Part of the shipment of food to be prepared for the next week’s University of Wisconsin football game arrived, as usual, at Camp Randall Stadium on a Thursday. The collection was short in one product that in Wisconsin almost certainly would get noticed if concession stands ran out early: There weren’t enough brats.
In the short term, a search gathered enough supply of the brats to get Wisconsin through the football season before pivoting. Over the following months, chefs went through a taste-testing process that informed how they were planning to move forward.