrepreneur (because) I wanted them to know what was possible, even if it didn’t last or if it didn’t work out,” she said. “I wanted them to not be afraid to try things and step out of their comfort zone.”

To learn more about Hunt + Gather, visit its website, huntandgathergrazing.com, or find it on social media.