The Wildflower Supper Club brings Kewaunee to the Draft

KEWAUNEE – Cassie Jelinek and her husband Jason, owners of the Wildflower Supper Club, participated in Taste of the NFL, a culinary event hosted by Schreiber Foods at the 2025 NFL Draft held in Green Bay. Jelinek said it provided a unique opportunity to showcase some of what Kewaunee has to offer to tourists from all over the country.

Jelinek and her husband took over the Wildflower Supper Club in 2020, which was previously owned by Arthur and Sarah Schiller.

It wasn’t Jelinek’s first foray into the restaurant industry, as she worked at several chain restaurants before opening her own business in Kewaunee, but COVID-19 stymied growth.

“I teamed up with a few people in Kewaunee here, and we started a different business, a catering business. But then 2020 hit. Then we kind of gave that up,” she said.

Arthur and Sarah Schiller came to Jelinek and her husband shortly after with a proposition.

“The building that we’re in now was owned by Art and Sarah and they didn’t have any interest in running a restaurant, so they approached my husband and I,” Jelinek said. “[My husband] is also a contractor as well, so he they approached us to see if we would want to bring the building back to life and run the restaurant out of it.”

Jelinek said running a restaurant, especially a supper club, had always been a dream of hers, and she wanted to run a family-oriented business.

“My aunt and uncle moved from Wausau to come help me open the place,” Jelinek said. “They and my dad came and helped us do all the refrigeration work, and my husband helped with a lot of damage and stuff that was around the building, because it’s an old building and it needed a lot of TLC. Now my uncle is the head chef and my husband is the bartender.”

Jelinek met her husband in Green Bay while she worked in hospitality, who is both a construction worker and a musician. The name Wildflower was inspired by Tom Petty’s album, which Jelinek said embodies the spirit of the supper club.

“We’re passionate about food and we’re passionate about this community,” she said. “We just really love when people come to stay and visit and have a place in this community where you can bring your family and bring friends from out of town and just relax and have a good meal. And we’re trying to bring that good supper club feeling, where you can sit and have a few drinks, relax with your family, and get to know the bar patrons.”

The building previously hosted restaurants Uncorked by Scallywags and The Cork, an Irish pub, for 15-16 years. Before that, it was a supper club called Happy.

“It’s been a restaurant and bar for quite some time. And I always have people that come in from all walks of life that say they used to work here, or their aunt used to work here, their grandma and, you know, when it was different. So it’s really fun to hear all the stories come through different owners and the different ways they used to do things,” Jelinek said.

Taste of the Draft

Jelinek said getting involved with the Draft took a lot of planning and coordination, but the invitation was completely unexpected.
“We have a few patrons who became regulars, and I didn’t actually know that they worked for Schreiber Foods until they invited us to the Draft,” she said.

The Wildflower accepted the invitation in the fall, and Jelinek said the wait leading up to the Super Bowl was nerve-wracking. Once the game came and went, however, the meetings quickly began.
“The week after the Super Bowl we started, boom, boom, boom,” Jelinek said.

While the restaurants chose which dish they would serve, they weren’t allowed in the kitchen.

“It was a little crazy because you’re not in control of the situation. Another catering group is in charge of making your dish, so we’re just plating it and presenting it ourselves,” Jelinek said. “So we got the final say, but we couldn’t go in the kitchen, which drove my chef crazy.”

While the Wildflower couldn’t make the dish themselves, Jelinek felt the caterers stayed true to their instructions.

“We had different meetings with them, and went over how we prepare the dish. We sent in pictures, and we had a one-on-one with them a couple times over the phone to make sure that they understand what we’re cooking,” Jelinek said. “So it’s as close as we’re going to get. I think it’s not exactly our dish, but it’s very, very close.”

The Wildflower Supper Club chose their tuna steak dish because it’s a unique offering from a Wisconsin supper club.

“It’s one of our most popular dishes. It’s a sashimi-grade elephant tuna coated with black and white sesame seeds and pan-seared. It’s got a pickled onion and sriracha sauce and a mild red pepper sauce. We chose it because it’s very colorful. It’s different than what a lot of other supper clubs do. Because while we do steak, we also have more seafood- or Asian-forward food.”

Schreiber Foods set up a booth for each restaurant with custom signs, and each booth was assigned a Packers player. The Wildflower was assigned James Lofton, who Jelinek said was a fantastic promoter of the supper club and the Kewaunee area.

“We were reminding people that Kewaunne is over here and we’re open, and because a lot of people used to come here when it was The Cork, most recently, they said, ‘Oh, we were wondering if that building was open again. We used to stop through there all the time,’” Jelinek said.

The Taste of the Draft provided the Wildflower with a unique opportunity to not only advertise their business and food, but also to showcase the unique community in Kewaunee and all it has to offer. Jelinek said she’s grateful for the opportunity and hopes to see more visitors all throughout the county.