Catering & Me

I guess it had to come to this. After over 7 years of trying to help other catering companies grow, and almost 10 years since I last was the driving force in a catering company, I have decided to incorporate and create my dream catering company. As most of you know who read this blog regularly, the most enjoyable and rewarding job I have ever had was with Max & Me Catering. The six and a half years that we grew the company from under one million dollars in sales to almost twelve million was a wild and crazy ride that I will never forget. The relationships we made, the high profile successful events, the great staff, and the happy repeat clients made the those years that I was mostly absent from my family seem worth it. Until it all came tumbling down. Ever since, I have been chasing that feeling and hoped to achieve it through alliances with other successful catering companies, without having to do the real work myself. It kind of worked and I was able to put my daughter through ...

As we continued the process of growing Max & Me as a premier corporate catering concern in Philly, a new venue that was under construction came into my awareness in the Spring of 2001. Jaisy Styles, who at the time was with PGI, a major event planning and destination management company, told me about the National Constitution Center and that I should contact a Phil Castellano to find out about the plans for catering in the venue. Well after many calls and emails that went un-returned, I eventually found out how to get in the door. Rather than rewrite what I have already written, I'm going to regurgitate three separate Facebook posts that I wrote last year. These are what prompted me to do this series on the history of Max & Me Catering. After these three Facebook posts, (which I tried to write on anniversaries of the occurrences) I decided to just write the whole history as a blog series. Now I have reached this point, and I feel like just cutting and pasting and sharing....

Relaxing with Katie & Ashley in LBI after the RNC. After the crazy month of the lead up and execution of all our RNC business, we all had some nice downtime to relax and reflect. For me, my real work and what I wanted to accomplish with Max & Me Catering was just about to begin, which was to transform a high end, mostly Bucks County based catering company into a major player in the Philadelphia (and beyond) event world. In reviewing our history and current work calendar, I also wanted to focus mostly on growing our business through corporate events as opposed to weddings which had been the bread and butter (or maybe in our case the lobster & filet) of Max and Jon's business. There's nothing wrong with weddings as a major part of a strong caterer's event mix, but I felt we needed much more corporate to balance out the calendar and allow us to have more full time dedicated employees. How to move our center of gravity from above (Bucks County) to Philly...

Easter morning. Reflections on life, death, and my past, present and future. Thoughts turn to one of my current projects and how it grabs an important piece of my past and brings back some very interesting memories that I have yet to write about. The movie "When Harry Met Sally" came out in 1989. My mom, Sally, passed away in June of 1988, so we never got to use that as a joke or pop culture reference. For those few of the readers of this blog who knew her, you will remember what a unique and amazing person she was. I will write more about Sally some day, but for this post I'm going to cover our family's adventure in eating that began in 1971 and how it is now a part of my daily work life. The original Electric Factory, 22nd & Arch. Quick background. My father and his brothers (and others) opened the Electric Factory in 1968. Shortly afterwards they hired Marguerite Gaffney, who quickly became my mom's best friend. Already trending towards acce...

Colorado and California. The two states I have spent the most time in other than my native Pennsylvania. Lived in California in 1971 to 1972 and then for 4 months in 1976 and 5 months in 1977. Moved again to the Bay Area in 1987 and left in 1994. Colorado was were I ski bummed for two successive winters in 1979 and 1980. Returned to finish my undergraduate degree at University of Colorado from 1982 to 1985. Every time I leave either state, I can't wait to return. Two diverse and incredibly beautiful places. Two very distinct but related mindsets. I can't seem to get enough of either place and every time I return, the list lengthens of places I still want to experience or revisit. Here's a cool tune:  Rufus Wainwright's California Mt. Audobon Colorado 1984, photo credit Jeffrey Z. Gilbert Los Padres National Forest, California 1975, photo credit Kevin Bacon This latest journey, which ended on Thursday March 12th, was propagated by my previous trip last spring. V...

Very exciting day yesterday. This amazing new museum, currently under construction, held their pre-bid meeting for the companies vying to be the food service provider, for catering and their cafe. In reviewing my notes this morning, I counted the companies present and there were thirteen. How fitting, thirteen colonies, thirteen bidders for a very prestigious contract. Museum as it would have looked in Valley Forge. Cool design, but much better in Philly. Being the history buff that I am, my excitement about this museum is particularly strong, but even more so because of the over ten year history I have with the project. Originally slated to be built in Valley Forge, and back in the Max & Me Catering days, we catered a few events for them, including the unveiling of the museum design. We were also present, and showed up to cater a very important milestone event, that had to be canceled two hours before the event was due to start because of issues surrounding public/private ...

When I look back at my tenure with Max & Me Catering there are many amazing high profile events that stand out. There are two major events however that were the most exciting, rewarding and ultimately became career makers. One of them was the Bush Campaign Train trip following the RNC in 2000. After catering the craziest two weeks of all our careers, we had to pack up, load in and be ready to serve 200 members of the traveling international media on a moving train in Pittsburgh about 12 hours after our last event wrapped in Philly. How could we do this? Our operative mantra became "how could we NOT do this?" Figure it out. Create amazing menus. Try and anticipate every potential problem. Put our best people on it. Price it so we wouldn't lose money. Figure out how to return in one piece. On the road with W. & the late great catering whiz Ariel Alejandro Here are some of the details and itinerary. We would be serving 4 meals over the 3 days of August ...