About Us
Our Story
We are a small business founded by two friends on the principles of quality food production at a reasonable price. Relationships are integral to our business, and meaningful relationships built around the shared love of food are what drive us forward every day.
Friends since birth, and born of Italian heritage in Melrose Park, Illinois, our passion for sharing quality food with the people we love was instilled in our DNA. From Saturday dinners at Nona's house during childhood, to working as dining room servers in a retirement community during high school and the preparing of shift meals at the station since becoming first responders, our journey into the world of food has been a lifelong endeavor. That experience was revolutionized by a trip to Chicago's largest buffalo wing festival in 2014, and eventually resulted in the production of our first product: dan&nicks Medium Buffalo.
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Premised on the idea of unlimited wings at a reasonable price, that wing festival (and others like it) exposed us to the multitude of wing styles, sauce varieties, and presentation creativity the culinary arts had to offer. Year-after-year we returned, but over time the popularity of these events caused them to grow too large in size. The resulting decline in quality, and rise in prices, inspired us to try our hand at putting together a wing party of our own. That decision grew into a recurring yearly event making homemade sauces and wings for hundreds of family and friends.
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Since 2018, we've been hard at work crafting the perfect buffalo sauce to accompany our wings. In 2023, after hundreds of samplings and overwhelmingly positive feedback, we made the decision to incorporate Chicagoland Food Group to deliver the recipe for what has come to be our flagship wing sauce: dan&nicks Medium Buffalo.
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Our story doesn't stop there, as we've already begun developing additional bottled sauce flavors that will hit store shelves later this year (www.danandnicks.com for more). Beyond our bottled sauces, we are developing dry rubs, coffee/espresso lines, and other small batch products made with the same dedication to quality.
First Responders
Food is our business. Public Safety is our vocation. Chicagoland Food Group, LLC is proudly owned by police officers and firefighter/paramedics in the Chicago metro area.
With decades of experience as first responders, we understand what it means to help others and give back to our community. We intend to provide that same level of dedication and heart to our business, because providing exceptional service to our customers is what will allow us to keep making quality products our friends and families can be proud of.
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As we continue to grow, we are also working to secure partnerships with police, fire, and military/veteran non-profits so we can give back to the people who helped get us to where we are today.
Mission, Values, & Vision
Mission
It's our mission to deliver quality, small batch food products at an affordable price to the Chicagoland wholesale and retail market.
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Vales
Our operating values are honesty, quality, service, dedication, and affordability.
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Vision
Chicagoland Food Group isn't limited to shelf-stable, pre-packaged food products. As we continue to grow, our vision grows with us. In the next five years, we envision our regional distribution growing nationally, our shelf-stable food products expanding to refrigerated fresh goods, and our hobbies of making homemade wine and sopressata transitioning to products we can safely (and cost-effectively) offer to the market.
In time, we hope to add our favorite recipes to the website, create a food channel on each of the major social media platforms, and partner with our favorite restaurants to expand our line of products. We are constantly experimenting in the kitchen, and as we continue to try and fail, we will also try and succeed. We hope you'll be there for the journey.