After working together as servers at the Nicollet Island Inn in Minneapolis during the 1990s, David Burley and Stephanie Shimp opened the Highland Grill on St. Paul’s Cleveland Avenue, followed by a series of additional local restaurants under the title Blue Plate Restaurant Co., including the Groveland Tap and Longfellow Grill.

On Sunday afternoon, Burley, who grew up in Perth, Australia, died in a motorcycle crash on Interstate 94 in Wisconsin’s St. Croix County. All Blue Plate Restaurants were closed on Monday in remembrance.

Shimp, co-owner of the Blue Plate Restaurant Co. and Burley’s ex-wife, released a written statement Sunday evening.

“My heart is absolutely broken by the devastating news of David’s passing,” Shimp wrote. “Losing him so suddenly is overwhelming — a painful shock that has left me and our entire Blue Plate family grieving a loss too deep for words. David’s passion and kindness were the foundation of everything we built together. We will profoundly miss his spirit, energy and irreplaceable presence.”

Burley was struck by a driver who tried to overtake traffic by using the right shoulder on Interstate 94 in Hudson, according to the Wisconsin State Patrol. The man, driving a 2011 Infiniti G25, struck a guardrail, veered back into the right lane and collided with the motorcycle that Burley was on.

Burley died at Regions Hospital in St. Paul. He was 58 and lived in Minnetonka. The driver has been charged in the incident.

‘Mate, we can do this’

“He was the kind of leader who could be demanding, but you wanted to do well for David,” said Kevin Wencel, who worked for Blue Plate in the 1990s and 2000s in various roles, including as corporate executive chef. “He made you better. If he felt you were delivering less than you could, he told you as much. He asked a lot of people, but there’s nobody that’s more generous and more kind, and I think that’s probably what made him so magnetic.”

Burley and Shimp were co-founders of the Blue Plate Restaurant Co., through which they launched also the Edina Grill, 3 Squares, The Lowry, The Blue Barn at the Minnesota State Fair and The Freehouse.

One day in the early 2010s, Burley approached Troy Reding, then Blue Plate’s vice president of operations, with an idea.

“I remember him once looking at me and going, ‘we’re going to open up a brewery,’” Reding said. Only one problem: Neither of them knew anything about brewing beer, which Reding was quick to point out. “And he says, ‘Ay, mate, we can do this.’”

Cut to late 2013, when Blue Plate opened The Freehouse in Minneapolis’s North Loop.

“He never backed down from a challenge,” Reding said. “When he was convinced you could be successful, you were going to do it.”

‘He had vision’

When Reding ultimately left Blue Plate and started his own restaurants, including Holman’s Table at the St. Paul Downtown Airport, Burley’s lessons stuck with him.

“Before I worked for him, there was no way I would’ve branched out on my own,” Reding said. “He taught me so much about how to be successful in what’s an incredibly hard business. … He was all in on everybody being successful.”

Several major local restaurant groups and chefs trace a lineage through Blue Plate, Burley and Shimp, from Red Cow, started by Shimp’s brother, to spots like Coalition and the Creekside Supper Club under chef Eli Wollenzein.

“You don’t work with David or know David without pulling something away and being like, ‘I want to be more like him,’” said Wencel. “He had vision. He was resolute in what he saw the people around him could do, and he just didn’t settle for less. It was unwavering.”

Mara H. Gottfried contributed to this report.