Picky eaters can be the frustrating, head-banging bane of any home cook or professional chef’sexistence. Katie Fiore, founder of Fioreously Delicious Culinary Services, has learned to laugh it off. She recalls one group of women she cooked for as extremely weight conscious. “Basically, they were like, ‘Can you cook food that will help me stay as thin as possible and keep me alive?’” And a recent attendee at a retreat she was cooking for stating his dietary restrictions – no fruits, no vegetables, only meat that is kosher, and undefined issues with texture. “Even the retreat facilitator suggested he bring some of his own food to supplement the meals.”

Other than a strong aversion to turnip greens, Katie has always been an adventurous eater eager to explore all kinds of cuisines. She was drawn to cooking from a young age, observing her mother and aunt using food as a conduit for every celebration. Years later, she would find that food and cooking were the conduit to creating a business on her own terms and shaping it to fill a niche and a need she had no idea existed growing up in Johnson City, Tennessee. “There wasn’t a lot of exposure there to restaurants outside of the usual fast food and chain places. There was one Greek-owned family steakhouse that had escargot, Lyonnaise potatoes and the best authentic Greek salad. It opened my eyes to what was out there.”

She describes what Fioreously Delicious Culinary Services does as ‘boutique catering’ and takes pride in the personal attention paid to every client.

A graduate of the prestigious New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, she and her husband Kirk – they met at NECI – were living in Keene Valley in New York’s Adirondack Mountains where he was chef at the Mirror Lake Inn and she was raising their toddlers. But as a professional chef and business owner before momming, she was desperate to expand her repertoire beyond applesauce and carrot sticks.

“I met a widower who wanted to continue his late wife’s tradition of entertaining, but had no idea how. I started planning and cooking

for his cocktail parties and small dinner parties, but also ended up going to his house every day to make his turkey sandwich for lunch. He was really clueless in the kitchen.”

Through her work with him, she met others who not only needed her formal catering skills but everyday meals for their families. “I saw how people needed help figuring out how to eat healthy, how to accommodate special diets, and I realized personal cheffing could be a thing.”

While in college at the University of Georgia, a waitress job steered her toward her true passion. “I have always had a lot of energy, so that restaurant energy really appealed to me. I loved always having something to do with my hands, but I wanted to be cooking, so eventually I was able to move to the kitchen.”
Still uncertain about the viability of cooking as a career path – but with a degree in speech communications in hand – she made the time-honored decision not to make a decision and with a boyfriend, traveled to Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia. “Getting out of my bubble, being so far from what I knew, ha

ving all of those experiences and being exposed to all those foods made it very clear that I needed to do what I loved to do.”

Returning to the states, she visited Culinary Institute of America, Johnson & Wales and the New England Culinary Institute, choosing NECI in part for its program and in part for its location in Vermont.

After two years of culinary and two six-month internships in different cities, Katie and her husband Kirk decided to stay in Vermont and took the leap to open a farm-to-table takeout restaurant and catering service. “I know the term is ubiquitous now, but it wasn’t so much then and it was very exciting. Our business partner in Sugar Snap rented four acres down the hill from our building and grew things that are easy to grow, but expensive to buy. It was great having 10 pounds of basil at our disposal.”

They were in Burlington for eight years, then Keene Valley for two years. The Biltmore Estate brought the family to Asheville when Kirk was hired as their head of catering. “He was working so much that I would have to take the kids to the Biltmore just to see their father.”

With her kids in school, she continued to pursue personal cheffing under the name Chef Katie Cooks; a contract job providing food service for the Asheville Racquet Club netted her more clients, particularly people interested in eating healthy. “I started doing a weekly meal delivery service, but it wasn’t generating the income I needed to make the business viable, so I took the chef job at Red Radish Catering.”

A Facebook post she saw from life coach and business strategist Lisa Zahiya changed everything for Katie. “She was offering a promotional class for a phone call every day for a month,” she explains. “The prompt was to set a personal goal. My original goal was to pay off a little credit card debt.”

Zahiya urged her to think bigger and reach higher. “She said what about this side hustle you have, how do you make it more than that. I told her that was my five-year plan and she said no, we’re doing it now.”

Between coaching from Zahiya and encouragement from her husband, she quit the job at Red Radish, and in 2019, launched Fioreously Delicious Culinary Services, focused on personal chef services in people’s homes, catering to the thriving retreat industry in WNC and weekly home meal delivery.

When Covid hit in 2020, on-site cooking for home entertaining and retreats were both hit hard, but her meal delivery business tripled as restaurants closed and grocery shopping was restricted. “There were times I’d be the only car on the interstate driving to deliver meals and thinking I must be an essential worker,” she says with a laugh. “That was such a crazy time. I’d arrive at a house, put on my mask and gloves, leave the food at the front door and scurry off.”

As things returned to normal, she resumed personal cheffing, catering and her work with retreat centers. With the growth in home meal delivery, she was able to move from renting space in other commercial kitchens to having her own, solely dedicated to Fioreously Delicious.

The Weekly Family Meal service offers a six-week rotation of meals that change out every season; she sources heavily from the WNC Farmers Market (see The Partner). “My goal in creating menus is to cook fresh and healthy and lead with big flavor.”

For more on Fioreously Delicious, visit fioreouslydelicious.com.

— Kay West

Photos courtesy of Nate Burrows and Fioreously Delicious