Chef Ann Marie Stefaney. Photo courtesy Order/Fire.

Rare Roots Hospitality has hired Ann Marie Stefaney. Stefaney, a Johnson & Wales graduate, was the longtime pastry chef at Heirloom Restaurant following the departure of opening pastry chef Jossie Lukacik (then Perlmutter). She left Heirloom and took part in a Bravo television series called Welcome to Waverly, where Stefaney and other young professionals were sent to a small town in Kansas to work alongside locals in their industry. The four-part show aired in late October.

Rare Roots Hospitality is the restaurant group behind Dressler’s in Metropolitan and Birkdale, Dogwood Southern Table & Bar, The Porter’s House, and Fin & Fino. The desserts and breads for each of the restaurants are baked at an offsite facility, including the famous cheesecake (a recipe from owner Jon Dressler’s mom). Stefaney began working for the group because of her best friend and roommate, who needed additional help. She spent time working on the line at The Porter’s House, then was hired full time at the bakery by chef Scott Hollingsworth to help streamline the processes there.

To start, Stefaney and the bakery’s other two staffers are trying to keep up with restaurant production and prepare for upcoming holiday events. Once everything begins running smoothly, they’ll shift focus.

“The goal is hopefully to be able to work with the executives at each restaurant and help develop new menus and private events and stuff, so we’ll be able to do creative things,” Stefaney says. “But right now, we’re in more of the building stages of trying to organize this bakery and get out the right amount of product.”

Her first days in the bakery are spent focusing on operations, making sure things are documented properly and making strong use of highlighters, color-coding, and spreadsheets. Stefaney still gets to come up with plated desserts for certain private events, and signature menus for each restaurant may not be too far down the road.

“It’s a pretty new thing, so we’re just trying to figure it out and see where it goes,” she says. “It should be pretty exciting because it’s a big restaurant group and there’s a lot of different concepts, so those concepts can go many different ways so they don’t all have to be the same. But they all don’t necessarily have to be completely different because they all kind of meld with each other.” —Kristen Wile