Beans and Banter, a podcast hosted by NiCole and Keith Fischer, the owners of The Mill in Bonduel, debuted in December 2025.
“Grab your coffee and stay as long as you want” is NiCole Fischer’s vision of The Mill, a popular coffee lounge, boutique and bourbon retailer, opened by the Fischers in late 2023, a vision that carries over to the Beans and Banter podcasts.
The podcasts are just as authentic and transparent as the postings on their Facebook page (The Mill, Bonduel).
NiCole Fischer listens to podcasts, so she simply decided that they should do one.
The Fischers designed their podcast to provide interesting tidbits about The Mill, their future plans, their family and the people they connect with on a daily basis. The podcasts that have dropped so far are entertaining, honest and genuine.
By watching, or listening to, one of the podcasts, it is clear that the Fischers love what they do and enjoy telling the stories about their family, The Mill, and the community.
“Initially, the purpose was not that we think that we are super-important people,” NiCole Fischer said. “But we have a story to tell, of The Mill, our business and our blended family. We have five kids.”
Their children, who will all be seen in individual podcasts are Sawyer Klotzbuecher, 21; Journie Klotzbuecher, 19; Cubby Fischer, 15; Knox Fischer, 8; and Nash Fischer, 7.
“Keith’s the police chief in town, and we have a coffee shop, and we renovated the building,” NiCole Fischer said.
She said that there are a lot of questions that people have, and they want to answer them and share the story.
The first podcasts were filmed with just the Fischers.
“Now our goal is to have more guests,” NiCole Fischer said.
NiCole Fischer said that on The Mill’s Facebook page she writes things that she feels are touching, or any story that she thinks should be told. The same will be seen on the podcasts.
“There’s a lot of bad news out there all the time,” NiCole Fischer said. “We like to highlight the good. We like to hear feel-good stories. We like to hear about the good people in our community and people who stop in to The Mill.”
Some of the guests they plan to line up for future podcasts are other small businesses and people in the community.
“We will have a liver donor, (Mandy Williams) and liver recipient (Andy Drath) on,” NiCole Fischer said.
The Fischers also have Lindsey Johnson from Shawano Downtown Business Improvement District scheduled to participate.
“To be honest, we’re figuring it out as we go,” Keith Fischer said.
Keith Fischer said they expect their podcast audience to be supporters of them, in the many different aspects of their lives. Currently, most listeners are friends and family.
“It’s a broad genre, because we have a broad guest list,” NiCole Fisher said. “We’re going to have law enforcement, food service, people who’ve been injured or had a terrible childhood.”
“We’ll have people who’ve overcame some hard things in their lives,” Keith Fischer added. “We’re not really worried about the podcast being labeled just one thing.”
They currently have about 180 subscribers to the podcast.
On Jan. 14, they filmed an interview with Jordan Thomson, of Shawano. Thomson is recovering from a significant injury. He appears on the podcast with his 7-month-old husky-shepherd mix dog, Lalou, who is blind.
His recovery journey, along with the adoption of Lalou, is the type of story that the Fischers want to highlight in their podcasts.
He is a friend of the Fischers from their church, Bethel Lutheran Church in Oconto Falls.
The Fischers’ lives are really busy and packed with multiple responsibilities. They feel the podcast time is an opportunity to hang out with each other for an hour a week, as a coffee date.
Their podcast manager is Cami Orgel, who Keith Fischer said is “great,” while NiCole Fischer said: “We got lucky with her.”
Orgel, of Sturgeon Bay, had experience working in Los Angeles on movie sets and had a relevant background. Her story is told in an upcoming podcast with the Fischers.
Orgel posts the completed podcasts to Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/genre/podcasts-page), Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com) and YouTube.
In meeting people, and talking with people, NiCole Fischer said she’s the type of person who feels that things are just meant to be.
“There are two ways of looking at things,” she said. “Everything’s a miracle, or nothing is at all. That’s an Albert Einstein quote.”
They don’t use notes in doing the podcasts. They don’t want to jam people up. They want the podcasts to be raw, transparent and real.
“We get so many questions and messages, such as ‘How do you do this?’ or ‘What do you recommend?’” NiCole Fischer said.
She and her husband have seen many positive reactions to their Facebook posts, which makes them feel that people are craving good stories.
“And I think that we have a good story,” she said.
