Stella’s keeps keys to success in kitchen Winnipeg restaurant chain quietly marks 25 years in business with eye on expansion Made in Manitoba
By: Aaron Epp Posted: 9:25 PM CDT Thursday, Mar. 20, 2025

When Corey Pierre was a teenager working as a dishwasher at a Stella’s restaurant, it was just supposed to be a job to pay his way through university.

Almost 15 years later, he’s still with the company.

“It kind of built into the career I didn’t know I wanted,” Pierre says.

Now 34, Pierre is the operations manager at what Stella’s calls its commissary: a 15,000-square-foot kitchen, bakery and warehouse in the southwest Buffalo neighbourhood that serves as a hub for the company’s eight Winnipeg restaurants.

The work employees do at the commissary helps ensure food quality is consistent from restaurant to restaurant. That dependability is important to employees like Pierre.

“Knowing that we’re consistent and that we move that food to the locations and the guests get to enjoy that — I think that’s the best part (of my job),” he says.

About 10 per cent of the company’s 500 employees work at the 1100 Waverley St. facility, which also houses a catering operation and serves as the company’s head office.

The company buys local products wherever possible, including rolled naked oats from Adagio Acres, grass-fed beef and sausage from Borderland Agriculture, fresh chicken from Dunn-Rite, beer from Good Neighbour Brewing Co., and flour from Prairie Flour Mills Ltd.

Just about everything served at Stella’s is made from scratch at the commissary, including mayonnaise, salad dressings and jam.

Employees prepare produce, including peeling, blanching and storing potatoes — 100,000 pounds of them each year, all of them purchased from Peak of the Market.

Burger patties and garnishes are prepared in the production kitchen.

There are eggs from Nature’s Farm on site and thick-cut bacon from Olymel in Quebec. Each year, Stella’s employees serve 300,000 of the former and 200,000 slices of the latter.

In the bakery, employees make the breads, buns and dainties Stella’s is known for. They produce about 100,000 loaves of bread and 100,000 desserts annually.

The warehouse has alcohol, cleaning products and office supplies for distribution to the restaurants. It ensures staff at the individual locations never have to worry about purchasing anything on their own.

Each restaurant places an order daily at 3:00 p.m. and commissary staff start putting the orders together at 4:30 p.m. Every evening, 2,000 pieces are organized for shipment the next day.

At 4:30 a.m., the company’s truck drivers arrive and start making deliveries to the restaurants. Every day, three drivers each make five trips.

When asked what he most enjoys about his work, vice-president of operations Rob Del Grosso says: “It’s running a business where I’d be proud to have any of my kids work and serving customers and providing a great guest experience, so that it’s not only the great food that (customers are) having but great service and great atmosphere.”

Stella’s got its start Dec. 13, 1999, when four entrepreneurs opened the first location as an over-the-counter breakfast and lunch café in Osborne Village.

The four included Tore Sohlberg and Lehla Abreder, who still own the company today.

Its founders created a menu and environment focused on simple, healthy, in-house baked breads, soups, jam and sandwiches for dine-in or take-away.

After the first restaurant took off, a Stella’s on Grant Avenue opened next.

Today, the company’s eight locations include a 100-seat restaurant in the departures area of the Richardson Winnipeg International Airport.

There’s also a 30-seat spot on Corydon Avenue the company opened in December 2022, with a focus on a grab-and-go café area featuring paninis, breakfast sandwiches, salads and homemade bakery items.

Additionally, the company owns and operates Kevin’s Bistro, a gourmet mac-and-cheese restaurant in the Exchange District.

Sohlberg was born in Norway and moved to B.C. with his family when he was 13. His father was a chef and the family ran a bakery café, where Sohlberg got the inspiration to start his own restaurant.

Sohlberg, who works as an airline pilot, was stationed in Winnipeg when he and his business partners started Stella’s. They named the company after Abreder’s cat.

Del Grosso estimates the restaurants receive between 750,000 and one million visits annually. The most popular items are the Mexican breakfast, buttermilk pancakes, Wolseley salad and Stella’s club sandwich.

Sohlberg’s 77-year-old father, Thorleif, stops by the commissary every now and then to help with the recipes.

All food that is not used is donated to non-profit community nourishment organization Agape Table.

The business made headlines in November 2018, when several former and current employees publicly alleged workplace harassment, verbal abuse, sexual harassment, poor labour practices and mistreatment by members of the chain’s management team.

In the wake of the “Not My Stella’s” campaign, Sohlberg and Abreder fired two key managers and hired Del Grosso.

The company completed a third-party human resources review that took into account confidential feedback from 44 current and former employees, and started its own HR department. The company pledged to revise its policies and develop a leadership training program to improve management, coaching and employee development.

“I think everything’s been going extremely well,” Del Grosso says. “We’ve I think turned that all around (and) we’re focused on the growth and all of the good products and expanding the business. And we’re doing it the right way.”

December marked 25 years since Stella’s opened for business, which amazes Sohlberg.

“It’s been a long journey and Winnipeg (has) been great,” he says. “It’s not originally where I’m from but it’s where I ended up and it’s been a fantastic opportunity to grow our business here. Winnipeggers have been receptive and it’s my home now.”

The company didn’t do anything to celebrate the milestone either internally or publicly, though it hasn’t ruled out planning something in the coming months.

Rather, employees were focused last year on, among other things, reopening the airport location forced to close in 2020 when airport passenger numbers were slashed amid COVID-19 pandemic public health restrictions.

Company leadership have their sights set on expansion, with plans to open another one or two grab-and-go locations this year.

“We strive to be organized and buttoned-down behind the scenes in everything we do,” Del Grosso says. “But to our customers, we still want to be that local café that serves fresh, healthy, local, quality food.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca