Chris Glazer has flour in his blood. There are photographs, he says, of him as a toddler running around in diapers covered in it, a fitting origin story for someone who has spent the better part of his life in professional kitchens and now runs one of Ely’s most ambitious small businesses.
Glazer, one of the minds behind Boundary Waters Kitchen and Market, spoke Tuesday to the Tuesday Group, laying out a personal history that winds from an Italian grandmother’s kitchen in Apple Valley to fine dining in Omaha, a shattered hand, a stint teaching history and culinary arts at the Vermilion Country School, and ultimately to a market that he is quietly trying to build into something much larger than it appears.
“Catering is the core of what we do,” Glazer told the group. “But there are so many other components.”

A path up north
Glazer grew up in Apple Valley, the grandson of first-generation Italian immigrants for whom cooking was less a hobby than a language. He started washing dishes at a bakery at age 13, skateboarding there after school, and never really left the industry. He cooked through college at Minnesota State Mankato, where he double-majored in English and history. He cooked in Nebraska, where he went to culinary school in Omaha and worked at fine dining establishments. He bartended, cured sausages, and rolled pasta at 3 a.m.
For nearly a decade, he worked with Travail Collective in Robbinsdale, the acclaimed Minneapolis-area restaurant group known for its avant-garde, constantly evolving menus. The experience shaped his philosophy about kitchens and his belief that everyone should know every role, that menus should breathe, that cooking is as much intellectual as it is technical.
Then, about nine years ago, he shattered his right hand. Four surgeries followed. He couldn’t hold a knife. He pivoted to bar consulting, catering logistics, and eventually teaching, which is what brought him north.
Some former colleagues from the Travail world recruited him to help with a project in Tower. He came for a summer. He stayed. Five years later, he lives above his market in Ely and, by his own description, bakes in his pajamas at three in the morning when the mood strikes.

Building something year-round
Boundary Waters Kitchen and Market grew out of freelance catering work Glazer was doing in the region and a recognition that the area lacked the kind of food infrastructure he wanted to be part of building.
He and his business partner considered a food truck before dismissing the idea. The logistics didn’t make sense for a year-round operation in northern Minnesota, and Glazer was clear about that goal: no seasonal model, no summer-only employment.
“I want a year-round job,” he said. “I want to do what I do year-round.”
The market now offers grab-and-go items, deli salads, and catering, and has recently partnered with a resort, where guests booking cabins and houseboats can pre-order grill kits.

The bigger picture
Glazer outlined several expansion initiatives still in early stages.
The first is a cookie company built around a biscotti recipe passed down through his mother’s Italian family. His mother has already developed lemoncello, cappuccino, and other variations on the base recipe.
Glazer and his father, an engineer, are designing prototype production pans and expect to launch somewhere in the September-October range. They are working with economic development contacts on the manufacturing classification, which could unlock subsidies and potentially create two full-time jobs.
The second initiative involves tea. Glazer’s father has spent two decades cultivating a relationship with a tea producer in China. The plan is to import high-end black and green teas in bulk, repackage them for the American market, and distribute them regionally.
There is also a possible coffee roasting acquisition he is monitoring, and a longer-term interest in becoming a specialty food importer for the broader northern Minnesota restaurant community, bringing in fine cheeses, cured meats, and other products that regional chefs currently can’t easily source.
“We have some really interesting restaurants starting to crop up up here,” he said. “These are products that are difficult to attain. That’s kind of what we’ve predicated a lot of what we’re doing.”

The constraint
All of this, Glazer acknowledged, runs up against one stubborn problem: space.
He has already outgrown his current facility. He is holding two fixture slots in reserve for a produce cooler, and that’s about all the flexibility left. The longer-range plan involves finding land, building out a pole barn insulated and fitted as a production kitchen, and using that to support the cookie company, the tea repackaging operation, and whatever the coffee situation becomes.
He is also thinking about workforce housing, a perennial challenge for businesses trying to maintain year-round staff in the region.
“I want to see this place thrive,” Glazer said. “I’ve worked in almost every restaurant here. It is so hard to find good help up here.”
He is trying, in his own way, to fix that. One hire, one LLC refiling, one 3 a.m. baking session at a time.