Nic Mink says it will feel different when people come to Seven Acre Dairy Co. in a few weeks. The owner of the boutique hotel, restaurant and events space is referring to a new concept that is slated to replace Seven Acre Dairy Co.’s The Kitchen restaurant at the end of April. Little Cloud Restaurant will draw from head chef Ben Serum’s French-cooking background and the cheeses and dairy products in sister operation Landmark Creamery ’s body of work in Paoli.
When Seven Acre Dairy Co. opened in an old dairy factory at 6858 Paoli Road in 2023, chefs Ben Hunter and Kyle Kiepert ran The Kitchen and designed the restaurant’s menu around Wisconsin farmstead cooking and hyperlocal produce . “Since [Hunter and Kiepert] left, the food has struggled to find an identity,” says Mink. “It was just very tied to them.” In 2024, former Landmark Creamery co-owner Anna Thomas Bates sold her share of the cheese-making business to Mink, and Landmark Creamery co-owner and cheesemaker Anna Landmark moved the Landmark Creamery cafe and retail space from across the street into Seven Acre Dairy Co., where she had already been producing small-batch butters.
The idea for Little Cloud Restaurant came from figuring out how to best integrate Landmark Creamery’s business with Seven Acre Dairy Co. “I think of The Kitchen as [Hunter] and [Kiepert]’s restaurant,” says Mink. “[Little Cloud] is [Landmark] and [Serum]’s restaurant and they’re bringing their vibe and their food backgrounds to this place.” The new menu concept “will dig into cool, new dairy products that [Landmark is making], as well as featuring some of [Landmark]’s most iconic cheeses,” says Mink…