{
tenting experts,” says Lewton. The pandemic has revealed remarkable loyalty from staff members and their superiors alike at their respective companies. Two Unique was dedicated to keeping the employees who were never furloughed or laid off at their original salaries, although many other companies had to assign pay cuts. Plus, they wanted to keep health care even for laid-off workers. Lenz advises other companies: “Take care of your staff the best you can. They’re the people that got you to where you were, that are going
“Take care of your staff the best you can. They’re the people that got you to where you were, that are going to help you push through this.” –J I M LE N Z of T WO U N IQU E
their booking rate after tastings is up 5 percent from before. To-go tastings are just one example of the forced creativity and adaptability that catering companies had to adopt over the past year. Of course, catering virtual events with individually boxed meals became prevalent. For example, Skosh Catering provided meals for a virtual Kentucky Derby, where the team dropped off meals at the client’s headquarters, and the meals were picked up by individuals who hosted five to 10 guests each within their homes. Overall, due to furloughed and laid-off staff, smaller teams had to make up for everyone’s various responsibilities. At Two Unique, chef/owner Lewton called her team a “small tribe” that always rose to the occasion when necessary. “Our sales team got versed very, very quickly into being
to help you push through this.” At The Catering Company, Kim Smith says that the 12 employees they have currently, stayed on their own. “I didn’t ask them to stay, they stayed on their own accord, so I feel very fortunate.” FORGING AHEAD Despite all the learning that has been done over the past year, the team at Skosh will be grateful when things go back to normal, especially because of their love of feedback at in-person events. “It’s a lot more anxiety, because when you’re at an event, you hear the reactions, people come back to the kitchen and say how everything was. You can ask people as you’re clearing plates... At this point, they pull into the parking lot, pop their trunk, we put the bag in and we send them on their
way. We don’t hear from them until we follow up with them how things went,” says Rachel Carlisle. Every caterer wants things to go back to “normal,” but many are nervous that it will take longer for things to go back even after all restrictions have been lifted. Of course, recent rollouts of the vaccine have shed some light on the timetable, but it might be much longer before people don’t worry about the spread or becoming infected with COVID19 even after they’re vaccinated. This could translate in several different ways within the catering world. Within corporate planning, Rachel Carlisle from Skosh Catering thinks that lunch and learns—often accompanied by catered food—will be no more, as people may want to avoid eating and drinking in front of each other. Several companies think that plated meals (as opposed to buffets or family-style meals) will be here to stay, as choosing plated meals means that planners won’t have to worry about keeping people socially distanced in line, or putting plexiglass shields in between their team and the guests at a buffet line. Regardless of how the future plays out at in-person events, one thing that the pandemic has done is emotionally reconnected caterers to their clients and their teams. “It was really heartwarming to just see people come together with us, the clients, their family,” says Lewton. “I think what was probably the most inspiring thing out of that whole process was our sales team and our culinary teams were able to execute weddings in sometimes less than 10 days,” says Lenz. The extra effort during these hard times that has connected clients to their caterers—and event planners and vendors—will make meeting in person again that much more special. While others may think differently, Lenz thinks that it won’t take long for people to want to get back to normal once again. “I think people are ready to party, they just need permission to do so.”
P H O T O : S KO S H C AT E R I N G
their hallmark anniversaries and summer picnics. And just because caterers couldn’t serve their regularly scheduled large gatherings doesn’t mean they couldn’t plan for future ones, so some companies had to innovate the way they did tastings. The Catering Company used to do one- to two-hour tastings in-person under normal circumstances. But with social distancing, adjusting has turned out for the better. Instead, they do to-go tastings, and can get four of them out the door at once, with phone or Zoom calls to answer questions. Now,
24 MIM+E » SPRING SUMMER 2021
MIMESS21.indb 24
4/15/2021 4:10:57 PM