From the Max & Me Catering Archives...
Good evening. Cooking and serving hundreds of burgers with brother Jon over the weekend took it's toll. I'm still recovering, so I thought I would take the easy way out today and share an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer that was written about one of my favorite catering experiences.
I started working with Max & Jon full time on St. Patty's Day 2000. One of my first projects was meeting and working with our clients for the Republican National Convention. What started out as one major client turned into three major clients and a volume of business that in two weeks was equivalent to 45% of the sales volume Max & Me Catering had done in all of 1999. This obviously involved a huge time commitment from all of the key employees, and we all looked forward to that first Saturday after the convention for some downtime. Yeah, right.
About a week before the convention began we got a call from Bush Campaign. They were referred to us by the Union Pacific Railroad; they were our first major client. They wanted to offer us the catering work for the Whistle Stop tour that was due to leave Pittsburgh bound for St. Louis around noon on Friday August 4th, the day after the RNC ended. Wow. Max, Jon and I started our hasty deliberations on whether we could do the work, and if so, how to deploy our soon to be battered staff into uncharted territory.
The crux of the decision making process became the argument of "how can we do this?" vs. "how can we NOT do this?" We could not say no. For three or four days I was back and forth with the campaign planners on pricing and logistics, and it was not a done deal until Monday of convention week. I'll write more about that week itself some other time, but by Tuesday, Max & I had pulled ourselves out of Philly mode and were thinking and planning how to best execute the Bush Campaign Train 2000.
Maria Gallagher of the Inquirer wrote a great article which became the cornerstone of our Press Kit and I never missed a chance to show it to prospective clients.
Please click: Cooking On A Campaign Train Calls for Considerable Dexterity
Harry 6/27/11
I started working with Max & Jon full time on St. Patty's Day 2000. One of my first projects was meeting and working with our clients for the Republican National Convention. What started out as one major client turned into three major clients and a volume of business that in two weeks was equivalent to 45% of the sales volume Max & Me Catering had done in all of 1999. This obviously involved a huge time commitment from all of the key employees, and we all looked forward to that first Saturday after the convention for some downtime. Yeah, right.
About a week before the convention began we got a call from Bush Campaign. They were referred to us by the Union Pacific Railroad; they were our first major client. They wanted to offer us the catering work for the Whistle Stop tour that was due to leave Pittsburgh bound for St. Louis around noon on Friday August 4th, the day after the RNC ended. Wow. Max, Jon and I started our hasty deliberations on whether we could do the work, and if so, how to deploy our soon to be battered staff into uncharted territory.
The crux of the decision making process became the argument of "how can we do this?" vs. "how can we NOT do this?" We could not say no. For three or four days I was back and forth with the campaign planners on pricing and logistics, and it was not a done deal until Monday of convention week. I'll write more about that week itself some other time, but by Tuesday, Max & I had pulled ourselves out of Philly mode and were thinking and planning how to best execute the Bush Campaign Train 2000.
Maria Gallagher of the Inquirer wrote a great article which became the cornerstone of our Press Kit and I never missed a chance to show it to prospective clients.
Please click: Cooking On A Campaign Train Calls for Considerable Dexterity
Harry 6/27/11
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