When her dad suggested she start her own business, Kelly Lewis was reluctant despite having a business degree from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
She had a job as a store manager at Cook’s Corner in Green Bay and the idea seemed unnecessarily stressful.
But soon after, Cook’s Corner closed and former owner Pete Burback asked Lewis if she wanted to join him in a new venture — sharpening knives. It was a service always being sought at Cook’s Corner, so they knew there was a market.
The two attended a trade show and trained with The Perfect Edge, based in California. After they returned to Green Bay, Lewis took on the primary responsibility for sharpening.
“The idea of sharpening might seem easy — you run the knife back and forth, how tricky can it be? But there’s a lot of angles and you’ve got to hold the knife properly,” Lewis says. “Muscle memory is what takes time to really learn. It is a craft.”
That business failed to take off, but it was enough “proof of concept” for Lewis. She decided to start her own enterprise.
“I knew that I wanted to be a one-person show,” Lewis says. That led her to adopt a business model from The Perfect Edge, which offers mobile sharpening as one of its many products and services.
She purchased a fully-equipped truck from The Perfect Edge and drove it back to Wisconsin in an epic 37-hour road trip with her dad, Steve. She has since replaced the truck with a trailer that her dad helped her build out.
When Lewis first started in 2019, much of her business was tied to restaurants. The COVID-19 pandemic forced her to seek new markets, so she set up in a grocery store parking lot.
These days Lewis and the trailer are on the road every day between May and November, and she visits regular customers throughout the year. Her reach extends from Sheboygan to Door County along the Lakeshore and from Oshkosh to Green Bay and Shawano.
She sharpens all types of knives, mandolines, blender blades, scissors, garden tools, mower blades, axes and more. Lewis says customers show up all the time asking, “Can you sharpen this?” Invariably, she can. She also can repair items with broken tips and nicked or damaged blades.
In addition to servicing restaurants and holding regularly-scheduled pop-up events, The Traveling Sharpener has four drop-off locations — two in Green Bay and one each in Appleton and Suamico. Customers can even request a house call if the volume of items needing sharpening is large enough.
“People are passionate about their knives. Sometimes they want to learn how to do it themselves and I have mentored people,” Lewis says. “It’s about teaching and creating a community. At the end of the day it’s still one more person who knows about me.”
