The Verme Firm - Food Experience

The Verme Firm Restaurant and Food Experience

" Mom, when I grow up, I want to be a waitress! " - Ann Verme (at a very young age, many, many years ago!)

Ann Verme has been involved in the restaurant and food industry off and on for the past 30 years.

Previous restaurant experience included stints as a server, a hostess and manager. In addition, Ann has worked closely with the restaurant industry as a volunteer event planner for organizations such as the Minneapolis Downtown Council and Arc Greater Twin Cities.

While working as a consultant for Arundel Street Consulting, a local business development group, Ann worked with restaurants and food companies interested in expanding and growing their businesses. Toward that end, Ann worked with the client to brainstorm new areas of opportunity, completed competitive analysis, developed market research questionnaires, worked with focus group companies around the United States to plan focus group sessions, and prepared follow-up reports and recommendations.

Ann is an avid cookbook collector (800 and counting!) and was a previous participant in a local cookbook book club moderated by local food reporter, Sue Zelickson. Through this book club, Ann ended up as one of the co-project managers of the 1999-2000 Zagat Survey - 1999/2000 Minneapolis St. Paul Restaurants. To promote the book, Ann and Sue traveled around the metro area, bringing in chefs whose restaurants received top survey votes to talk about their restaurant, their cooking philosophies and how they got started in the industry. Notable panelists included Lucia Watson, owner of Lucia's Restaurant and Wine Bar, J.P. Samuelson, owner of jP American Bistro, and John Schlitz, owner of The Lake Elmo Inn.