After a ten year interlude, during which she advanced to the executive ranks in the world of banking, Julie Thomsen is returning to her hospitality roots to buy Zoup! of St. Joseph.
Call it divine intervention, serendipity, or simply fortuitous timing, but Julie will exchange her ledgers for a ladle and take over from Zoup! owner Al Mussman early next month as the new business owner of the restaurant in the Courthouse Square in downtown St. Joseph.
The two have been friends, business associates and even fellow worshipers at the same church for several years, so when they were chatting at the St. Joseph Today Annual Meeting in mid-March Al approached Julie and said, “Julie, I am thinking about selling Zoup!, and she said ‘I’ll call you in the morning.’”
Julie admits she “might have texted him that evening,” and requested a copy of his Profit & Loss Statements to determine if she wanted to proceed with her interest. (He jokes that his phone “rang all night that night.”) Julie says, “We then met on Tuesday, and we just had a few days to make the decision, so I called Richard Zimmer, who is in the corporate offices at Zoup!, and spoke with him for at least two hours on the phone, just to find out about the Zoup! name, their business, and their culture and gave him a little bit about my background and it just started moving forward rapidly after that.” Zimmer is the Director of Franchise Development and Real Estate for Zoup!
Eventually, Julie had to meet with the Zoup! leadership team and be approved by them to see if she was a good fit for the business.
Al says, “Here’s the thing, this is the next natural step for Julie and I, both of us, in a progression of building a life that we love. For me it’s a chance to…well, I have two sons, my wife has two sons, and we have two grandsons and now in the last month we’ve got two granddaughters. It’s amazing I haven’t met them and I’m head over heels over them. It will also give me a chance to really ‘dance with the one that brung me,’ which is Biggby Coffee, so I’m gonna have a chance now to, rather than half-assing two things, I’m gonna whole-ass Biggby!
While Julie has been engaged in the Southwest Michigan banking business for the last ten years with six at Fifth Third and the last four at Edgewater Bank, she’s no stranger to the fast casual restaurant trade having owned the A&W Root Beer Restaurant in Bridgman for six years before stepping away to banking.
She says she loved the A&W gig, but “With two kids under four years old I had someone approach me to purchase it and I needed to spend some time at home, so I sold it.” She was only home for about half a year before moving into the banking world.”
Regarding her bank career, Julie says, “It’s been great, I’ve always loved the financial side of things, and I was able to get into an executive role at Edgewater and learned so much from Rick Dyer, and the whole team.” However, she admits, “I always knew that I would end my career owning a business.” She had a few people approach her, and “sort of looked into a few things, but nothing was the right fit.”
Then, along came the St. Joe Today meeting and Julie says, “I’m a big believer that God has a plan and truly when Al came up to me, I really didn’t even give it a second thought. My husband was a little shocked, but just meeting with the Zoup! team, and it’s a class-act company, it was the right choice.”
Thomsen spent two days with the whole corporate team at Zoup! and also attended a reunion last weekend and met the founder Eric Ersher – and discovered his story of when he started and how he created the franchise and “Just the overall culture, obviously there’s a great business here.”
She loves Zoup! of St. Joe, saying, “It’s clean, customer service is great, we have a great team, so we’re really not going to change anything, just kind of move forward and change hands.” She met with the staff yesterday and told them it’s going to be little to no change for them, that it will largely be behind the scenes changes.
Julie takes over early next month and will close on the place at 3pm on Friday, June 7th, shut down on June 8th for the weekend for a deep cleaning, and will re-open on Monday June 9th as the new owner.
The stage for her culinary career was actually set with her first job in the restaurant business as a 14 year old high schooler working as a dishwasher and waitress. The A&W was the first business that she owned, and she calls it a really great experience. In fact, she admits, “Had I not had such little children at the time I would have probably been in that business still today.”
Julie says she’s always been an entrepreneurial spirit, “so I just think it’s a need. I’m excited about the opportunity.” Her Edgewater Bank boss, President Rick Dyer concurs, saying, “If you know Julie, you know she has an entrepreneurial spirit.” He adds, “We’ve always known that Julie would once again own her own business. Although we’re sad to see her leave, we’re proud of her, and excited that she is following her passion to be a small business owner.”
Originally from Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Julie moved here 16 years ago, and says, “It’s been great to live and work and play in this community. I’ll still be serving the community, just in a different capacity.”
Zoup! has 100’s of recipes for soups, rotated daily so 12 options every day are delivered with a hunk of bread, and they encourage sampling. As Al Mussman says, “So you have no excuse for not getting something you like.”
The restaurant on Main Street, next to Biggby Coffee, has a capacity in the house of 96 seats. In addition to soup they also offer great sandwiches and salads. Julie’s favorite soup is Chicken Pot Pie, which Al also likes along with Lobster Bisque and Mushroom Bisque.
Of the Zoup! corporate team, Julie says, “I was very impressed, when I was over meeting with the team, they just hired a new culinary chef, and so now they have a two man team in the test kitchen, experimenting with all new fresh products, and we have all sorts including gluten free, vegetarian options for a very nice healthy line-up.” She adds, “Coming from the burger world, I just think it’s a really good option, as we see the whole paradigm shift toward eating healthy and I think we can really help all those in search of vegetarian products and gluten free options.” Every day Zoup! offers 3 or 4 vegetarian options, gluten-free ingredient options, low-fat options, dairy-free options, low-caloried options, so literally something for everyone.
Best of all for Thomsen she says, “Al will be right next door at Biggby, so if I need anything, I can reach out to him for help.” Zoup! is open from 11am to 8pm daily, seven days a week. All 15 of Al’s Zoup! employees will be staying on with the new owner.
