CATER THIS!    ......
                   BEHIND THE SCENES

Welcome to the first blog post .... the goal was to start this post on March 1st and I now have exactly 1 hour and 5 minutes to make my deadline!  It can be done!

The purpose of this blog is to have fun with the things that happen behind the scenes of the "glamorous" life of a cater.  Nearly every event we cater, somone says to us "this must be so much fun!"  I want to say .... "THIS" part is fun ... the part that YOU are experiencing right this minute ... but OH what it took to pull this off!"  ... However, we usually just nod and smile ... and keep working!  No need to spoil their idea, right?  :-)

I will begin by telling who we are - usually a good place to start, right?

There are 3 owners of Cater This!  Myself, Debbie, Louise and Kelly.
The top photo shows myself on the left and Kelly on the right ... Louise is in the bottom photo. 
Not our most flattering photos ... we will have to work on that!  :-)

Our background ... We all 3 met while working with Sodexo at Liberty University.  I was the catering manager, Kelly was the executive adminstrative assistant  (code for - brains of the operation) and Louise was a lead supervisor and the etiquette trainer (code for, person who had to do all the things that I talked clients into!) 

Together, we managed an account that conducted just shy of 1 million dollars in catering sales.  We had a staff of 40 - 60, depending on the time of year we were catering.  Football season was always the heaviest and had the longest days.  A normal workday during football season was 18 hours plus.  The average amount of catering events during a football weekend was approximately 20 - 30.  The highest amount of events we catered in 1 weekend .... 63 .... with 43 of them being in ONE day!  That was NOT a fun weekend! 

During our time with Sodexo at LU, we were priveledged to learn a tremendous amount concerning all aspects of  food service, food safety and the catering world.  We catered from 2 guests to thousands of guests per event.  We handled events in open fields, on airport runways, at family farms, in people's driveways, most venues in Lynchburg and anything inbetween! 

The 3 of us would talk, off and on, about starting our own catering business "one day" but we were always so busy catering, we never seem to have the time to start anything. When we did have the time, nothing ever seemed to work out ... the timimg was never right.

One by one, we were no longer in the catering department at LU ... and little by little ... the dream of creating our own catering company began to fade away.  It seemed like it was just not meant to be.

However, last April - literally over night ... the dynamics changed.... and without even trying, the phone started to ring .... "are you catering on your own yet? "...... "we heard you may be catering again" .... and before we knew it ... WE WERE!  We made a decision to just do it! 

We were all 3 more broke than we have ever been, and, to us, the timing seemed wrong - but the phone kept ringing and bookings were coming in.  It was definetly God's timing, and not ours.  We were just amazed.

We became an LLC in June and have been full steam ahead ever since!  We are back!  We are running our own catering and event business .... and we are loving it!

Thank you for taking the journey with us.  We look forward to sharing our stories and pictures with you. 


Here is a hint for the next post .....

Until next time,

Debbie