June 23, 2020 • 17 mins
Catering - and food service in general - is a challenging work in the best of times. And now, with public-facing events still mostly shut down, Heather Bublick and her business partner/chef/husband D'Andre Carter have found new ways to bring their gourmet comfort food to the masses via "Soul & Smoke." They're serving their delicious fare to school kids in need, unemployed hospital workers, nursing homes and "the populations that need us most" in their native Chicago.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is on the Job. This season, we're speaking with
folks who are finding their professional stride in a tumultuous
job market and learning how to double down on their
skills and their experience to overcome challenges. We'll bring you
inspiring stories of people making themselves essential, an important skill
set in any economy. The food industry is usually high paced,
(00:26):
arduous labor, especially catering, a line of work that demands
a resilient, flexible spirit. On the wake of COVID nineteen,
when millions of Americans are put at risk just by
going to get their next meal, one woman is doing
everything she can to make sure her catering business brings
it to them. Hi. Hi, how's your day going so far?
(00:48):
Going well? I can't complain. This is Heather Public. She
co owns a catering company and evans in Illinois, about
twelve miles north of downtown Chicago. The name of her
company is sold in smoke. We do chef to and
barbecue and comfort food. Can you tell me what's on
the menu? And we do a lot of brisket, baby
back ribs, pulled pork. We have a signature mac and
cheese with the top secret three cheese blend, lots of
(01:10):
cornbread muffins. You can't tell me, no, I can't. The
chef behind their barbecue and secret cheese blend is DeAndre Carter.
He's from the South side of Chicago. He's the other
co owner. Heather is more in the business end, so
today she's in the office doing payroll and scheduling. Well,
Chef Carter is downstairs with their other employees prepping meals
for delivery. So they're working on tomorrow's foods. So they're
(01:33):
making brisket chili right now. Chef is very particular on
his brisket. You can get into like a whole rabbit
hole with him talking about how he smokes, how many hours,
all of that. I don't do a very good job
listening to it all sometimes. Probably important to note Heather
and Chef DeAndre are married. Oh yeah, somewhere along the
way that happened. They've also got a two year old daughter.
(01:57):
The two met when Heather started working at Arrest staurant.
DeAndre eventually became the executive sus chef for the world
renowned Moto Restaurant in Chicago, a Michelin star restaurant did
course feasting menus, and then we switched the game and
switched to catering. Having worked a lot in restaurants myself,
I can attest that working at a place like Motto,
(02:18):
where people travel from around the world for the best
food in service money can buy, it's not worked for
the fant of heart. And also having worked in catering
that generally is even crazier it is, at least in
a restaurant, like you have your flow of service. You
know what your steps and service are, what your side
work is. Every day is the same, even you know
your menu. Everything is different in catering every day. So
(02:42):
whether it's a two person plated wedding or a hundred
person cocktail party that's an anniversary party. But do you
like having a job or every day is different? It's
better than every day being the same. Sale's moke has
been well received all around Evanson and Chicago. Right up
(03:03):
until COVID nineteen hit, they were catering big events like
weddings and galas office parties. It's a ton of work
and being a relatively small business, Heather ends up wearing
a lot of hats during our normal course of things.
I am the one that will help coordinate the events
and the ordering of the rentals and the linen's and
(03:23):
the execution and the timelines. She coordinates their marketing people
with social media teams, taxes, payroll. I generally know everything
that's going out in the building at any moment. Meanwhile,
DeAndre is busy cooking the menu for any given event
in their commercial kitchen. Some of the meals have to
be slow cooked for days, so he'll routinely go to
the kitchen in the middle of the night just to
(03:44):
check on it. I think that he just puts so
much of his time and energy and making sure that
it's perfect that I think it's just so personal to him.
On the other end of the business, Heather's restaurant training
makes her equally invested in the experience. You know, I
cannot walk into a dining room and not see a
fork that's not out of place. I run the business
(04:06):
side of things here, but I also think that I'm
also in charge of the whole front of the house
operations for our full service events. She says she misses
that part of restaurant work, being on the floor serving
people one on one. She doesn't work as many events
as she'd like to but I am still as obsessive
about the linen's and the napkins and how the silverware
has done and the flow of service, and I get
(04:27):
like so obsessive where I can like time everything out.
And despite the madness of running a business like this
with so many moving parts, their combined dedication has truly
set them apart in a highly competitive industry. It's it's crazy.
It's like the thing I love to do. Heather grew
(04:47):
up in Deerfield, a suburb in Chicago, and like many
people who end up in this line of work, she
sort of found it after straying from a clear cut path.
Would you say you were rebellious growing up? I mean
I ended up in the food service distry, so I
was probably rebellious some aspect for sure. Definitely grew up
like you're supposed to be a lawyer doctor. She did
(05:08):
not do that. She ended up getting her degree in
writing from the University of Illinois and then immediately went
to culinary school, where she started out with a six
month internship in the kitchen at Moto. This is where
she met chef DeAndre, who was also knee deep in
his own internship. It was rough work and I remember
very specifically washing these dishes with him and asking how
(05:28):
he liked being there, and him telling me, he's like,
it's a lot of work. It's like it's a lot
of hours. But that did not scare her off. She
cooked there for six months, and when she had to
go back to school, the restaurant moved her to the
front of the house as an employee, and on her
first night, she got to serve a dish that she
had made in the kitchen hundreds of times, and all
of a sudden, I was able to talk to something
about the food and talk to something about the dish,
(05:49):
and I went to clear it and they told me
how amazing it was, and I had never heard it before.
It fascinated me was something that I didn't get in
the kitchen. She fell in love with service and became
one of their observers, and after a few years at Moto,
she went on to serve at other restaurants, and DeAndre
It was looking to branch off and do something different
on the side, so in two thousand twelve they decided
(06:10):
to host a pop up dinner together at a local venue.
Turned out great, sold out. We were an eater. We
had all this acclaim. Like before I even knew what
it was going to be. It was just all really popular,
really fast. But then the venue got shut down, so
they started hosting dinners in their home at their dining
room table. We were doing underground dinners for eight people,
sway nights a week. We started. Our first dinner was
(06:32):
in January. By April, I had to quit my job
because we were just too busy. People started asking them
to come to their homes to host ten person dinners,
twenty person dinners. People started asking them to cater their weddings. Yeah,
it was crazy, and we were restaurant people, so we
would just say yes and we would just figure out
how to do it. So, like before you even actually
(06:52):
knew it, you were a catering business exactly. It's very
much like our customers turned us into a catering business.
We didn't know what we were going to be going
into it, and then that's not what we are. They
called their catering business Feast and Imbibe, which wasn't Barbecue
at the time. They started taking on more events and
DeAndre quit his restaurant jobs soon after. Heather did to
(07:15):
keep up with the demand, and I think it was
even more so because he took that leap that it
was like, we just had to figure it out. Visa
and Bibe was built for on site catering events, but
they were getting tons of requests for drop off delivery
style catering, so they pivoted. DeAndre has always loved barbecue.
Was the food that he grew up on. He grew
(07:36):
up on comfort food. It reheats so well, it holds
so well. It's you know, brazen meats and smoked meats.
It's almost better than next day exactly. So we created
literally a menu that would work so well for this
drop off catering. Thus Sullen Smoke was born. It's only
gotten crazier since they started, but today they are a
very successful business. It's a lot. The rewarding part of
(07:57):
it is worth, oh for sure. You know, you're literally
building a restaurant and creating an experience every day and
being able to see people have that wow factor. And
nobody comes to us because it's Tuesday night and they
just need to eat dinner. It is all people who
are celebrating really special moments and we get to be
a part of those moments. And there are lifetime memories
(08:20):
which is incredible. In two thousand twenty, after seven years
in operation, someone Smoke was doing well enough to the
point where this past February they stopped renting their kitchen
space and bought the building that she's calling me from today.
Immediately after they did COVID nineteen hit, the event industry
(08:43):
was certainly decimated. It was very instant for us. We
had lots of events and then all of a sudden
it was nothing. They had been prepping for St. Patty's Day,
which is a massive holiday in Chicago. They had employees
that were ready to work, they had menus ready to go,
a big enough kitchen space to safely work in, and
(09:04):
they were in a city that needed to eat. So
we had very early on started like we had all
this food, and we were just like, we're just gonna
feed people. How do we take care of the populations
that need us most? Never did it even dawn on
anybody that a month later it would be this more
(09:28):
in Heather Story After the Break. A strong work ethic
takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details.
This is you. But to get an honest day's work,
you need a response, You need a call back. You
need a job. Express Employment professionals can help because we
(09:51):
understand what it takes to get a job. It takes
more than just online searches to land a job. It
takes someone who will identify your talents, a person invested
in your success. At Express, we can even complete your
application with you over the phone, will prepare you for interviews,
and will connect you to the right company. Plus, we'll
(10:11):
never charge a fee to find you a job. At Express.
We could put you to work with companies of all
sizes and industries, from the production floor to the front office.
Express Nose Jobs get to No Express, find your location
at Express pros dot com or on the Express Jobs app.
Like most Americans, Heathern DeAndre did not have a playbook
(10:33):
for something like COVID nineteen. Their business, like so many others,
came to a screeching hult. So when Chicago started shutting down,
they figured they just keep doing what they do. You know,
at the time, it was very much like we're just
gonna go down with the ship. We're just gonna keep
on cooking until there's nothing left to cook. They no
longer had any clients at the time, but even before
(10:54):
the pandemic, there were lots of people in the surrounding
area who didn't know where their next meal was coming from,
a reality only made worse by unemployment and the closing
of restaurants. So how do we feed people? How do
we make sure that people have what they need? We
had this idea, well, we'll cook ten meals and if
people want to help and contribute to it, like great.
They called it community sponsored Meals for your Neighbors in Need. Basically,
(11:18):
they were putting together meals that they were going to
give out regardless, and they put a page on their
website where people in Evanston could donate and sponsor a meal.
By the time we just kind of put out the
call of the community, of the community just showed up.
The first day, they ended up delivering thirty meals. The
next day they did a hundred, and we were feeding,
you know, to people by the end of that first week.
(11:39):
Like it was just heartwarming and overwhelming and we were
just go, go go. They quickly got funding from local
organizations and start coordinating with schools to see which families
in the area might be in need. They made a
donate page where anyone can sponsor delivery to essential workers
to nursing homes, long term care facilities, and it's all
(12:00):
their normal incredible menu items too. That brisket chili she
mentioned at the top of the show is the meal
that's going to be going out tomorrow, and every day
is different. The next day is pulled pork with a
roast sweet potato and a cinnamon or butter. We really
wanted to make sure that when we first first started
that it was a meal that had a lot of
dignity behind it. So we've always put just a lot
(12:21):
behind it and making sure that everyone has a really
comforting meal, especially during these times there's so much uncertainty.
Kept our entire team employed and they're all here, which
has been incredible. Have you even had a moment to
zoom out and reflect on how big this has been
for your community? Yeah, I mean certainly, especially in the beginning.
(12:44):
It was mind boggling that it was even we knew
that we wanted to feed people and it was like, well,
this is not what we do. It was mind blowing.
We had no idea that there were going to be
so many people that wanted to support and wanted to
be on the same side of this, And I'm still
pretty blown away. I mean we're currently doing, you know,
(13:05):
somewhere between seven meals a day every day. This was
never Heather's plan, obviously, not COVID, not these community meals,
but even this business. It's not an easy life. And
(13:26):
seven years ago, just before DeAndre and her started serving
people in their kitchen for eight people, Heather was going
to stop working in the food industry altogether, and I
was gonna, like get a desk job somewhere. I really
thought I was done. I was like, I'm going to
go to law school. I'm gonna become a lawyer. I'm
gonna have a spot for like my shoes under my desk,
and it's going to be wonderful. And that never happened.
(13:49):
I worked in the restaurant industry for seven years in
three cities. The hours can be absurd, the mental pressure
of a busy service can be diabolical, and a lot
of people you end up working with seem like genuine maniacs.
There's moments where you think I am out of this madhouse,
and still I've left and come back three times. Now,
(14:13):
what is it that brings you back? I don't know.
It's probably just the feeling that you get feeding people.
You just nourished people and you got to hear their
stories and it's a part of life that you just
get addicted to. With or without the pandemic. Heather and
(14:35):
DeAndre are doing just that. They're continuing to serve flavorful
food that has set them apart for seven years, food
with intent and care in everybody. You know, with DeAndre
being from this outside, he understands that, like people have
a sense where they feel forgotten about and left out
of the conversation. We really wanted food that people felt
(14:55):
like someone cared about them. You know. We really wanted
to stay away from anything that was cold. We wanted
to be things that were warm and hearty. A meal
that's already done and ready to go and you don't
have to worry about putting something together for your family,
being able to give them a true meal where it's
like a gift, something that people could enjoy. Wow, it's
(15:18):
really incredible what you've been able to do during the pandemic.
How do you think this time is going to affect
Sullen Smoke when and if things go back to normal.
And we've been feeding so many people in the community
for so long now, when we've talked a lot about it,
how to extend this beyond coronavirus and what that looks like.
(15:39):
Still trying to figure out how long through coronavirus we
can even get through, and you know what that all
looks like. But I would certainly hope they were able
to continue at least some of this forever. I feel
like you've been constantly hitting the ground running and adapting
so far, no problem. Yeah, you know, I think a
(16:01):
good challenge for On the Job. I'm Otis Gray. Thanks
(16:29):
for listening to On the Job, brought to you by
Express Employment Professionals. This season of On the Job is
produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures. The episodes are
written and produced by me Otis Gray. Our executive producer
is Sandy Smallens. The show was mixed by Matt Noble
for Audiation Studios at the Loft in Bronxville, New York.
Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on I Heart
(16:52):
Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard,
please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts
or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time for
more inspiring stories about making yourself essential as you discover
your life's work audiation
This is on the Job. This season, we're speaking with
folks who are finding their professional stride in a tumultuous
job market and learning how to double down on their
skills and their experience to overcome challenges. We'll bring you
inspiring stories of people making themselves essential, an important skill
set in any economy. The food industry is usually high paced,
(00:26):
arduous labor, especially catering, a line of work that demands
a resilient, flexible spirit. On the wake of COVID nineteen,
when millions of Americans are put at risk just by
going to get their next meal, one woman is doing
everything she can to make sure her catering business brings
it to them. Hi. Hi, how's your day going so far?
(00:48):
Going well? I can't complain. This is Heather Public. She
co owns a catering company and evans in Illinois, about
twelve miles north of downtown Chicago. The name of her
company is sold in smoke. We do chef to and
barbecue and comfort food. Can you tell me what's on
the menu? And we do a lot of brisket, baby
back ribs, pulled pork. We have a signature mac and
cheese with the top secret three cheese blend, lots of
(01:10):
cornbread muffins. You can't tell me, no, I can't. The
chef behind their barbecue and secret cheese blend is DeAndre Carter.
He's from the South side of Chicago. He's the other
co owner. Heather is more in the business end, so
today she's in the office doing payroll and scheduling. Well,
Chef Carter is downstairs with their other employees prepping meals
for delivery. So they're working on tomorrow's foods. So they're
(01:33):
making brisket chili right now. Chef is very particular on
his brisket. You can get into like a whole rabbit
hole with him talking about how he smokes, how many hours,
all of that. I don't do a very good job
listening to it all sometimes. Probably important to note Heather
and Chef DeAndre are married. Oh yeah, somewhere along the
way that happened. They've also got a two year old daughter.
(01:57):
The two met when Heather started working at Arrest staurant.
DeAndre eventually became the executive sus chef for the world
renowned Moto Restaurant in Chicago, a Michelin star restaurant did
course feasting menus, and then we switched the game and
switched to catering. Having worked a lot in restaurants myself,
I can attest that working at a place like Motto,
(02:18):
where people travel from around the world for the best
food in service money can buy, it's not worked for
the fant of heart. And also having worked in catering
that generally is even crazier it is, at least in
a restaurant, like you have your flow of service. You
know what your steps and service are, what your side
work is. Every day is the same, even you know
your menu. Everything is different in catering every day. So
(02:42):
whether it's a two person plated wedding or a hundred
person cocktail party that's an anniversary party. But do you
like having a job or every day is different? It's
better than every day being the same. Sale's moke has
been well received all around Evanson and Chicago. Right up
(03:03):
until COVID nineteen hit, they were catering big events like
weddings and galas office parties. It's a ton of work
and being a relatively small business, Heather ends up wearing
a lot of hats during our normal course of things.
I am the one that will help coordinate the events
and the ordering of the rentals and the linen's and
(03:23):
the execution and the timelines. She coordinates their marketing people
with social media teams, taxes, payroll. I generally know everything
that's going out in the building at any moment. Meanwhile,
DeAndre is busy cooking the menu for any given event
in their commercial kitchen. Some of the meals have to
be slow cooked for days, so he'll routinely go to
the kitchen in the middle of the night just to
(03:44):
check on it. I think that he just puts so
much of his time and energy and making sure that
it's perfect that I think it's just so personal to him.
On the other end of the business, Heather's restaurant training
makes her equally invested in the experience. You know, I
cannot walk into a dining room and not see a
fork that's not out of place. I run the business
(04:06):
side of things here, but I also think that I'm
also in charge of the whole front of the house
operations for our full service events. She says she misses
that part of restaurant work, being on the floor serving
people one on one. She doesn't work as many events
as she'd like to but I am still as obsessive
about the linen's and the napkins and how the silverware
has done and the flow of service, and I get
(04:27):
like so obsessive where I can like time everything out.
And despite the madness of running a business like this
with so many moving parts, their combined dedication has truly
set them apart in a highly competitive industry. It's it's crazy.
It's like the thing I love to do. Heather grew
(04:47):
up in Deerfield, a suburb in Chicago, and like many
people who end up in this line of work, she
sort of found it after straying from a clear cut path.
Would you say you were rebellious growing up? I mean
I ended up in the food service distry, so I
was probably rebellious some aspect for sure. Definitely grew up
like you're supposed to be a lawyer doctor. She did
(05:08):
not do that. She ended up getting her degree in
writing from the University of Illinois and then immediately went
to culinary school, where she started out with a six
month internship in the kitchen at Moto. This is where
she met chef DeAndre, who was also knee deep in
his own internship. It was rough work and I remember
very specifically washing these dishes with him and asking how
(05:28):
he liked being there, and him telling me, he's like,
it's a lot of work. It's like it's a lot
of hours. But that did not scare her off. She
cooked there for six months, and when she had to
go back to school, the restaurant moved her to the
front of the house as an employee, and on her
first night, she got to serve a dish that she
had made in the kitchen hundreds of times, and all
of a sudden, I was able to talk to something
about the food and talk to something about the dish,
(05:49):
and I went to clear it and they told me
how amazing it was, and I had never heard it before.
It fascinated me was something that I didn't get in
the kitchen. She fell in love with service and became
one of their observers, and after a few years at Moto,
she went on to serve at other restaurants, and DeAndre
It was looking to branch off and do something different
on the side, so in two thousand twelve they decided
(06:10):
to host a pop up dinner together at a local venue.
Turned out great, sold out. We were an eater. We
had all this acclaim. Like before I even knew what
it was going to be. It was just all really popular,
really fast. But then the venue got shut down, so
they started hosting dinners in their home at their dining
room table. We were doing underground dinners for eight people,
sway nights a week. We started. Our first dinner was
(06:32):
in January. By April, I had to quit my job
because we were just too busy. People started asking them
to come to their homes to host ten person dinners,
twenty person dinners. People started asking them to cater their weddings. Yeah,
it was crazy, and we were restaurant people, so we
would just say yes and we would just figure out
how to do it. So, like before you even actually
(06:52):
knew it, you were a catering business exactly. It's very
much like our customers turned us into a catering business.
We didn't know what we were going to be going
into it, and then that's not what we are. They
called their catering business Feast and Imbibe, which wasn't Barbecue
at the time. They started taking on more events and
DeAndre quit his restaurant jobs soon after. Heather did to
(07:15):
keep up with the demand, and I think it was
even more so because he took that leap that it
was like, we just had to figure it out. Visa
and Bibe was built for on site catering events, but
they were getting tons of requests for drop off delivery
style catering, so they pivoted. DeAndre has always loved barbecue.
Was the food that he grew up on. He grew
(07:36):
up on comfort food. It reheats so well, it holds
so well. It's you know, brazen meats and smoked meats.
It's almost better than next day exactly. So we created
literally a menu that would work so well for this
drop off catering. Thus Sullen Smoke was born. It's only
gotten crazier since they started, but today they are a
very successful business. It's a lot. The rewarding part of
(07:57):
it is worth, oh for sure. You know, you're literally
building a restaurant and creating an experience every day and
being able to see people have that wow factor. And
nobody comes to us because it's Tuesday night and they
just need to eat dinner. It is all people who
are celebrating really special moments and we get to be
a part of those moments. And there are lifetime memories
(08:20):
which is incredible. In two thousand twenty, after seven years
in operation, someone Smoke was doing well enough to the
point where this past February they stopped renting their kitchen
space and bought the building that she's calling me from today.
Immediately after they did COVID nineteen hit, the event industry
(08:43):
was certainly decimated. It was very instant for us. We
had lots of events and then all of a sudden
it was nothing. They had been prepping for St. Patty's Day,
which is a massive holiday in Chicago. They had employees
that were ready to work, they had menus ready to go,
a big enough kitchen space to safely work in, and
(09:04):
they were in a city that needed to eat. So
we had very early on started like we had all
this food, and we were just like, we're just gonna
feed people. How do we take care of the populations
that need us most? Never did it even dawn on
anybody that a month later it would be this more
(09:28):
in Heather Story After the Break. A strong work ethic
takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details.
This is you. But to get an honest day's work,
you need a response, You need a call back. You
need a job. Express Employment professionals can help because we
(09:51):
understand what it takes to get a job. It takes
more than just online searches to land a job. It
takes someone who will identify your talents, a person invested
in your success. At Express, we can even complete your
application with you over the phone, will prepare you for interviews,
and will connect you to the right company. Plus, we'll
(10:11):
never charge a fee to find you a job. At Express.
We could put you to work with companies of all
sizes and industries, from the production floor to the front office.
Express Nose Jobs get to No Express, find your location
at Express pros dot com or on the Express Jobs app.
Like most Americans, Heathern DeAndre did not have a playbook
(10:33):
for something like COVID nineteen. Their business, like so many others,
came to a screeching hult. So when Chicago started shutting down,
they figured they just keep doing what they do. You know,
at the time, it was very much like we're just
gonna go down with the ship. We're just gonna keep
on cooking until there's nothing left to cook. They no
longer had any clients at the time, but even before
(10:54):
the pandemic, there were lots of people in the surrounding
area who didn't know where their next meal was coming from,
a reality only made worse by unemployment and the closing
of restaurants. So how do we feed people? How do
we make sure that people have what they need? We
had this idea, well, we'll cook ten meals and if
people want to help and contribute to it, like great.
They called it community sponsored Meals for your Neighbors in Need. Basically,
(11:18):
they were putting together meals that they were going to
give out regardless, and they put a page on their
website where people in Evanston could donate and sponsor a meal.
By the time we just kind of put out the
call of the community, of the community just showed up.
The first day, they ended up delivering thirty meals. The
next day they did a hundred, and we were feeding,
you know, to people by the end of that first week.
(11:39):
Like it was just heartwarming and overwhelming and we were
just go, go go. They quickly got funding from local
organizations and start coordinating with schools to see which families
in the area might be in need. They made a
donate page where anyone can sponsor delivery to essential workers
to nursing homes, long term care facilities, and it's all
(12:00):
their normal incredible menu items too. That brisket chili she
mentioned at the top of the show is the meal
that's going to be going out tomorrow, and every day
is different. The next day is pulled pork with a
roast sweet potato and a cinnamon or butter. We really
wanted to make sure that when we first first started
that it was a meal that had a lot of
dignity behind it. So we've always put just a lot
(12:21):
behind it and making sure that everyone has a really
comforting meal, especially during these times there's so much uncertainty.
Kept our entire team employed and they're all here, which
has been incredible. Have you even had a moment to
zoom out and reflect on how big this has been
for your community? Yeah, I mean certainly, especially in the beginning.
(12:44):
It was mind boggling that it was even we knew
that we wanted to feed people and it was like, well,
this is not what we do. It was mind blowing.
We had no idea that there were going to be
so many people that wanted to support and wanted to
be on the same side of this, And I'm still
pretty blown away. I mean we're currently doing, you know,
(13:05):
somewhere between seven meals a day every day. This was
never Heather's plan, obviously, not COVID, not these community meals,
but even this business. It's not an easy life. And
(13:26):
seven years ago, just before DeAndre and her started serving
people in their kitchen for eight people, Heather was going
to stop working in the food industry altogether, and I
was gonna, like get a desk job somewhere. I really
thought I was done. I was like, I'm going to
go to law school. I'm gonna become a lawyer. I'm
gonna have a spot for like my shoes under my desk,
and it's going to be wonderful. And that never happened.
(13:49):
I worked in the restaurant industry for seven years in
three cities. The hours can be absurd, the mental pressure
of a busy service can be diabolical, and a lot
of people you end up working with seem like genuine maniacs.
There's moments where you think I am out of this madhouse,
and still I've left and come back three times. Now,
(14:13):
what is it that brings you back? I don't know.
It's probably just the feeling that you get feeding people.
You just nourished people and you got to hear their
stories and it's a part of life that you just
get addicted to. With or without the pandemic. Heather and
(14:35):
DeAndre are doing just that. They're continuing to serve flavorful
food that has set them apart for seven years, food
with intent and care in everybody. You know, with DeAndre
being from this outside, he understands that, like people have
a sense where they feel forgotten about and left out
of the conversation. We really wanted food that people felt
(14:55):
like someone cared about them. You know. We really wanted
to stay away from anything that was cold. We wanted
to be things that were warm and hearty. A meal
that's already done and ready to go and you don't
have to worry about putting something together for your family,
being able to give them a true meal where it's
like a gift, something that people could enjoy. Wow, it's
(15:18):
really incredible what you've been able to do during the pandemic.
How do you think this time is going to affect
Sullen Smoke when and if things go back to normal.
And we've been feeding so many people in the community
for so long now, when we've talked a lot about it,
how to extend this beyond coronavirus and what that looks like.
(15:39):
Still trying to figure out how long through coronavirus we
can even get through, and you know what that all
looks like. But I would certainly hope they were able
to continue at least some of this forever. I feel
like you've been constantly hitting the ground running and adapting
so far, no problem. Yeah, you know, I think a
(16:01):
good challenge for On the Job. I'm Otis Gray. Thanks
(16:29):
for listening to On the Job, brought to you by
Express Employment Professionals. This season of On the Job is
produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures. The episodes are
written and produced by me Otis Gray. Our executive producer
is Sandy Smallens. The show was mixed by Matt Noble
for Audiation Studios at the Loft in Bronxville, New York.
Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on I Heart
(16:52):
Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard,
please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts
or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time for
more inspiring stories about making yourself essential as you discover
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