Discussing the State of the Catering and Personal Chef Industries with Chef Brendon Hudson of Liliahna Catering

Welcome everyone. This is Chris Spear with the Chefs estaurants podcast and on today's show I have chef Brendon Hudson, owner and chef of Liliahna catering. Welcome to the show.

Thanks, Chris. How are you? I'm great. How you doing? Good. Good. Thanks for having me.

You're welcome. Do you have a good weekend? Did you have to work?

Yes. So actually, thankfully, I had to work yes, we had, um, where I so the catering company, obviously was quite a bit slow for a while. But now we're starting to pick up, you know, doing some micro weddings and more like smaller, private, intimate events, I

find the micro weddings to be really interesting. That's probably making up about 50 to 60% of my business right now, like I'm being a small personal chef, I never did weddings, you know, most people do these big, hundred percent things. And I kind of max out at 20. But now I'm seeing all these like 20 and under weddings, and little babies, and it's so interesting.

Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's, you know, we've never really done micro weddings prior to all of this. So it's, it was definitely like a learning curve for us to figure out, you know, kind of mixing a concept of doing like a private dinner with a wedding at the same time. But you know, it's been a lot of fun, because it allows us to like really hyper focus on some of the details that maybe with like 150 person wedding, you wouldn't really be able to focus on,

do you find that the clientele is a little different. And the expectations are a little different, because what I'm seeing is, when people hire a personal chef for a dinner, it can be formal, but it's still a little more casual. But now I'm getting these people who are maybe even started planning a wedding with like a wedding planner, and like a full blown caterer. And now it seems a little more, I think uptight is the word like they're more focused on my China and linens and all that stuff that I didn't have to deal with when I was doing a personal chef. And I didn't know if you've seen that at all, with the

totally agree. I mean, so before all that we are obviously like a full service catering company. So we were doing larger events. But you know, usually with the smaller events that we were doing there, like you said, they were usually less focused on the nitty gritty of everything, and just wanted it to be, you know, a fun night where they could have friends over and enjoy the food and kind of keep it, you know, no white tablecloths or anything crazy like that. But now what we're seeing is they want, you know, a certain type of tablecloth and a certain type of glass and all these different utensils and silverware. And it's, you know, I think they're trying to accomplish that large scale wedding and one all the details in the, you know, the aspects of that, but paring it down to 15 people, 20 people, which is difficult for us to do, because you know, you're at the more expensive things get, the smaller your profit margin gets,

when you have a staff how many people work with you.

So usually, we have about five people who work with us on a consistent basis. And then we kind of contract out like servers, and bartenders and chefs and stuff like that. But through all of this, I've had to lay off three of them. So it's now just myself and two others are myself and one other I'm sorry, who we just kind of, you know, have been doing the communication and emails and organizing and stuff like that.

So let's take a step back. How did you get into food? Was this something you were always interested in? Were you growing up interested in food? Did you start working in restaurants at a young age? or How did you find yourself here?

Yeah, so I mean, my grandfather, and his father actually opened up villages, downtown Little Italy. So I quite literally grew up in the apartment above the restaurant for like the first five or six years of my life. And so, you know, was in the restaurant industry from as far back as I can remember. And then as I got older, into like, my, you know, preteen years, and then through my teens, I started to work in a restaurant in front of house and then moving into the back house. And I fell in love with it, who was just something, I was somewhere I felt most comfortable. I loved food, I love cooking food. I love seeing the reactions on the clients faces when you would bring them to food, all that stuff. So I think it was kind of destined for me at a young age to go into this industry.

And then did you go to culinary school? I did.

So I went to graduated from Gilman in Roland park in 2012. And then I just went straight to the Culinary Institute of America up in New York, in High Park, and then did my two years there and got my associates. And then I did another two years and got my bachelor's in entrepreneurship.

So going for entrepreneurship. Did that mean that you knew you wanted to open up your own business? I mean, a lot of people go to school just for culinary. And then the entrepreneurship comes later. Did you have that vision? I mean,

not particularly, I think so. The class that I was in, we were the first class where they actually offer the entrepreneurship program. And it just sounded very interesting and very cool. So naturally, I wanted to try it not really knowing that, you know, I was gonna have for this open up my own business or even thinking about that. But as I was kind of doing it and I was realizing that, you know, this is something that I'm really passionate about having my own project, able to see the project from start to finish, and then kind of cultivate it throughout the whole thing. Whereas, you know, sometimes when you're working for somebody else, you are limitations of your creativity, or sometimes, you know, you hit a roof sometimes, whereas doing them doing it on your own, it's really up to you how much or how little or how creative you can be.

So when and how did you start your business? Did you do it on the side? How long has it been going now?

Yeah, so it's been open officially for about four years now. But in culinary school, I would go around, and this is very common for the students of the CIA, you would go and do like little private chef gigs in the immediate area for different clients, or couples, or whatever it was, you know, and it's great for them, because they live so close to such a, you know, such a high end culinary school, they can just have their pickings of whoever they want to come cook dinner. So I got into that in my bachelor's degree. So the last two years. And I really love that because it combined, like my two favorite aspects of cooking number one, really be able to like focus on the ingredients and the plating, and the quality of everything. And then number two, also be want to interact with the client at the same time and like talking to them about the food, seeing their reactions, you know, starting a conversation where sometimes, at least, in my experience, being in the restaurant, and being in the back house, you don't get that kind of client interaction, you're just throwing food out. And, you know, hoping that the front of house doesn't come back with a play, essentially. So that's kind of how I got into the whole idea of wanting to do catering as opposed to opening up like a storefront. Because I know with catering, you still get those two aspects together, which was, you know, really exciting for me to figure out that there was something out there that still combined everything I wanted to do, and I could do it on my own. At the same time.

I think that's the best or worst part of the personal chef and catering thing, depending on your personality, because you're on show. A lot of people ask me about, you know, what are some tips? How do you get started? What do you need to do, and I always let them know, you know, you have to be comfortable, you're in someone's kitchen, you're in their house, most of them want to interact with you, the bigger parties, I tend to find that I'm more of the help. But when you have a small dinner party, I mean, I did a dinner for two last night and the night before a bachelorette party for six. And both of them were very interactive, asking me questions and stuff. And I know a lot of people aren't comfortable with that they come up in restaurants where they're in the closed kitchen. So you really have to enjoy that part of being on stage and kind of being the entertainer, I think that's what so many people are actually paying for when they hire a personal chef. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the whole, like you're saying the whole concept of

being, especially nowadays, being able to bring a chef into your home and have him or her where you know, their their chef jacket, their traditional garb, it just kind of feels it's almost like the same as if you were to have a singer songwriter, or band come into your home and play for you. You know, like, they're obviously there to enjoy the music. But at the same time, they're like, even more excited to just see you up close and personal in action, doing your thing. And that's one of my favorite parts. I mean, I love talking. And I love, like you said kind of being be being the show for people, I think that's kind of a great attribute to be able to have and then help those people, you know, experienced that.

And then there's the whole thing about cooking lessons. Do you do cooking lessons in person? Is that something you've done before?

Yeah, so before all of this, we partnered with a few different like residential buildings in DC in Northern Virginia, where we would do cooking lessons for the residents of each building, which was great. And I love doing cooking lessons, especially with residents of these buildings, because more often than not, you find that they are, you know, skewing a little bit younger. And so they're always a little bit more apt and willing to kind of chat have fun, not take anything too seriously, which is a lot of fun for me because it let it's less of like a lesson for me and more of just me cooking, hanging out with some new friends that I just kind of stumbled across. So that's great. And then, you know, with all of this, we transition into doing virtual cooking classes. So we just use a platform called crowdcast. And all of the residents can still log on, use the chat, they can bring their video up if they want to. And while it's not the same type of social interaction out for it's still better than you know, not doing them at all. Yeah, that's

really challenging. I haven't gotten into the virtual cooking classes yet but I know a lot of people are doing it. We actually have a woman here in Frederick where I live who has a it's called the kitchen studio, where it was all in person and she's shifted completely to virtual. I mean, that's her whole business. She doesn't go out and do events. So her whole business was totally decimated when this thing has And then had to figure out, you know, how do you still make money? And she's been pretty successful, I think converting to 100% virtual cooking classes, but you know, it's obviously not the same.

Yeah, no, and I mean, I think there's pros and cons to, to every situation to this situation specifically, you know, the Pro is that you kind of learn, you're, you're forced to pivot, you're forced to pivot your business, your business, and so you might learn a different avenue that you maybe haven't explored before, that is something you can continue to, you know, go down and, and, and explore after all of this is over. The con, obviously, is that you're just thrown for a wall run, do you know, it's like you, you don't really ever know what's going on, you don't have a timeline for when things are going to end. So you just have to kind of keep keep, you know, chucking through the mud to try to get to the other end?

Where you completely unemployed when COVID hit like, did you have a period where you didn't work at all?

Yeah, I mean, so I know, a, at least for us, it started to really hit us hard in March. And then so march through a basically July, we have nothing like all of our events were canceled, or rescheduled, no one was scheduling anything new, obviously. And then all of the like, while we were trying to pivot, all of our like cooking classes, and all those other kind of like, miscellaneous events that we do. The corporate partners had cancelled all of those. So we were kind of, you know, I was a little nervous for a little bit, I was like, this is a bit crazy to just go from, you know, what was going to seem like a normal, beneficial profitable year to, you know, within a week, it felt like everything being closed, shut down, cancelled and rescheduled. So you really have to pivot quickly.

And you have overhead. I mean, I don't have a commercial kitchen. But you have a commercial kitchen, correct? Yes. So that's a cost you're having to absorb while you don't have any income.

Exactly. So for those few months, it was um, definitely, you know, and you, it's hard to expect, like landlords and owners and, and real estate, and they say commercial real estate companies to give you a break, when they're in the same position you are, you know, so it's like, everyone's kind of in this same position. So we all just kind of have to do our best work together to see what we can kind of make happen to make ends meet. So thankfully, our owners were able to work with us a little bit in terms of like the cost of that, during those months where we didn't have anything. But yeah, it was definitely a nail biter kind of going into it. Because I mean, especially with, like you said, the commercial kitchen, and then the utilities and all the food we had in here, you know, just trying to figure out ways to use it, or get rid of it without totally losing all of that kind of money that you spent on it.

So have you found any things that you've started doing, because of the COVID situation that you're going to carry on, like, let's say, when we get back to normal whenever and whatever that is, have you learned anything, and have you decided to change your business in any way that you think is going to stick?

I think the biggest thing that we've earned the two things that we've really kind of been able to focus on with all of the time that we had to kind of adjust these virtual classes have been great. I mean, it's great, because you can have as many or as little guests as you want. Whereas with in person cooking classes, sometimes that's limited because of space or ingredients, or, you know, whatever it is, but with this, you know, it's still alive, while you can, while you may not be in that kitchen with them, like showing them step by step, they can still bring up their camera. So it's like, you know, one degree away, I think from from me being there, and it's great that I can do it with, you know, 60 7075 people at a time. Whereas before, I would have never been able to do that with the spaces that you know, we have. And then the other thing I think that has been great is that we've really been able to focus on our digital presence through all this and really focusing on doing, you know, really nice food photography and upping our, just our general kind of presence online. Because we've realized that, especially now, your digital presence to somebody, your Instagram profile, your Facebook, your website, whatever it is, is somebody's first impression of your business. And so if they, you know, aren't impressed by it, or the website is unorganized or your Instagram feed isn't great or you haven't been active or whatever it is, they're not even going to email or call you because they're just, you know, you're just not an option. At that point. They're looking for somebody who's a bit more, I guess, to put together and organized. So thankfully, we've been able to really kind of gather ourselves in that aspect and really bump that up. So when this is all over, we're not kind of, you know, running behind trying to catch up everything. We're already there so we can kind of hit the ground running once we're once we're out of this. Yeah, I've talked

about this with other guests. I think you have to look like a legitimate business, right? Because there's also so many side hustlers out there, and I'm not hating on that. I do Did that myself. But I think when someone's looking to spend potentially hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars on having someone come in their house, you know how you present yourself, like you said, that's that's the first impression. If it looks like you're just some guy who's, you know, making food out of his home kitchen and is maybe never done this professionally and isn't very organized, like is that the person you want to hire? And I think a little time money spent in that area goes a long way.

Oh, for sure. And I, you know, speaking to exactly that, I think there are a lot of side hustlers out there that are doing this, especially during this time, where they're realizing, okay, I'm laid off, I'm furloughed, or whatever it is, let me explore this hobby, or let me, you know, devote some time to this, which is great. But at the same time, you know, like you said, there's clients who are fine with that, and kind of looking for a much more casual looking to keep it as cost effective as possible. And then you have the clients doing the micro weddings where they want somebody who's established who has a background and a reputation in the field where they don't have to stress about, you know, if they're kind of taking a gamble,

and I'm going to go back, I've got to find which episode this was. But it was on one of my very first podcast, it was probably within the top five, where I said, you know, right now, the economy's good. Everyone's got their hands in the pot. Everyone's doing really well. I said, when the economy collapses, not if but when the ones who are going to be left standing are gonna move on to have a presence, and who look professional. And I said this back in like November, December without any idea that this was coming. And that's exactly what happened. And now, all these chefs who were in restaurants are trying to get in the private chef game, even though there may be established chefs, because they haven't been doing this. People are finding guys like you and me who are established personal chefs and caterers and stuff. So always trying to stay one or two steps ahead, because you never know what's coming.

Yeah, and that's the most important, you know, I think, especially with with all of this, taking this time to even further distance yourself from whoever your competition may be, you know, kind of trying to think of what questions or concerns clients may have, and addressing them before they even get to your Instagram or to your website or to your Facebook. So, you know, so you have a better chance, a better idea as to whether or not they're going to submit a lead whether or not they're going to contact you.

So who's your traditional customer? And how are you finding people like what are you doing that's really great for generating leads?

Yeah, so we recently won't maybe not recently, so before all of this wheeze, we were on thumbtack, we signed up for thumbtack, which is a great site, it's a lot like Angie's List or a site where a consumer can go and look for pretty much anything in terms of different professionals that have come help them do things for them. So we were on thumbtack, and we've gotten a very, a very decent amount of leads from that, while a lot of those leads, cons can sometimes be, you know, I say they're fake, I don't know if they're fake or not. But you know, you the you get the bad ones with the good ones. And you just hope that the good ones outweigh the bad ones, but at the end of the day, and then the other part would really just be kind of like word of mouth and us being able to kind of market on Instagram and getting to these, you know, these younger generations who are very media savvy and media focused, and showing them like fit, like literally showing them pictures of this is what your table could look like, this is what your food could look like, this is what whatever could look like. And kind of, you know, instead of typing it out in email just showing them and be like, is this something you're interested in,

going back to thumbtack, I mean, that's how I really got started. I mean, I'd love to say that I naturally showed up in SEO results and stuff, but thumbtack was great five years ago, it's just so expensive now and it you know, it's like 30 or $40 for a lead that you might not even get if someone sends you an email and says, Hey, I'm interested. And then you send them a menu proposal and say, I'm going another direction, like I spent $40 that you're never getting back.

No, I mean, last year, I think we were spending close to eight or $900 a month in thumbtack leads. You know, and while we would generate actual events from that, and actual deposits from that, there were months where, you know, we were in the negative of in terms of our like event to spend ratio for thumbtack. So we you know, we've dialed back especially now we've dialed back like our budgets and stuff like that for specifically thumbtack just because it can get expensive quickly, especially when clients and consumers who don't really understand that we pay for leads every time they reach out, you know, if they're reaching out just for fun, or just because they want to see pricing for something or they're not really even sure something's happening, but they just want to see who's out there. Well, that's all well and good. It's still difficult for us, because, like you said, we're still shelling out 30 4050 $60 for these leads, and nothing comes from comes of it.

And I don't think they love it. But I've talked about this, I put it on the podcast. I've done blog posts, like Just the whole kind of pulling back the curtain and letting customers know that we are paying like a crazy fee for that. I don't like their pricing structure, I used to get a lot more gigs when a customer put out a lead, and then you could individually respond. Now they want you to give them this budget money that they're going to allocate. And they're going to bid for you. And I, I've never turned that on. And the year and a half, they've been doing that. And now I get no jobs from them. It's like, I don't even get a shot anymore. So, but I'm getting, you know, direct leads right to my website, which is good. I think, again, with thumbtack, you can build your profile in there. And I always hope that people will go through and look because my business name in there, and my info that then they'll maybe jump off their site and just find me naturally and

I do the same exact thing. And what I found sometimes, which is slightly annoying is that they will reach out on thumbtack. And then for some reason, they don't think I'm going to get the lead for thumbtack. So then they go to my website as well and submit a lead. I'm like, I wish she would have just done it through my website, because that wouldn't have to have you know, I've had to spend that money to do it. But that is you know, for anyone else who's kind of using thumbtack right now, I don't want to I don't know if it's a loophole or not, but being able to incorporate as many different kind of like hints in your thumbtack profile for them just to go to your website, whether it's like to check out your portfolio or whatever it is. You know, it's kind of like a built in free marketing tool.

Yeah, I don't know if they scan emails like I don't know if they do editing I know with like Airbnb like if you set put your phone number or email address like Airbnb website blocks, I don't know if thumbtack does that. But when someone contacts me, or when I reach out to them, I send them an attachment that has all my info on there. And I'm always kind of hoping that like maybe then they'll bounce over. I'll say like, if you're interested contact me at every little bites@gmail.com. And I don't know if thumbtack like screens that stuff or not. I'd be really interested to know if that works. But Airbnb is very similar. You know, I try and work with Airbnb to get business. And it's really hard to reach out to an Airbnb account, if they don't have a name. Like, there's places like I work with the fingerboard in here in Frederick, you can google fingerboard and and find their website. But if you're just like 805 Smith Street, like it's gonna be impossible to find these people because they don't want people not using the Airbnb website.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's hard. And I think that's kind of the one of the cons of websites like that is today. You know, they want to make sure everything goes through them. Because that's how they make the majority of their income and profits. So I think, you know, there's definitely, like we said, there's pros to it, they they put our business in front of more eyes than I could have probably put our business in front of, especially with me not knowing much about SEO, where website coding or anything like that. So you know, I'm still thankful for it. But we're just slowly trying to figure out other ways, I guess around without having to spend so much

on the service. Well, that's where I'm hoping to grow shot. So that restaurants is kind of like a free version. Like I've said a number of times, I want to be like the free version of thumbtack because I people all the time this morning, I got contacted for an event, I can't do it because I'm already working. Like why am I not sharing that lead with you or someone else, because I've already got it. And then hopefully, you'll share something with me. Like if you can just build a big enough network where you could kind of be free sourcing all this information. Let's put these guys out of business. Like they're just a bunch of tech bros in Silicon Valley making money off us. They know nothing about the food business. thumbtack isn't even a food business. I mean, they just can't find you a plumber or a lawn mower, as a chef, they're not invested in the food industry. So how do we kind of, you know, steal that business away from those guys? Yeah, no, I mean, that sounds like a great a kind of doing like a peer to peer type, app or website or whatever it is, you know, and even like the Facebook page that you have now, I think, is a great space to, you know, post different I know, we there's some members who are kind of scattered around around the country. But um, you know, still, like you said, if we have an event that we're already booked that day, or whatever it is, you know, I would much rather try and give that client to someone else I can trust or someone else who I know has a decent reputation, it's just kind of sending them back off into the void, trying to find another catering company, and then you're still providing a service for this customer. I mean, that's hopefully gonna resonate on some level that, wow, he was really great. You know, it's not his problem, but he still found me a chef for the event, you know. So what's your travel radius? How far are you going out for events?

So we go, it's weird, because we are based in Baltimore. And so in my head, I was like, oh, we're going to get, you know, I really want to focus on downtown Baltimore. We get no downtown Baltimore leads, we only get dc in Northern Virginia for some reason. You know, I'm kind of assuming it's because naturally, it's where the money is in this kind of like immediate area. But, you know, where, thankfully it's not too far for drive, but that's kind of where we are. Draw the line like Northern Virginia really is as far south as we'll go. And then we'll go up to like the very southern bit of Pennsylvania. And that's really it. Just because, you know, at a point, it becomes not really worth a three hour drive for whatever, you know, unless the event is a huge dollar event. That's just a lot of time gas and money you're spending on whether it's your catering vehicle, your personal vehicle, whatever it is, just to get there, not even taking consideration the time you'll spend there. And then the time it takes to get home, you know,

yeah, I'm in Frederick, Maryland. And, you know, we have a great food scene, there's some money here, both in the Baltimore and DC market. And I always thought my business was going to do really well here and I'm in the same boat as you, I'm totally Northern Virginia, d. a, you know, for me, I'm a lot closer to DC than you are. And it's worth doing, I've actually changed my information on my website, just so it shows better and search results, because I've had Frederick and Frederick was in my logo. And like five years in, I was still doing zero, like Frederick makes up 5% of my overall business. So I changed like my business location and address and everything to like Alexandria, Virginia to target that area. And someone the other day, messaged me and said, did you move I see that your business has Alexandria, and I was like, No, I just want to make sure that people down there Find me a lot easier because a lot of people see Frederick, and even though my marketing says, you know, I'll travel 7080 miles, I think they just go with someone more local. Yeah. While I want to grow the local, I've tried so many things, and it hasn't really worked out. So I'm just really trying to target in that Metro DC area.

Yeah, I mean, that's the same with us, you know, we were trying for like the first two years to do, like we tried, I want to say six or seven different marketing strategies and and promotions that we were trying to do to get Baltimore businesses in Baltimore residents, you know, involved in our business, and it just wasn't clicking. And we were saying, you know, without us even really doing any work or marketing towards DC or Virginia. That's where 80 to 85% of our business was coming from. So it just made sense at one point just to shift, you know, all of our money and effort and time into marketing in that area, because that's where, you know, we're seeing the biggest return.

And I think there's a difference between catering and personal chef, and you do a little both of those. But what I've found is, people always look for caterers, but the personal chef thing is still relatively new. And I feel like the people in DC and Northern Virginia are maybe more used to seeing that and hiring them. So they'll look for a personal chef. Whereas like, I don't know, in Frederick, people still don't realize it's a thing. I tell people. I started this 10 years ago, and they're surprised like they've never heard of someone coming into your home and cooking for you. But in DC, you can hire people to do anything for you, I guess.

Yeah, I think it kind of comes with kind of like that big city feel like I used to live up and live up in New York, and New York City. And you could literally hire anyone to do anything in New York City. So I think that's kind of just the same thing in DC, and maybe smaller cities like Frederick like Baltimore, like Annapolis, they're not maybe not aware of it, don't really think they need it for whatever reason. So I think it's a benefit, at least for us that we still can offer, you know, catering because everybody knows about catering, they know that they kind of know how the process works. But you know, at the same time, private shopping is kind of where I started and where I kind of fell in love with the whole catering ask business. And so I still definitely offer that to all of my clients, because it's just a time, really for me to relax and decompress and get back to kind of doing what I love the most doing doing like, like you said, parties for two or three, and just really be able to interact with them.

Did you ever work in restaurants, like post culinary school when you got out to do a run in restaurants or not?

Yeah, so I worked in graph yado in DC, in Chinatown, for a little bit, and I realized that it just wasn't for me. I just it felt I felt way too disconnected from everything. It felt like, like nobody, at least for me, it didn't feel like anybody really had a passion for what they were doing there. Like they were just throwing out food to throw out food. And then they were just counting down the time until they were off. Which is fine. You know, I totally get that. But if I'm going to spend so much time somewhere and I already spent so much time in culinary school learning the tricks of the trade and tricks and techniques and all that. You know, I want to love what I'm doing. I want to love where I am and who I'm working with and, and everything about it. So, you know, while you can't really have your cake and eat it too. I'm doing my best to do both.

Well, graphy Otto is quite a moment in time and the de Neri scene and look at how quickly things can change on a dime. And no, you know, a lot of people who worked within that restaurant group kind of moved on. Yeah,

it got thankfully I wasn't there when everything was happening. But it's crazy how how quickly things can turn around.

I will One of my favorite things, I don't know if you're ever there for any of the industry nights, but I always thought those were a good time when they brought in chefs, I think I went to like eight of them. And that was always really fun, I would go just based on the guest chef that they had brought in. And I always seem to know a lot of people there. But even then you could see some of the bad behavior that maybe went on. Behind the scenes, it was like a little glimpse into it. But yeah, I mean, the restaurant scene isn't for everyone. I'm definitely not a restaurant guy. I've actually told people like, I've never really worked in restaurants, I was more drawn towards catering, and then like contract food service. And within contract food service, I did a lot of catering. But that idea of special events, as opposed to just the grind of putting up, you know, 500 plates in an evening. Yeah,

yeah. And I think that's kind of hard. You know, especially coming from culinary school, where there's definitely egos involved. And those who think, you know, the chefs who work in restaurants, seven days a week, 12 hours a day think that, for some reason, they're more important and more talented than, you know, a private chef, who maybe works four days a week, four days a week, and is actually able to have a social life. You know, I think, at least that's something I've kind of experienced in terms of, you know, telling, talking to other chefs and kind of telling them what I do, and then not really taking me seriously. But, you know, I don't really let it bother me, I just I just kind of say, you know, well, you don't really seem super happy what you're doing, and I'm more happy than I could ever be because no one you know, number one, I'm running my own business. And number two, I get to do everything I love at the same time. And I'm not doing it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But I think that's one of the biggest things that I've kind of, you know, come across in my in the four years of doing business in terms of, you know, the perception that caterers and private chefs kind of have in the industry.

Yeah, I've said I started just without restaurants, because I kind of had a chip on my shoulder. But you know, I've talked to a lot of people with this whole idea of imposter syndrome. Because I mean, my last job, I worked in a retirement community, right, so I wasn't a real chef, you know, I have a four year bachelor's in culinary from Johnson and Wales and started cooking in 1992. But like, I'm not a real chef, because I cook at a nursing home, you know, and it's been a number of years in catering and it worked at IKEA. But it's like, you get to the point where you just, like, get over that. It's like, oh, when I worked in that nursing home, I was getting paid really well. I had four weeks 401 K, I'd every other weekend off, like you're just hating like, you're working 80 hours a week at $12 an hour and you hate your life. Like, that's not my problem, and just kind of coming to terms with that. And then the same with a private chef, like friends who say, oh, it must be nice to work two days a week. It's like, well, if I make in two days what you make in five? Yeah, it is. Yeah.

Exactly. And I think the only people who really kind of have that outlook are the people who aren't happy with where they are. Because like I am on the same hand, I've talked to plenty of chefs, who you know, love their restaurant and love what they're doing, and are very supportive and very, you know, communicative with me about what I'm doing there, they they really, truly believe there's something they can learn from me. And there's something I can learn from them. So I think it all comes down to, you know, where they where they are, and personally in their life, if they're not happy with where they're at. I mean, it goes for any profession, their first instinct is to tear somebody else down.

Yeah, and you have different stages in your life. I mean, I'm a little older than you, I have a wife and I have kids who are eight years old, like I want to spend time with them. But I have a lot of friends who are my age who are still unmarried and have no kids, and they'll spend all the time there. That's great. I maybe do that, too. If I was my age and had no ties, I would maybe rather hang out at work and hang out with those people. But I think once you have like a family, then you really have to kind of look at where your priorities are and how you balance that. Yeah, definitely. So what's next for you? Do you have any big plans with the business, any growth things coming up, or just kind of trying to figure out how to get through this phase of the world right now?

I think right now, that's kind of like our priority. You know, like I said, thankfully, we've gotten busier and busier as the weeks go on. And we're starting to book more, more normal size weddings for 2021. But one thing we have really kind of been wanting to do is kind of do like a ghost kitchen type situation to where you know, we already have the commercial kitchen space. You know, especially right now with to go and carry out being so popular. And I think that's a trend that will probably keep up through all of this is people realizing that you know, you could you don't have to go to your favorite restaurant to bring your favorite restaurant home. You know, so I think being able to do something like that is what we've been talking about as well. Kind of using our commercial kitchen space to do like lilyana catering, but on a much smaller scale where you can come order at the same day pick it up and then take it home and you know enjoy a nice chef cooked meal. I think

that's genius. We have a couple spaces in town here that are commercial spaces that are shared kitchens. And I think there's going to be some opportunities coming up for some ghost kitchen kind of stuff. It is a little harder when you're sharing the kitchen, you have your own kitchen that's just yours, or do you have to share it with anyone else?

Yeah, no, it's just ours. So there's a

lot of opportunities there to have that. Yeah. Have you thought about delivery? And if you did delivery, would you do it yourself or go with a third party? Because I think that's the one thing that everyone's kind of looking at is, you know, there's been a lot of talk about the grub hubs and the Uber Eats and how much they're cutting into profits. And I think if you are going to get in that model of ghost kitchens, and then potentially delivery, like, how do you handle that? Is that something you've thought about?

Yeah, so I think we've definitely, at all costs, we don't want to have to use one of those third party platforms, just because we've kind of done the math on what, what we would have to charge per plate per dish to make any type of money on top of the percentage that they take out for delivery, for tips for fees, whatever it is, you know, it just wouldn't really be worth it. Because it's it came out to be too expensive, that we think anybody would really be interested in buying it. So we are trying to find, whether it's, you know, hiring the delivery driver, or trying to find like a more local delivery service in town, to where, you know, we're still totally comfortable paying whatever fee it is. But we're hoping that it's not, you know, the 35% that Uber Eats, or grubhub or doordash charges just to come pick up the food. So that's definitely been a big kind of point of contention and just something we really need to think about. Because delivery, I think, is what people want the most, because then they don't really even have to leave their house. So yeah, it's definitely been something we're trying to figure out.

So before we wrap up, do you have anything that you want to share with our guests, anything we haven't gotten into? I'm going to do a couple like rapid fire questions. Before we get into that. Is there anything else that we haven't discussed yet?

I don't think so. I mean, just that we are, you know, we're kind of full fledged into this virtual cooking class thing. And we have some videos up on our website that you kind of go back and watch and get the recipe for. And then you know, if you want to have your own little virtual cooking class, go ahead and give us a call or send us an email.

I was looking at some of those recipes. They look good. I really like the look of the cauliflower steak that you had done. I mean, that's one of my favorites. I do a lot of vegetarian cooking, and some vegan cooking. So like looking at things like that. It looks delicious. So I've done a cauliflower steak before but I think your method looks a little better than what I've done. And I've only done it once. So I might give that one a try.

It was one of my favorites. And I am like the most hardcore meat eater around. And that has totally changed my mind on things. You know, I've never thought so it's actually Gordon Ramsay's recipe that I followed. And I've tweaked it a little bit. But the whole concept is you treat it the same exact way you treat a steak. You know, you're basting it in butter, you're using the herbs, you're searing it and then you're baking it and it's, it's it comes out, you know, incredible and one cauliflower steak. I never thought it would fill me up. But it is just as filling as like a 12 ounce York strip with me.

I have all the things in my fridge right now, I might actually make that for lunch. Really awesome cultured butter. So I might throw that in. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's crazy. It really did

blow my mind The first time I did it. And now I'm like, I think at points, I get a little pushy in terms of wanting my clients to pick it and have it on the menu. I'm like, trust me, even if you don't think you'll like it, you'll like it. Because it's like one of those things that all of the flavors work really well together. And you know, you can't go wrong with butter and rosemary and salt and pepper on something.

Well, that's where I do some Chef's Choice courses. I don't know if you do any of that. But I find that there's dishes I really want to serve. The people never order when they're on a written menu. So I give myself some leeway. Like I always bring at least one dish that I get to pick. So that's one of those things where like, you know, I'm gonna bring this because I used to have them pick like all the courses, and they'd pick like weird stuff that doesn't really go well together. And I try and give them some guidance. But now it's just kind of like, nope, you go ahead and pick three courses. And I'm gonna pick two courses. And everyone's been fine with that. And then I get to bring some really fun interesting stuff. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah, yeah, definitely worth doing if you if you want to be creative, because again, like, I got into this also because I wanted to do my food. But then you have these people who still order they want a crab cake, they want a fillet. They want all this stuff. And it's just kind of mundane, and it pays the bills, but like how do I get some of those more interesting dishes out there?

Yeah, for sure. So do you have any

advice to people who are looking to start a catering business or personal chef business? Like what what would you do some really easy basic things. I think

the first thing I'll do we kind of we touched on already is just really focus on your Instagram feed and your Facebook profile. I think that is honestly the most important part of a business nowadays. You know, like we're saying it's what people see first. So it's the same concept as if you were trying to pick a mechanic and you Go to all these different mechanics, Instagram feeds, and you see one one guy's posting, you know, twice a day always has something going on and the other guy hasn't posted since 2012. You know, you're always a little bit more eager to go with the person who's more active, because it shows that, you know, you have more going on. So even if you don't have any clients right now, I think it's good to still post, you know, pictures of whatever you're cooking yourself for dinner, and posting stories of you cooking and just showing people that, you know, this isn't a side hustle. It's something I do professionally. And I'm going to show you that I do it professionally, through my Instagram feed through Facebook, whatever it is.

It's amazing how much you can build the businesses through Instagram, everyone talks about Instagram, it's like, Man figuring out those algorithms and getting your stuff out there. But it's just content content. It's exhausting, right? Like, I have been between my own personal chef business, and now she has without restaurants trying to push content from two accounts

every day, I'm going to need to hire someone just to do that soon. And I think that another thing that we never really thought about doing but these past few months we've gotten into is finding you know, and with Instagram being you know, obviously social media over the internet, we've collaborated collaborated with a few other food blogs and food Instagram accounts, who have a much larger following than you do. But through that collaboration, you know, we send them a recipe, they make a post about the business. And so through that kind of cohesive, sim symbiotic relationship, you're gaining followers, which means you're getting potential customers as well. So I think that's another thing, even if you don't have many followers, it's always worth a shot, just a DM you know, 20 or 30, different food accounts, food Instagrams food blogs, that, you know, you're just starting out, you love their page for x y&z reasons. And you want to see if you know, you could work together on a recipe.

Yeah, I think that's kind of scary to some people, like if they've never reached out to someone before. And you know, one of the things is finding the right people, because so many of those influencers charge money too. And I think that's the thing. It's like, you reach out to someone and they come back and say, well, it's $500 to do a post and you're like, what, like $500 to do, like, can't you just put a picture on your Instagram, like, it literally costs you nothing. I've had a lot of success working with brands, you know, and talk to some of our guests directly about being brand ambassadors, and a lot of it is like start tagging every business, right? Like I made a corn salad the other day, I post on my Instagram, and I use like tajines seasoning. So like, tag them and mention them and I use this brand of cheese like tag them and Mencia for sure. It might not go anywhere anytime soon. But if you keep doing that, like sooner or later, someone's going to contact you. And then maybe they're going to share it on your page. And I you know, I've used General torborg scripts and like they've shared dishes on their Instagram page, things like that. And I think that's a good way to also get a lot of success if you're using a brand if you're shopping at a store, like tag those businesses. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Do you have any favorite culinary resources? Whether it be cookbooks, TV shows, websites, anything? Yeah. Um, so

you know, I am a huge fan of cookbooks, I have way too many. And I just, you know, even if it's something I'm not interested in, I buy it because you never know, you know, just paging through, you might find a portion of a recipe that you can use and something else. So I think cookbooks are great, especially nowadays, where you have, you know, these world famous restaurants, putting out cookbooks, it's kind of your, your ability to get that point of view of the restaurant as opposed to trying to like search online for a recipe for xy and z, you know, you can go in and go into this cookbook and say, Oh, this is how they make that or this is how they make that. And then another thing that I was actually gifted for Christmas last year, was a masterclass subscription. And, you know, I really thought going into it is going to be more geared towards home cooks and home chefs. But I'm telling you, I've watched nearly every episode of each Cotter instructor and it's like, I've learned more in those classes than in some of my classes I've learned up at the CIA. I mean, it's crazy how like, in depth they go, and not only teaching with, like, the history of the dish, and the history of ingredients, but difference, like substitutions you can do in case, you know, you don't have masa or my ease, or whatever it is to make tortillas. You know, she'll go in and show you like, I'm talking about chef cup coffee gala, she'll go in and show you, you know, you can go to the store and buy this flower and you get a very close replica of it. So it's really helpful for me, because those are things I can directly apply to my business, you know, and different dishes I can offer. Like that's where I saw the cauliflower steak recipe was in Gordon Ramsay's cooking class. You know, so I think that has been it was the biggest surprise for me because I was not expecting at all to learn as much as I was from it.

I love the master class. So I also have access to that and I've been I've been Some of them I've done some of Gordon Ramsay's, but I haven't seen that. So I have to go back and I keep adding every day. I'm currently I'm currently doing the one on negotiating, which comes from like, a whole negotiation. You know, it's really interesting. Like, if you're someone who's going into business or just in life, you know, like, I have a contractors working with me right now. And it's like, how do you talk to them for sure to find some common ground and things like that. So every day I'm watching some masterclass, it's really great if you can just throw your laptop on your counter while you're cooking. And if it's something you can listen to, I'll put in, you know, Wi Fi earbuds and just kind of walk around and listen to it. But the cooking ones masimo bhatura. Is has been one of my favorites of watching those. Yeah.

And that that's like, one of the things that's like, you have no other platform or program will you be able to see, you know, the chef of the best restaurant in the world, at one point, be that personal and that candid with you about his dishes and his techniques and his preparation about everything. So it's like, you know, it is an expensive subscription, but I think it's worth it because you get that knowledge those recipes, you know, and it's it's been really great.

Yeah, I love it. I also did Annie Leibowitz is photography, one because I'm big into photography. And just like, I then went immediately, like, deep into like portrait photography with like, all my friends and family and stuff like that. It was it was really great. Yeah,

it's really cool.

Well, I think that's all I've got for you. If you have any. Anything else you want to share. I'm gonna share all of your contact info in the show notes so people know where to find you. Okay,

yeah, no, that sounds great. Thank you so much.

Awesome. Well, to all our listeners, this has been the cieza at restaurants podcast. As always, you can find us at Chelsea at restaurants comm.org and on all social media. Thanks so much and have a great week. Thanks.