Chef Mavis Linnemann-Clark founded The Delish Dish and Made By Mavis to bring her passion for gourmet food, global flavors, and knack for Southern hospitality and events to Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.

As a young girl, Mavis worked in bakeries, candy stores, and coffee shops, all the while improving her baking skills at home with chocolate mousses and layer cakes. Later, Mavis studied magazine journalism at Syracuse University in New York and in Florence, Italy. After graduation, she fell in love with cooking while living in Philadelphia near the historic Italian Market. When she wasn’t cooking, she traveled, visiting five continents and taking cooking classes in Umbria, Italy.

In 2008, she moved to Chicago and began hosting dinner parties to make new friends. In 2010, she enrolled at Kendall College. At Kendall, Mavis was classically trained in French culinary techniques and participated in a Mexican Master Class with renowned Mexican chefs. In 2011, she graduated with a certificate in Catering and Personal Chef. She now has 25 years of experience working the food service industry.

Mavis moved back home to Northern Kentucky, married the man of her dreams, and established The Delish Dish in 2012 to bring globally inspired dishes and artisan jams to her hometown.

In 2013, Mavis was a finalist in the spring class of Bad Girl Ventures (now Aviatra Accelerators). That same year, she joined the Northern Kentucky Incubator Kitchen and launched her artisan jam line, Made by Mavis Artisan Jams. In 2015, Mavis was proud to be one of the faces of the Kroger Buys Local campaign through the Kentucky Proud program, and won the Start-Up Spirit Award from the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce for her entrepreneurial efforts.

In late 2016, Mavis had the opportunity to take over the 5,000 sq. ft. kitchen at 1032 Madison Avenue in Covington, Ky. In 2017, she launched Kickstart Kitchen, a food business incubator that provides temporary leased commercial kitchen space to food entrepreneurs to launch or grow their small businesses. In addition to the storage space and commercial kitchen equipment, Kickstart Kitchen offers complimentary assistance with business planning.

Mavis currently has 12 full-time employees and 30 part-time employees, and rents out Kickstart Kitchen to 10 small food businesses, with more entrepreneurs signing on each month. In 2018, Mavis and The Delish Dish team were awarded the Small Business Administration’s Kentucky Woman-Owned Business of the Year and the Small Business Development Center’s 2018 Pacesetter Award.

In 2019, Mavis was awarded the Next Generation Leader Award in the Entrepreneurial Category by the Northern Kentucky Young Professionals branch of the Northern Kentucky Chamber.

After 8 years of growing her business, Mavis was super excited to welcome her daughter Alanna into the world in January of 2020. Mavis was awarded the 2020 Kentucky Small Business of the Year by the Small Business Administration. Although the COVID-19 pandemic greatly affected The Delish Dish and Made By Mavis, Mavis is proud that both companies survived the pandemic and are now thriving in 2021 with the vaccine rollout and lifting of government restrictions. She looks forward to celebrating 10 years in business in 2022.