Catering & Me

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 ...

Before I return to RNC 2000 and finish the story on the Bush Campaign Train, please indulge me as I update some things I discussed at the beginning of writing this blog almost 4 years ago. Sometimes my body thinks it's in a different time zone, today I think it's GMT. I fell asleep last night at 8pm and woke up at 3am. Solid 7 hours, but off kilter with the rest of Philly. Nothing to do but read, write and listen to music. So I started reading my own blog from it's inception, which I have never done. Realized I need to update some stuff. Here we go... Like her dad, K couldn't resist the draw of the Rockies. When I started the blog I was about 3 months away from driving my daughter Katie to college in Denver. This morning I realized that it's now 3 months until we get to celebrate her graduation. Wow. For those of you who have kids about to go off to college, here's a warning, the 4 years will pass a helluva lot faster than your own college time did. I am so...

Picking up the story on Sunday July 30th, the night before the convention itself opens, and our biggest night of the week in terms of numbers and the prestige of the events. We would be catering breakfast, lunch and dinner on the Union Pacific trains, the Texas delegation opening party for over 1000 guests and the State of Utah's boat party in the Delaware River boat parade of all 50 states. Curtis Center Atrium. Dramatic event space for the Texas delegation welcome party. I assigned myself to oversee the Texas delegation welcome party at The Curtis Center. The Curtis Center, located only a block from Independence hall, is a very cool event space, but fairly difficult to work in for catering. It's probably much easier now as Philadelphia's preeminent wedding caterer, Cescaphe, has made some nice changes to allow them to execute events easier, but in 2000 we had to work out of the loading dock for our ovens and the mail room and adjacent hallway for hors d'ouevres ...

W. in Philly. Always a good sport. The stage was set, the contracts were signed, food was ordered, staff was booked, and our home base RV was rented. It was just about showtime in Philly for tens of thousands of Republicans, press, protesters  and little old Max & Me Catering from rural Bucks County, was smack in the middle of the whole shebang.   Wish I could have catered this Republican party! Well, Bully!!! The weight of anxiety and the fear of failure; I find helps me make sure to go over all preparations and work extra hard to help create successful events. I find that for almost every major event I take part in there comes a few hour period where my fear of failure dominates my thinking. I will go over any potential weak points in the execution plan and then mostly pace around, eat too much food, worry some more and then eventually the feeling fades. What if the staff and deliveries can’t get through security in a timely manner? This was perhap...

The previous two parts of my story are very good prep for this episode, either read them now, or after you read this post. Or don't. This post will mostly cover planning our participation in catering over 25,000 meals in the two week period before, during and after the Republican National Convention of 2000 that took place in Philadelphia, based at The First Union Center. Headquarters of the Union Pacific Railroad. Their history is great stuff. The first client we had for the RNC was the Union Pacific Railroad and by mid May or so most of the menus and pricing had been settled on and contracted. Max had actually been flown out to Omaha to UP headquarters to see the antique rail cars we would be serving on and meet many of the folks we would be interacting with ahead of time. The Electric Factory. Republicans once stampeded here. I'm not sure of the exact date, but our second client for the RNC came to us through our Electric Factory connection. Rob Jennings, who ...

In Part One I started the story with what led up to my employment at Max & Me Catering. This post will start with my first day and lead up to about the beginning of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 2000.  Some of you have asked why I am doing this, and there are a number of reasons. One is that when I started blogging a few years back I had always planned to tell the story of the best job I have ever had, my years as GM then partner at Max & Me Catering. I think many of the stories over those years are very interesting and make a good read, many of you have told me that it is in fact nice to read. I also plan on writing at least one book some day, so this is practice, and also maybe advance work that I can cut and paste later into a manuscript. Another reason is that for those of you in the catering business these stories can also be educational, with many things you can learn both to do and not to do. Finally, I love history, and this s...