Women in business: Phillis Engelbert – Detroit Street Filling Station, The Lunch Room and North Star Lounge

In honor of Women’s History Month, The Michigan Daily’s business beat spent the month speaking with women business owners throughout Ann Arbor about their journey, their connection to the community and their legacy. Read the other stories here.

You may not know her name, but there’s a good chance you’ve wined and dined at one of the three prominent Ann Arbor establishments run by Phillis Engelbert: Kerrytown staple Detroit Street Filling Station, the recently-opened North Star Lounge and The Lunch Room Bakery & Cafe in Huron Towers. With a focus on locally-sourced produce and community organizing, Engelbert’s restaurants provide an assortment of eclectic vegan fare for their patrons.

After getting a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in Biology in 1985 and a master’s degree in Natural Resources in 1987, Engelbert did nonprofit work for several years. Then in 2010, Engelbert made her foray into the culinary industry when she started cooking vegan cuisine for local dinner parties.

“I decided to take a break from all the different things I had been doing, and I just stopped working and called it my period of creative self-unemployment,” Engelbert said. “I started cooking with a friend who lives next door and is vegan. We threw a bunch of dinner parties for our friends and did some pop-up meals.”

Engelbert went on to open something a little more permanent in 2011 — a food cart called The Lunch Room alongside her then-business partner Joel Panozzo. They quickly upgraded The Lunch Room to a brick-and-mortar location in Kerrytown in 2013. 

Engelbert now operates three restaurants across the city, with the most recent addition being the North Star Lounge music venue which opened in September. The North Star Lounge opened in October right next to the Detroit Street Filling Station, Engelbert’s second Ann Arbor business. All of her work has come from her passion for good food and sharing flavorful vegan cuisine with her community, Engelbert told The Daily. 

“It wasn’t a desire to be a business owner; it wasn’t even a desire to be a restaurateur,” Engelbert said. “It was just led by food, putting one foot in front of the other and just sort of following the open doors.”

For Engelbert, serving an entirely plant-based menu is about upholding her commitment to pacifism.

“When I went vegan, in around 2007, it was just because it felt better,” Engelbert said. “It felt like a good way to eat and because it seemed like a way to sort of exercise my nonviolent principles. So to me, part of nonviolence means not killing and eating animals. And I’m lactose intolerant, so the dairy part was easy.”

Engelbert’s commitment to social and environmental responsibility extends to her community-based work with her employees. She’s worked to establish partnerships with a number of local organizations to support initiatives such as food justice, civil liberties and human rights.

“Having a business for me has been a lot like running a nonprofit,” Engelbert said. “It’s set up a little bit differently, but it’s really like this business is like a big community organization with (around) 50 employees or 52 employees … The idea is to have a community where everybody’s contributions are valued and where there’s fruitful dialogue and opportunities for people to express themselves.” 

When it comes to being a woman in business, Engelbert said she’s never really felt as though her gender has set her back, but she acknowledges that many other women entrepreneurs continue to to experience a variety of challenges. Engelbert said the biggest learning curve for her was picking up the practical and financial skills that she hadn’t been taught growing up.

“I’ve never really thought that there were things I couldn’t do because I was a girl or woman,” Engelbert said. “A lot of boys are raised learning certain useful skills from their fathers in terms of fixing things or building things … I certainly wasn’t raised with any of those skills … That is one thing where I just had to dive in.”

Engelbert encourages aspiring business owners to think carefully about their reasons for starting a business and to be mindful of the impact they will have on their employees and community.

“The biggest challenge I think for most people when they get into business that they don’t really think about is the fact that you will become an employer,” Engelbert said. “It means you’re responsible for the livelihoods of whoever works for you. It means that your decisions will be heavily scrutinized and it means you have a responsibility to try to do the best by your people that you can.”

Engelbert offered her support to any aspiring entrepreneurs, particularly marginalized groups such as women and people of Color, who are interested in starting their own businesses.

“I am very free with my time and advice,” Engelbert said. “So if somebody out there, women in particular — I especially have been working with women of Color who are interested in starting something — I’m very happy to answer any questions.”

Daily News Editor Irena Li can be reached at irenayli@umich.edu.