Eric Warnstedt is a board member of TURNmusic. Which makes sense as just down the street sit three restaurants that he owns and operates. And he’s a music lover. Eric’s been a James Beard Foundation nominee or semifinalist for eight consecutive years, between 2009 and 2017. Eric founded Hen of the Wood in 2005, and it quickly became a top destination in Vermont as the state’s food scene began developing its nationwide reputation. “It was definitely the goose that laid the golden egg,” Eric said of that restaurant (source: Burlington Free Press, 2018). He added a second Hen of the Wood in Burlington in 2013. He opened Doc Ponds, a restaurant/bar in Stowe, in October 2015. In 2018 he purchased a well-known Waterbury eatery, Prohibition Pig. He later added a second restaurant behind that, a brewery. Then he moved his flagship restaurant, HOTW, to downtown Waterbury in a historic bank building in 2019. While he’s admittedly a very busy entrepreneur, Eric still finds time to lend a hand with the TURNmusic board.

(Image: Ryan Mercer)