National Culinary Review

Tina Thomure/Artisan Events

Blue Plate's yellowfin tuna tartare, nori toast points, golden miso/sake vinaigrette, golden pea shoots, tatsoi leaves and sugar snap peas.

Do you have what it takes to be a caterer?

Dickinson, who opened Pearl with co-owner Mikel Rogers 2½ years ago, previously owned a catering company and had also been an executive chef for a group of restaurants that had a catering arm. “I’ve done a lot of catering and have learned a lot of lessons, so I created a master checklist that I work from,” he says. “I’ve learned the hard way. I was on a boat once, and didn’t have enough food. But you can’t plan to go over too much, because it will affect your margins.”

Chris Bybee, chef/owner of Sublime
Catering, Longmont, Colo., says caterers
are an entrepreneurial bunch. “It’s like
a disease, and it grows on you. I like
the challenge of taking something and
building it into something successful.
There’s something in me that craves
entrepreneurship, but you have to know
how to deal with things like taxes and
payroll, in addition to cooking.”
notes that 60% of catering companies
are female-owned. “Women get a
much fairer shake in catering, as a
chef, than in a restaurant.”

He says Pearl hand-selects catering events that do not compromise its standards. “We’ve turned down off-site lunch events for 250 people because it’s too large of a group for us. There are too many challenges. We want to be sure it’s perfect. We’d have to hire extra staff, and when you’re using outside resources, it’s a big challenge to train them to your standards.”

Creativity is another characteristic
necessary to be successful in catering,
says Paul Larson, executive chef at
Blue Plate, Chicago. “Compared to a
restaurant, there’s more creativity in
catering. Every day you have a different
location and different menu. At a
restaurant, you might only change the
menu three times a year. You’re often
cooking the same 20 items on the menu
every day. There’s an opportunity to see
and taste different cuisines and do a lot
of research with catering.”
He also emphasizes that successful
caterers are great salespeople. “You
need to be able to sell. Just because you
cook well and have great creativity in the
kitchen, it’s only half the formula. Many
chefs struggle at first because they are
food-driven and not sales-driven.”
Roman says catering also is suited to
those who are not shaken by a crisis.
“Caterers, by nature, thrive on having
problems to solve. My advice is to work
for a caterer and go to lots of events.
Catering is an event world.”

Some interesting catering jobs included an event held in an airplane hangar at Boeing Field (King County International Airport), Seattle, to launch a new car for a Mercedes dealership. The Pearl staff served hors d’oeuvres and wine. And Pearl frequently caters wine dinners at nearby wineries, such as Woodhouse Family Cellars, Woodinville, Wash., and DeLille Cellars, Redmond, Wash.

Michael Roman, president/founder
of Minneapolis-based Catersource
Magazine, Conference & Tradeshow,
Bradley Dickinson, chef/owner of
Pearl Bar & Dining, Bellevue, Wash.,
believes it takes a certain type of chef
to do catering. “The chef can’t be a
seat-of-your-pants operator. You need
to be organized and have a sense of
preparation and planning.”

“We sit down with the winemakers and come up with fun stuff for these catering events,” Dickinson says. “Sometimes, those dishes end up on our menu at Pearl.”