Katie Potter is the keeper of a closely guarded family secret. It comes in small, artfully designed packets and she’s not giving it up.
“My lawyer said to never divulge it,” she said.
We do know the secret involves tantalizing spices that are critical ingredients in Potter’s award-winning seafood chowder.
The creamy combo of shrimp, scallops, cod and potatoes warms the soul, she says.
“I’ve never seen an empty bowl,” she said. “I love serving it to people who’ve never had it. I’m educating them one cup at a time.”
This rich seafood stew leads the menu at Potter’s Newport Chowder Co. LLC, with other choices that include lobster mac and cheese, stuffies, and grilled shrimp and corn chowder. She launched her chowder business with a food truck three years ago; since then, she’s expanded with a second food truck and a seasonal, warm-weather outpost on Thames Street in Newport that was once a pizza joint.
Potter is the youngest of six children. Her dad is from Poland and her mom, Muriel, was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. When they first met at a tennis club, her father was studying electrical engineering at the University of Toronto. They married and moved to Newport in the 1960s, where Muriel ran a French nursery school.
In the ’80s, she opened Muriel’s Restaurant on Spring Street, a favorite local eatery that served comfort food, including sausage and cheddar soup and the now legendary seafood chowder.
The latter reflected Muriel’s maritime roots in Nova Scotia. Potter and her siblings worked at the restaurant during high school. Muriel’s fish stew won multiple cook-offs and was eventually inducted into the Chowder Hall of Fame.
And even though the restaurant was sold in 1999, the memory of that chowder lived on.
“My mother was an entrepreneur before her day,” Potter said.
While she was a student at Rogers High School, Potter was diagnosed with scoliosis – a curvature of the spine. It meant numerous trips to Boston, where doctors wanted to perform major surgery.
“I said, ‘Hell no,’ ” Potter said. “I wanted to learn how to avoid that.”
After high school, she went to the University of Rhode Island, where she studied physical therapy and graduated with a master’s degree, followed by a doctorate degree at Utica University.
“I’m like my mom; I’m willing to take risks,” Potter said.
For years, Potter had no intention of going into the restaurant business. She’d been working as a physical therapist at University Orthopedics Inc. when someone suggested she would be good in sales. She tried out for a couple of jobs, with no luck.
“It was a man’s world back then,” Potter said. “I wasn’t planning on it, but when I applied for an opening and was told no, I said, ‘Watch me.’ I tell my kids to ‘never say never.’ ”
Potter’s persistence paid off, as she was hired by Ortho-McNeil Neurologics, then Medtronic, selling pacemakers and devices used in spinal surgery. It was a high-stress environment, but she loved her job, she says. Then in 2019, she started a side hustle, selling the packets of secret spices with her mom’s recipe cards to local retail markets and online.
At the same time, Potter kept hearing from people still hankering for Muriel’s chowder. She decided to take classes at Hope & Main, the culinary incubator in Warren, on the finer points of making the seafood stew in 90-gallon batches.
From there, she began selling the creamy concoction from a pushcart at a farmers market and bought the first of two food trucks. By 2022, the business had grown so much, she was working seven days a week and had to make the tough decision to leave her full-time sales job to focus on it.
“It was a leap of faith,” she said.
Potter enrolled in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program and one of the tasks was to come up with an opportunity for growing her company. Her husband, Michael Potter, found the erstwhile outdoor pizza location and a year later, she opened it as a seasonal restaurant. She’s now in the middle of renovating and tearing up the floor to extend the season and make the space more suitable for private events. It’s also a great location for people-watching, she says.
During the summer, Potter’s day starts as early as 6 a.m. It’s her favorite part of the day, she says. She makes sure that the generators are working and the propane tanks are filled, then talks to catering clients and her seafood supplier, Fat Boy Foods, while mentoring more than 20 young employees.
The food trucks visit weekly polo matches and food festivals, and soon her chowder will be available at some local midsized markets, as well as online.
One secret she’s happy to pass along: If you think you’ll make money in the first year, don’t. It isn’t going to happen.
“The hard part is going from Point A to Point B when you don’t know what Point B is, and not having enough time,” she said. “I watch every episode of ‘Shark Tank.’ I want to work with these growth opportunities, but I don’t want to make mistakes. I don’t want to be cocky and think I know it all.”
