On today's show, I have Nicolas and Stephen Servis, identical twin brothers who founded Servis Events, a private dining service based in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. You’ll learn how the brothers pivoted during the early days of the pandemic to start their business.
Nicolas and Stephen's passion for farm-to-table cuisine flourished during their time as chefs de partie at The Mainland Inn, where they tackled full animal butchery, gardening, and more. Later, while volunteering at Quarry Hill Farm, Stephen learned about the WWOOF program, a travel-for-work opportunity on organic farms. So, when the pandemic forced the brothers to leave their restaurant jobs in 2020, seeking inspiration, they moved to Maine for two months to work on Flying Pond Farm, where their vision for Servis Events began to take shape.
Today, Nicolas and Stephen share their story and passion for culinary arts and sustainability, combining their love of cooking with their dedication to being stewards of the planet.
SERVIS EVENTS
Servis Events on Instagram
Servis Events - Private Dinners
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris Spear (00:00):
Have you ever worked with a sibling or family
member? If so, how did it go?
Now? Could you imagine startinga business with one? On today's
show, I have Nicholas andStephens service, identical twin
brothers who founded serviceevents, a private dining service
based in Bucks County,Pennsylvania. He learned how the
brothers pivoted during theearly days of the pandemic to
(00:20):
start their business. I thinkyou're going to be inspired by
their commitment to sustainablecooking. And if you're a
personal chef, or hope to beone, I hope you'll pick up some
practical advice on how topossibly grow your business.
This is Chris spear. And you'relistening to Chefs Without
Restaurants, the show where Ispeak with culinary
entrepreneurs and people workingin the food and beverage
(00:42):
industry outside of atraditional restaurant setting.
So I've taken a few unplannedweeks off from the podcast, but
it feels good to be back. Didyou miss me? So the service
brothers began their culinaryjourney at middle bucks
Institute of Technology, wherethey both enrolled in the
culinary arts program. They thenwent on to earn their
associate's degrees in Hotel andRestaurant Management from Bucks
(01:04):
County Community College beforehoning their craft in
professional kitchens. Theirpassion for Farm to Table
cuisine flourished during theirtime as chefs to party at the
mainland Inn where they tackledeverything from full animal
Buttrey to gardening, and somuch more. Later, while
volunteering at Quarry HillFarm, Stephen learned about the
wolf program, I travel for workopportunity on organic farms. So
(01:26):
when the pandemic forced thebrothers to leave their
restaurant jobs and 2020 seekinginspiration, they moved to Maine
for two months to work on flyingpond farm where their vision for
service events began to takeshape. Today, Nicholas and
Stephen share their story andpassion for culinary arts and
sustainability, combining theirlove of cooking with their
dedication to being stewards ofthe planet. And before we start
(01:47):
the show, I just have a coupleof quick words. As always, if
you go to chefs withoutrestaurants.org You can find
links to all of our social mediaaccounts, including our
Instagram and our privateFacebook group. If you'd like to
subscribe to our newsletter, oradd your info into our chef
database for possible gigreferrals, you can find those
links as well. And this week'sshow will be right up after a
word from this week's sponsor,the United States personal chef
(02:10):
Association.
USPCA AD (02:11):
Are you a personal chef looking for support and
growth opportunities? Look nofurther than the United States
Personal Chef Association withnearly 1000 members across the
US and Canada,USPCA providesliability insurance,
certification lead generationand more. Consumers can trust
that their meal experience isensured and supported by USP ca.
(02:33):
And now for a limited time, save$75 on new membership and get
your premier listing on Hire aChef by using the code
TaxBreak2023 at USPCA.com. Plus,if you have products or services
to sell chefs and their clientsshowcase your business on hire
chef and USPTA websites with ourgreat introductory packages. To
(02:57):
learn more about membershipadvertising or partnership
opportunities, call Angela at1-800-995-2138. Extension 705 or
email apratherer@uspca.com
Chris Spear (03:12):
Hey, guys, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for
coming on. It's really good tohave you here today. I think you
know that I like to start theshow by talking a little bit
about backgrounds and such. Sowhy don't you give me a little
overview about how did we gethere? How did you end up
starting your own personal chefprivate dining business.
Servis Events (03:34):
This kind of came from kind of out of the blue
from some girl, when Nick wasthe head chef of this
restaurant. It's calledardonagh. He opened that they
started doing brunch service.
And they had a lady who came invery frequently. And her and
Nick knew each other on a on akind of like first name basis.
And she gave me one day and sheasked the server to to ask him
to make her daughter veganpancakes. And Nick made before
(03:56):
and walked out to her and shewas so happy and so grateful for
that she came back about a weeklater. And she kind of pulled
him aside and said, Hey, Nick,do you guys do private events,
and began being a chef at arestaurant and he was thinking
she was asking about that? Andit's like, oh, we actually just
open. We don't really havepackage deals right now. But
you're here all the time, wecould probably get a manager and
(04:17):
filter paperwork out and kind ofget something together for you.
And she kind of pulled them in alittle closer and was like no,
no, like, you do private events.
And we always laugh and jokewith like the guests we get kind
of comfortable with what waslike, a fucking time for that.
Like no, I can't come cook foryou in your house sleeping in
the closet here. And so that wasthat was also before COVID Yeah,
(04:39):
so you know, we're both chefsand restaurants. So like
thinking about going to cook atsomebody's house outside of work
almost seemed possible. Andyeah, so it came from and it
kind of told me about it and westarted talking about, like LLC
names and shit that we reallydidn't need to get started. And
you know, that was again likeyou said before co
Unknown (05:00):
Have it. So as quickly as we kind of thought about it,
we got swept back into work. Andnothing really ever came from
it. until months was later thatwe went and took a trip up to
Maine, we watched a documentarycalled The biggest little farm
on Hulu. And we were reallyinspired by that. And we look
back into the program calledWolf. And if you ever heard
about Wolf is only through yourwebsite, I found that I had
(05:23):
never heard about it before yet.
So just for anyone who islistening, Wolf is worldwide
opportunities on organic buyers.
And I found out about this whenI volunteered a farm to get a
job and a farm to tablerestaurant. And they told me
it's weird to travel for free.
So again, you offer your work,and you get free housing and
free food from the farmer or thewolf host, if you will. And so
after watching this documentaryand being kind of stuck at home,
(05:47):
and nothing really was going on,we decided to go take a trip to
Maine and live on this farm fortwo months. And while we were
there, we shared the idea thatwe had with the family. While it
was like right before we went toMaine also, he wasn't working in
his restaurant at all, if theyclose completely for six months
without doing anything. I wasonly doing like a day or two
(06:08):
jobs takeout kind of stuff. Andshe cooked for our grandparents.
And one of our close our closefriends that we met through the
restaurants, I kind of did thiswhole kind of private dinner, I
always forget about that. Yeah.
And so we kind of had the ideaof but nothing set in stone
never really thought it couldever be a business. Yeah. And
(06:31):
then when we met the main, wekind of share our idea and share
these two dinners that he hasdone already. And the family
kind of really took this ideareally took it into process, the
end kind of like gave us all thetools that we kind of needed to
think about how to actually runthis as a business, not just
like a little kind of sideproject. So let's let's kind of
(06:52):
pause really quick and kind ofshuffle things around. We'll
we'll get right back into thisthat you guys were, you're both
cooking and we'll get into yourbackground a little bit. But you
were cooking in restaurants upuntil say COVID, right? Yes, a
little bit of coke. So from youknow, 15 years old, until COVID.
So we're gonna be again untilthe Day on March 15. And they
(07:13):
said you can't look at workanymore. I remember Bo packing
up the French onion soup thatyou're going to pull out for two
weeks. And some things we couldfreeze that we could use again
when we came back and two weeksand I know I remember the whole
mindset of like, alright, thisis what we can use. This is what
we can use take this home withyou cuz it's gonna go bad if not
and and never went back to thatrestaurant again. Guys working.
(07:33):
Were you at the same place? No.
So I was at a place called Siteblue. It's a small French bistro
in Doylestown, where we're from.
And I was the opening executivechef at a place called Arden
enough we didn't drink. It waslike a Mediterranean restaurant
woodfired pizza and Nick andmore pasta that we opened right
before the pandemic to be opento two months, two and a half
(07:55):
months prior. And yeah, that wasfun. So you guys were both what
like laid off furlough just kindof indefinite break, whatever
that scenario was called. Andyeah, and try to wait off. Like
he said he was doing a day, aday a week slot. And it was all
kind of I don't know, it was allyou know, onto the table. Yeah,
(08:15):
at that point. So everybody canfind employment, like we were
told that we shouldn't do. So.
Yeah, I was probably onlyworking once or twice a week,
only doing takeout and all thatkind of stuff. And we actually
had a sister restaurant calledCasey prime Steakhouse. I was
sous chef there for like fiveyears. And we essentially merged
both of our kitchen staff intoour one restaurant. And we're
(08:38):
doing both menus out of our onekitchen, which was Yeah, which
was a pain in the ass. But youknow, Ryan got to do what you
had to do to kind of survive atthat point. So when did you guys
then decide to go to Maine? Likewhat was that? So that was I
think, I think it was like thefirst few days of May. Again,
man, we just watched thisdocumentary. It's called the
(08:59):
biggest little farm again, foranyone who wants to check it
out. And the idea as adocumentary is this couple buys
a farm in LA. And the concept ofthe farm is that everything has
to be in harmony with nature.
And we talked about this at allwire events. And, and the
example I always use is, when acoyote comes and eats your
chickens, you don't just killthe coyote, because the coyote
(09:21):
is kind of keeping balance ofour ecosystem around us. And if
you can manipulate thatecosystem to work for you. It'll
naturally you know, stay sustainyour fire, but they we kind of
took that documentary and welike most chefs, it seems like
love the outdoors, lovegardening, love all of that. So
we kind of took that as ourfuel, if you will, to kind of
(09:44):
walk back into this program tokind of make this change or to
do this kind of life changingkind of thing because when we
heard about this, five or sixyears prior, we just weren't in
the right headspace to have allthese things down. There was no
time no money, no car
Servis Events (10:00):
Since five, six years ago, now, where I held the
government's timeless to beheld, we have time money, and we
were really good and competentat what we were doing. So it all
kind of just aligned that it waskind of a good time for us to go
do something like that. And wetalked a lot about, like, the
idea that, like, skills areperishable. And we were sitting
on our fucking couch all thetime, like, not only do you lose
(10:21):
the physical culinary skills,but you lose, like the mental
discipline, the mental toughnessthat you get in the kitchen. And
so we kind of say, like, forlack of better words, we were
starting to feel salt. And, youknow, we didn't really want to
want that we've put a lot oftime into kind of being people
we are. And so we're just tryingto look for literally anything
we could have done at that pointin time to just keep ourselves
progressing and keep that kindof attitude. And, and that
(10:43):
behavior, I guess, going and,and that was kind of the outlet
we found. And thank God, we did,yes, they really helped us kind
of make this into more of areality and give us kind of some
cool ideas and concepts that webrought back with us and put
into all of our events. So whatkind of things were you doing
when you were up on this farm?
So it was all on organicvegetable farm? So obviously,
most of the time just weeding.
(11:05):
Yes, there are tons of weeding.
But we kind of took that whichwas cool. And
Unknown (11:11):
we did a lot of our our own stuff educating. So when we
were kind of hanging around thehouse again, we also helped
with, you know, doing somebaking and we did butchering, we
slaughtered and evisceratedchickens, were there. The family
again, because we got very closewith them allowed us to do
things that never let anybodyelse do. So we were you know,
making fresh cheese, you know,baking bread every day making
(11:32):
tortillas like the whole familyof you know, canning, all of the
things that you would do on ahomestead it well, this family
did. And we kind of say like,when in Rome, we just hop right
into what they were doing. Yeah,we just did everything nowadays.
Because we were there to reallylearn and to kind of grow like,
we had questions abouteverything I read. It wasn't
just a farming practices andstuff like that. It was like,
(11:55):
how do you guys do this? Well,yeah, you don't we were there to
learn about organic farming, butalso about sustainable living.
Like that's what we want in ourown personal lifestyles, and we
want to live that kind of wholelife. It's this isn't just
something we preach about. It'ssomething that we actually, you
know, want to also do and tolead by example and going and
learning how they how they livedand what they did and what it
(12:16):
took to do that was like areally cool eye opening
experience. That like reallyinspired us to come home and do
the same thing you know, yeah,so yeah, I guess in a nutshell,
why don't we ding Yeah. Well,data harvesting Yeah, edging,
arching lettuce and yeah, likewe were saying, like, we took
the weeding aspect andeverything and we would self
educate ourselves on identifyingthe weeds we were picking and we
(12:37):
also started kind of doing withour speakers of our chef
background. We started doing alot of the inventory in a lot of
the like, like the harvestingand like the composting and like
we kept track really well oflike, what we brought in what's
going out how they were doingthe orders, what we composted
that day, because we wereharvesting it was the first time
playing cucumbers. So we wereharvesting like honestly broke
(12:58):
1000 pounds every couple days.
Yeah, and they were only sellinglike 200 So they were just like
art compost on whatever you willdo, you can with all but so just
you know, having my backgroundwith that I think helped us a
lot of being able to kind of runthe show for that and it was
exactly what they needed at thatpoint in time with the kind of
family issues they were havingand having us there was was
really good for them. Did youhave experience doing that stuff
(13:19):
before like were you gardenersat home have you done have you
done butchering before I did soat the it's called the like
mainland in so I volunteered atQuarry Hill floor when I first
ever heard about Wolfing to geta job at the mainland it and
that situation was like youknow, Koi hell foreign presents
the mainland it was like theirsister, you know, restaurant,
(13:39):
whatever. So we did all thebutchering stuff from there
while we were working at themainland. You know, we're
Catholic trees and making maplesyrup. We were raising bees and
spending honey, we did our ownhot sauces or vinegars or in
cured meats. We took care of awhole garden outside of the
restaurant, we did a herb gardenfarmer Baldino and we did a big
grow up in the basement in thewintertime was growing herbs and
lettuces and things like that.
(14:02):
So yeah, it wasn't like majorexperience. But you know, not
just like, I'm sure as you know,like, We're fucking workers,
bro. We can go do anything. Sogo along this farm, that's all
they asked for it was you know,you could actually just work and
we had no problem doing that. Sowe fit in really well there and
they really appreciated us andwe want to learn a lot and we
love being outside. We lovebeing in the dirt. Yeah, we love
(14:22):
being dirty. Yeah, so ya know,just fun for us. You don't have
yet for you. It's been a gardenback at your house, like back
home. So it's funny. So we'vehad like all of these big
ambitions and we'll be learnedand me and what we're going to
do we got back andI planted a garden before we
left and I went to Maine. I hadtold my girlfriend like just let
it go does it doesn't matter youknow, she's gonna take care of
(14:42):
your client if I go to shit. Andso we had anything for grilling
and we're getting big plants andeverything like that and so you
have this big ambition of allthese things we're gonna do and
we're gonna buy an apple treeand we're gonna bla bla bla and
when we came homeI guess we had a really for the
first time and you know kind ofwith
COVID the earth got to kind ofrecover a little bit. And so we
(15:05):
had to get really good winterhere in Pennsylvania. And so we
have a big sugar gum tree nextto our house that I think ended
up growing a couple inches andevery kind of direction. And
then as we started kind ofgetting into working the soil
and kind of added some compostto it, like our soil was so much
clay Yeah, so it was like ashard as a desk that won't
sitting at you on and union mindto, that's what I know. And then
(15:28):
just with our business are in tokind of take off and things
getting started. At this pointin time. It's just easier for us
to buy it from the people. Iknow we absolutely will. Yeah.
Again, we have our gardens andwe have little things that we
had always around the house andwe're doing little stuff but to
have an actual garden right nowis it's not something we that we
have, it's a ton of work. Imean, this time of year, even
(15:48):
when I had like slow periodswith my business, it was still a
ton of work the weeding thing.
Like if you guys ever want toget paid to come weed my garden,
I'll pay you to like, I mean,it's just it's it's a lot. So I
try and grow things that likepeople maybe that I can't buy,
like I have some really coolheirloom seeds. But like, if
it's just going to be tomatoes,I'm so much better just buying
them from someone around here.
(16:10):
There's a funny saying that goestide nine and the garden stops
for nobody.
So no matter how slow you are,how busy you are like that
should still growing out there.
It's not going to stop foranybody out. It's got it. It's
always funny. I think every timewe've gone away for a week we
have a garden you come back andit's like 10 times bigger than a
wilderness oil. Well, at leastwe just had a bigger Yeah. Or
(16:30):
it's completely dead becausesomeone didn't take care of it
for you. Yeah.
One or the other. So yeah, wedefinitely love we'd love all
this job. Yeah, we we like do alot of foraging and the spirit
of summertimewill have on our menus. The wild
forage pesto's and we do apickled ramps out every spring.
There'll be really enjoy andstuff like that. We love doing
(16:52):
the mushroom people whichmushrooms a lot. We don't serve
those we do ourselves. Yeah. Sohow did you really start the
personal chef business? Likewhen did you start that? And
what did that first event looklike that? You did? We had this
idea coming back from me. Weactually cut our our trip two
months short. We're split intofour monitors. They always say
for two, we came back we tookabout three weeks really to like
(17:12):
kind of reassimilate back intolike reality and just decide to
zone that was in May. We wereawesome. We're in the middle of
nowhere. Yeah. So coming backand seeing all the traffic and
everything we had here it waskind of like a readjustment
period. And then we kind of justsaid, Fuck it all and put it
out. We always as Chancellor,I'm straight up the same way
(17:35):
coming up in the restaurant, wealways felt some sense of
loyalty to the restaurants weworked with. So we didn't want
it to reflect poorly on us. Wejust came back didn't tell our
restaurant that was like, Oh,hey, we're running our own
business. We were both Salford,our jobs back. That's that's why
we were both when we were away.
We both got letters saying hey,you're welcome to come back to
(17:56):
work, you know, whatever. So weboth had these offers come back.
That's why he's kind of sayinglike, didn't know if it'd be a
bad thing. If I came back. Itwasn't like, Hey, show up. Just
so you know, I haven't talked toyou in eight months. But I'm not
coming back to work. Yeah. Andyeah, we got to a point where
you just said fuck it. And wejust made an Instagram page. And
because this is what we've beendoing our whole professional or
adult, our adult lives, like,when we put something out
(18:19):
saying, Okay, this is what we'regoing to do. It was always how
people were kind of like, it'sabout time you're doing that.
God Yeah, soil. Our first ourfirst event was not great. I
mean, it was, like instanttable. It's funny looking back
on, like what we wore, yeah. Andlike, while we were thinking
about, like, you know, we stillare, you know, what we what
we're trying to portray backthen, like, again, first time
(18:41):
we're like, there's nobodytelling us what we can and can't
do. So like didn't really knowif he wanted to wear the chef
jackets or if he wanted to,like, I don't know, just be more
t shirt casual and to kind of bemore of ourselves and, and so
just finding looking back onpictures and just seeing like
what we're wearing and yeah, orwhat we were serving the food
was so good. But yeah, to see itwasn't as like as it is refined.
(19:02):
Yeah, so we actually, lastmonth, cooked again for the
first strangers we ever cookedfor when we first started, like
two October's ago. Yeah, and I,I know, they told us also, but
like their experience just nowcompared to the first time it's
fucking blew out of the water.
It is cool to see and to nothear guests tell us like, Yo,
every time you guys come here,it's way better. So we kind of,
(19:26):
like I'm sure, like, you know,kind of take it upon yourself to
look at what you're doing,adjust a little bit, think about
better ways to do things. And,you know, we kind of keep
telling ourselves if we justkeep making little improvements
over time. We're gonna have madea gentleman Yeah, we'll have a
major a major change. Yeah, sowe do not first came back and
put this out. And I mean, we'dsay You know, we've done a lot
(19:50):
more since then. But you know,from that first weekend event,
we've done at least one a weekor weekend you know, since then
we're now doing about three orfour
A week, which is kind of rightwhere we want to be. It's been
technical, we'll spend a lot offun, you know, again, the people
we get to meet as we do it, andto see how it's like, constantly
growing, it was fine. We werefirst starting with being
(20:11):
excited that like, our filingcabinet is starting to fill up,
getting more papers, my filingcabinet and all this, like, just
those little things that we'venever done anything like this
before, or ever had anything ofour own. Kind of like this, you
know, we were always justrestaurant dogs. Did you have
any business experience becausethat's what I find a lot of
people like their chefs, theirrestaurant people, but running a
(20:33):
business like a real business isvery different. So we have our
associate's degree in Hotel andRestaurant Management. But aside
from that, no, like, we kind ofkeep joking around. And we sit
down with accountants now andall this kind of stuff. We're
always like, listen, bro, like,we are back of the house train
chefs. And that's it. You know,I never did any the front of
house management, or any kind oflike, closing the books at end
(20:53):
of the day or so. No, in thatsense. No, we don't. But our
dad's been entrepreneurs wholelife, you know, we've kind of
been around it a little bit,you're never going to be ready,
and you're never going to knoweverything. So your best bet is
to just start. And once youstart, you're gonna learn as you
go, and you're gonna figure itout. Like, you don't have to be
an account to start your ownbusiness, you don't even know
(21:15):
how it happened, do your ownbanking to start your own
business like, so we've beenfinding a lot of that stuff of
just as you go, like, it almostforces you to figure it out end
to end to find out how to do it.
And so that's how to spend themajor thing for us is just
getting started and getting theclientele and get some money
coming in. So we can keep doingthings and work out with you
know, and now we're just we'regetting into kind of the serious
(21:36):
aspect of things and gettinginto our taxes for the first
time and, and all that kind ofcool stuff, or not cool, but
stuff you have to get done.
Right? Yeah, for me, it doesfeel it does feel cool. And we
take pride in the fact that likewe can generate our own money,
and we can pay our own taxes. Soyou can do all this kind of
stuff. And where are you findingyour customers?
(21:57):
It's mostly honestly, where amouth? No, I like like we were
saying so we've been in thissame box county area our whole
lives, essentially, our parentshave been here, you know, Lions
too, you know, we have, for lackof better words, like a very
good, like, hate reputationaround here. So like you said,
but we didn't start this a lotof people will they go great
(22:18):
about time someone came with totry it a lot of referrals, a lot
of word of mouth and socialmedia. Yeah, man, then our own
website. And that's really it.
We don't we don't pay formarketing ads, we don't pay for
like direct mail campaigns.
Like, we don't really doanything of that because we had
just been saying that word ofmouth kind of gets the job done.
(22:38):
And it's been I guess, extremelybeneficial. We obviously be
handout on pamphlets toeverybody our events, you know,
we can talk about it everywherewe go. We have them in like you
know, local shops around towndown, I'll get to sit on the
calendar and you know, whatever.
But that's that's kind of reallyit. And I think the fact that we
use only local companies andlocal produce and local farms.
(22:59):
So when we go and we talk to thepeople who work there, or the
farmers and it's not they thentell all of the people who come
there about us and so it's kindof just is being community
driven. It takes a village andyeah, we got a whole village
kind of around us. Yeah, it'sreally helping us. Yeah. How far
do you do? Like what's your kindof travel radius? Like do you
(23:20):
feel like you're gonna have toexpand that at some point? I
know like local only gets you sofar at some point then you kind
of have oversaturated we didn'twe like you know, we try and
source locally, that does notmean we only serve locally does
that like we've gone to all thebeach towns at where are you?
Um, I'm in Frederick, Maryland.
So I'm like two hours away fromyou. He's gone to like, you
(23:42):
know, down down to Jersey. We'refrom Pennsylvania like Southeast
Pennsylvania. So yeah, we'regoing down to New Jersey, which
is about two and a half hourdrive. You also you talk five
out to driving but no roundly dothat for for bigger parties.
Yeah, he 10 people stuff likethat. Yeah. But our average or
average drives about 40 minutes,you know, what, half hour,
usually? 40 minutes? Yeah,wherever we go. Yeah, I don't
(24:04):
know if it's good or bad. AndI'll be honest, if you have no
problem traveling or coming toyou, if you seem like a really
great person, we're gonna dowe're gonna have a good time
waits, and you know, what, allthat kind of stuff. You know,
obviously, our time is importantto us. But I think nourishing
people and serving them goodfood and kind of raising the
awareness of what's around us ismore important than that. So we
(24:25):
will, we will kind of go theextra mile to come further than
we have to do this. There'll bealso shopping while doing it.
And how many courses do you guysnormally serve? And like, what's
your price point? I mean, you'reseven courses and is to a
knowledge person. And nopushback on that with pricing.
Like how do you find no again,like so it's one of those things
like I don't want to sound thisway either. But like it's one of
(24:47):
those things that have to saylike, oh, this is too expensive
and like you just aren't Are youaren't applying for us? You know
what I mean? You know, yeah,we've heard that but we've also
had people who've been with usseven times who tell us that
there are precious artShoot cheap. Again. Like, we
bring absolutely everything,everything like, we try to make
it. So if you're at arestaurant, what do you bring to
a restaurant, bring yourself, wetry to make it that literally
(25:11):
you come into your own kitchenand you sit down and you get up
just like you would interact.
And that's it. And that is it.
You know, we bring the menus,we'll be bringing napkins bring
water and water glasses, youbring a flower bouquet, we bring
a speaker for music company ifthey don't like they don't have
it on their on their own. Weread all the cookware all the
play where all all thesilverware again, and then we
(25:31):
take it all back with us andclean it up at our kitchen. So
there's no cleaning up in yourhouse. There's no clanking
dishes around while you'retrying to eat enjoy a meal. It's
it's very in and out for us andvery intimate and special for
the guests. And then we do a lotof interaction. We do a lot of
this. There's a lot ofconversating there's a lot of
talking, you know, there's a lotof our personality that comes
through when we do these events.
(25:53):
Yeah, people love hearing ourstories. And we love hearing
those, which is most importantthing to us of why we try and
why we do these smaller events.
Yeah, we don't do you know, wehaven't done yet or anything
like that. We don't do the microweddings, you know, our biggest
party has been like 11 people.
And you know, because we get tonow meet everybody over there.
You know, like, I want to leavehere like nothing's your dog's
name. And knowing your kid said,y'all, we want you to kind of
(26:14):
know the same about us. And youknow, we're, this is more than
just serving you food. It'sabout trying to, you know,
create a cannabidiol connectionsand community relationship
building. And I think because ofthat, you know, we haven't we,
we've had guests who have bookedwith us seven times, you know
what I mean? So like, there'sthings like that, that, like
we're starting to see now.
Because it's gotten to last ayear, just like in China saying
just the saying yes. And goingout and doing these events as
(26:37):
far as they were, or whatever itwas, like, we're seeing all
those relationships now startedto come back. And mostly
everybody who reaches out to usnow is from Oh, you cook for my
cousin, or you cook for youknow, my girlfriend's sister
over here. And, oh, I saw yourpamphlets in store here. And
they only had getting greatthings to say about you. And
then as far as menus go, howdoes that work? Are you kind of
(26:59):
working around what yourcustomer likes? Do you guys have
a set thing, seven courses is alot of dishes to do. I always
say if you hate beats willalways work with you to make
something that you like. But wechange our menu every single
month. That's why we are sayingthat we've had people book with
us seven times or so becausethey want to try the new menu
every single month. So we changeit every single month with
(27:21):
what's coming out what thefarmers are producing with what
local people are having. Itkeeps us excited, it keeps them
excited. We have our set menu,it's always updated on our
website, we always send out aemail campaign telling everybody
about it. And like I said, ifyou don't like it, where to
absolutely hate whatever we haveon the menu, we will then at
(27:42):
that point work with you tofigure something out if you
really, really want to have us.
Yeah, we've had people like wewere doing a lot when we first
started like pick your proteinkind of thing like your chicken
administering was one price,steak doc lamb, fish, pork,
whatever else was another pricethat we have like steak and
lobster as another price. And aswe've got into the winter menus,
(28:05):
not as like colorful, were funas the white beans spring and
summertime. So we kind of gotrid of that pick your protein
option. And now the menus moreso set and we kind of
incorporate meats kind ofthroughout the menu, whereas we
cook mainly vegetarian. Whatwe're trying to highlight, like
local produce everything. Themenu is mostly vegetarian until
the entree. Well, yeah, everymonth we try and change it. We
(28:27):
try and stay relevant. We'retrying to do different things.
Again, look like you're sayingwe're trying to keep ourselves
familiar people's eyes and keeppeople thinking about us. And
you know, oh, just because youcouldn't get a date this month.
Well, when you see the emailcampaign about the new menu, you
might want to look back intoyour calendar for February. See
if you have a day in Februaryyou want to focus for but you
don't get into this thing wheresomeone reaches out to you and
(28:49):
says hey, you know, it's mywife's birthday. I really want
to do strip steak and make amolten chocolate lava cake. We
do. So we do that. Yeah, again,like like he like he was saying,
like, we put out this menu, cuzour biggest thing is about
creating awareness level food,eating seasonal, being
connected, connected to theland, we kind of see the
spiritual side of food and foodbeing a medicine. So that's kind
(29:12):
of really big for us. Where hesaid, Dude, if you want strip
steak and walk in lava cake,bro, we're gonna do it for you.
Yeah. And like, we have noproblem with that. But we kind
of do see a lot they like a lotof people don't know what they
want. Or they're uncomfortablewith telling you what they
actually want. You know what Imean?
So yeah, a lot of people usuallyjust take the menu and we had
before told people like listen,like, I know some of these
(29:34):
things are a little unique orthere might be a little
different from what you've eatenand and not assigned. So but a
lot of the restaurants aroundhere are fairly mediocre others
around honestly, I'm likethere's nothing that's like
there's a few that are likepushing the envelope and doing
kind of cool things. So we'vetold people like listen, if you
don't have an allergy, just tryit. Just give it a try. You
(29:55):
know, you might find somethingthat you've that you've really
liked that you've never triedbefore. And you know, just
becauseIf you didn't like the way your
mom cooked can beets doesn'tmean you like the way that we
cook really good, fresh localones. You want to look at
brussel sprouts now like nobodyate brussels sprouts for like a
couple 100 years. It's like,well, yeah, because they were
just boiling frozen brusselsprouts and it's my number one
selling vegetable right now thenI'll sue.
(30:16):
Donald off that, like, Dude,we've had so many people tell
us, if I wasn't in my friend'shouse, trying to be polite, and
you put this menu down in frontof me, I would get up and walk
away. But as you're sitting hereand eating through the entire
menu, you have completelychanged my entire mind on
asparagus, or beets or turnipsor whatever. And like that's all
we that's really the only reasonwhy we started this. Yeah, I
(30:37):
can't tell you how many grownmen you've served. You've never
eaten a radish. Yeah. You know,saying like, it's like that.
It's just like, it's it's stillwild, you know. And once they,
they once they open their mindto it, and they conquerable with
us being there and everythinglike that. Like, they always
really enjoy it. And neverthey've told us like, listen, I
would probably don't think aboutordering ordering the students
when I go out again, or if I seehim on a menu somewhere else.
(30:59):
What are some of your favoritethings to make? Pasta? handle
handle classes? Debit myfavorite? We do. We offer pasta
classes, our two that were kindof filling up and getting pretty
popular with Yeah, we honestlydidn't like just a lot of like
vegetable cookery. You know, Iknow that sounds kind of broad.
But um, we've always seen like,anybody can put salt pepper on a
(31:20):
steak and sear it and make ittaste good. And put on a grill
and chop it up. Whatever. Butlike, it's hard to make, you
know, a carrot cvwd with duckfat, you know, tastes amazing.
Yeah, we got like, we weresaying we've taken vegetables
and had people be like, Yo, thistastes nothing like, you know,
brace on over that. And we justhad on the menu for the last two
months. Like everyone's alwaysgone with so wicker she and you
(31:40):
know, a nice flavor. And I justreally don't like that. And
okay, well, if you cook it thisway, and you add these flavors
to it, like it kind of gets veryneutral flavor. And he kind of
just takes on everything elsethat's kind of around it. And so
he had his own vegetables in arolling pasture and doing kind
of dough work like that, likemore more hands on things. Yeah,
start starting like pastry alittle bit more, as we're forced
(32:02):
into it. Now.
We don't have a lot of pastrytrading. That's been cool,
though. Because like we werealways very concerned with
even even before this with,like, you know, if I take a job
as executive chef Walden, whowas teaching me about food,
which is a very naive mindset,you know, I see now. So we were
(32:22):
always kind of afraid to go ifwe work for ourselves, like
who's teaching us? And honestly,bro, I think we've learned more
about food and everything elsein the past a year than we have
in any restaurant, or, you know,learning from yourself and
pushing yourself and now you getto look into things do you
actually want to cook yourself?
And you know, which is which isreally exciting and fun for us.
And there's so many resourcesthese days. I mean, with the
internet and the availability ofbooks and knowledge. I mean, I
(32:45):
tell the younger people, youknow, I'm 45 When I was in
culinary school, I didn'tliterally even have the internet
until I was a sophomore, right,like, and they didn't even take
that as a reference for thingslike you had to do a report on
like foods of Spain, I had to goto a library. I hope they had a
book on the foods of Spain,which, you know, 1995 probably
didn't really they had like oneor two, you know, and now it's
(33:06):
like, I was just telling someonethe other day I taught myself
how to butcher a pig's head bywatching like a Chris Cosentino
like YouTube video, you know?
That's amazing. That way it's sofunny you say that and like,
because we're we're like, whatfairly resistant to technology.
Like when we remain we did likesome why we made our own aprons
(33:26):
we did sex out, like knitted ourown kind of dish rags and stuff.
And we always say to that, like,how did you guys learn all this?
Where do you learn the strongbargain during the middle of
fucking nowhere? Like, yeah,they will only always say
YouTube videos. Like, like, why?
Like, why can't Why can't it bea book by kind of doing
something like this like, and sowe started to now more so like,
I just learned how to likereally make like passive gray on
(33:47):
you know, on YouTube videos wedid in a French restaurant, like
a really classical like therewas a way of doing it. But I
couldn't get that to work. Icouldn't remember all the
technique. So I can just watchYouTube videos and guide
perfectly got it perfectly.
Yeah, watching someone dosomething. I mean, reading it. I
(34:08):
mean, everyone learnsdifferently, right? Like some
people can read it and pick itup. But when you see fully
visually, the visuals areprobably good for at least you
know sort of chefs like us andit added that I've always wanted
to be that way the Golf I readit but like you know, we have
the old, like no technique booksthat are pictures, and then
trying to explain it and brosway easier is watch a video, ya
know what I mean? Then trying topiece some of these pictures
(34:30):
together and see what they'redoing on in between. And so now
what like are you just going tokind of continue on this path of
what you've been doing. Are youin? are you integrating new
stuff into what you're doing?
Right now we have through ourour backgrounds, we have the
understanding, at least in arestaurant, it takes at least
five years for you to really tryto say hey, we weren't here you
(34:53):
kind of made it so we understandthat we are still and will be
for a few years in that growingstate. So
Right now what we're trying todo, or what we see, we're going
to do is keep doing what works,keep improving what we're doing,
you know, if anything, we'llstart maybe doing a little more
marketing again. And we do havea lot of new things happening.
(35:16):
Pasta class is a big one. Yeah,just started recently do pasta
classes. Again, we were tryingto find ways to like the
weekdays, weekends fill up, noproblem. Yatra. As you know,
like, it's very easy to getpeople to book Friday, Saturday
and Sunday. So the past theclass has been a cool way to
kind of do more weekday solve asign as long, it's not as
expensive. And then we actuallyhad somebody, which is another
(35:37):
thing we're, you know, which is,yeah, adding these little
things, where it's offering likea wine pairing and wine class
with it, we had a girl reach outto us named Charlotte Adams, she
reached out to us and she hasher master's degree in wine and
vineyard science, from like theUniversity of Bordeaux, or some
really long French name fromFrance. And so she reached out
(35:58):
to us today, like, yeah, I wouldlove to work with you, is there
a way we can figure out how todo a partnership kind of thing.
And so we're gonna start tooffer, you know, if you want to
pay, you know, X amount of priceper person, just $35 a person
plus the cost of your wine,we'll bring her with us, you
know, she'll work with you, youknow, to order the wines and
local places of people she kindof is associated with help you
(36:19):
do the ordering, she can eitherpick it up for you. And then
she'd come along with us theevents and she teach about the
wine, and she pour the wine andexplain kind of why it's going
with each course. And you knowwhy she chose this and what's
kind of special and cool aboutit. We've told people you know,
we can offer you, you know, winerecommendations, we'll send it
to a friend and we'll getrecommendations. Like I'm not
buying it. I'm not providing it.
I'm not pouring it. I don't evenwant to open that can of worms
(36:41):
really and you know, with thelegalities and elegance, at
least in Pennsylvania,Pennsylvania is stranger and
their alcohol walls are justridiculous. Like, we don't even
want to even put our foot inthere. So yeah, so having this
girl now is kind of our, ourbridge. Yeah. to that. So yeah,
we're excited about that. But itreally man like, what's next is
(37:02):
just keep pushing, keep goingand meet more farmers. If we
could have like three or fourlike week like mother farms were
like, Yeah, we only get fromyou. And you know, we know
what's coming. We know you'regrowing kind of certain things
for us, which we do have acouple of these in the work we
have, you know, some BlackbirdFarm is a big one near us who we
sat down with and donec wentover his foreign plans, what he
(37:25):
has coming and he took anythingthat like we would maybe want
him to grow up for us. We spentthe whole last year just kind of
cruising around andexperimenting with places and
meeting people and going tofarmers markets and talking and
networking and blah, blah. Andso I think it'd be cool to just
as we go over the next fewyears, like really establish the
people we want to work with havethe set people this is what
(37:45):
we're doing. They're behind us.
We're behind them, you know,kind of relationship and what
hasn't worked for you anythinglike is there anything you were
doing when you started thatyou've kind of just like
shuffled off? Yes. And you triedto do like, like a three course
like weekday dinner, that wouldhave been, you know, half the
price, which when when we saythree courses, it's a museum use
(38:08):
booths, of course a second anintermezzo, then the third, then
dessert, so it's totally fivecourse yeah, but we just don't
count the intermezzo. And theamuse boosh, I don't know why we
sought to do the work for them.
But we just need to stall. Andso doing that will try a way to
kind of come in and be half theamount of time we can be in and
out and like an hour and a halfnot, ya know, and it's half the
price and you know, help weekdaybusiness. And, dude, it was just
(38:29):
two people's hypertrophy blocks.
That'll work. There's two of ustoo. So you know, I mean, like,
you guys got to split the money.
Like, I'm a solo show for the,for the most point, it's not
worth it for me to do that.
Exactly. And so it was that wassomething that just like, Yeah,
we just did two of them, and itwas for the same person. And so
that was like, Alright, we justgot that kind of kicked to the
side. And we also we tried doinglike kinda like meal prep stone
(38:54):
when it wasn't really mealprepping. It was like, we would
go to our farms and ourconnections, and we would get
all the produce, and we wouldn'tmake you like a big batch of
quinoa salad like that. Butanyway, yeah. So when we were in
meeting, the family, how theyeat was kind of on a whole meal
rotation. So it's the same thingon Monday, the same thing on
(39:14):
Tuesday, the same day onWednesday, but it was variety
driven yet and we're never tiredof it. So we saw that and we're
like, man, that'd be so cool tokind of help people implement
that into their lives. Becauseit took the stress of making
dinner and month kind of foryourself. So we tried doing that
for people doing this, you know,bulk Trek and stuff like that.
And we did a few of those too.
But one of those things that wekind of realized that was way
(39:37):
too much work wasn't enoughmoney weren't getting enough out
of it, like led to it's takingour attention away from what is
working. Like, that's a scratchthat also. What we saw again,
was with the whole like, youknow, meal meal, no rotating
like they knew exactly what theyhad to shop for every week. The
other wife knew exactly how manyounces of pasta she had to cook
(39:58):
every day.
He knew exactly how many poundsof meat you to pull out of the
freezer. She knew exactly kindof what the whole next day would
look like, because they were onthis schedule. And we thought
was fascinating to be honestwith you, their whole family was
all homeschooled. They're all inlike, their 40s are all you
know, the kids and everything.
But so they were saying, like,you know, when they were all at
homeschooling everything theywould do one day a month, they
(40:18):
will do all the prep for theentire month. You're gonna get
your clicker for one day for theentire month, and you're just
free shit and pull it out. Yeah.
So we kind of tried doing thatfor people and everything. And
it does, yes, it didn't take offdidn't wear well. And if you're
charging $200 for like a highend dinner, like you're not
gonna get anywhere near that forthat meal prep kind of stuff,
(40:38):
right? Okay, so we're never,we're never no matter what we
do, we're never willing tojeopardize the quality. So we're
never not willing to go to thefarms, we're never not willing
to buy the farm meat, which isno matter what expensive, which
I believe around it. So we weredoing like, you know, we're
going to give you all thereceipts, and we're going to
show you if they were buying,and you're gonna give us the
(40:58):
money back for the food. Andthen we're gonna charge $500. On
top of that, for us to do allthe all the shopping all the
prepping again, we're driving tofarm. So it's a lot of driving
around the county and goingdifferent places. We're going to
use our containers that you'regoing to recycle and get back to
us. And then we're going to prepit, get it all labeled mad
Cavanaugh and drop it off toyou. We also we would write kind
(41:19):
of sheets and how to reheat it,what you could put with what
what looks good together, how todress it and all that other kind
of stuff. So like it was it wasa lot of work. And yeah, it just
didn't really didn't really workand it was taking away from our
private event business will win.
And then it was a lot which islike where we're starting to see
now and try to like, as much aswe can move away from it was a
lot of chasing people down. Hey,are you want to do it again this
(41:41):
week? Hey, like, are we preppingagain for you this week. And the
more time we're spending on onemail is trying to call off the
people the last time we'recooking and getting the things
that actually matter? Doesanyone help you with anything?
Do you ever bring like extraservers to events? Or is it just
the two of you will bring likemy girlfriend who has like fine
dining sorting experience, butthat's only for like, parties of
(42:01):
like 10 or more. So to answernow not really like so I think
sauce sauce at events. I do alot of the serving, like I do
all the talking and I do all thespilling we serve the dishes and
Teller aisle is everything likethat. We both do the plating and
he's more so the back of house Ijust didn't cooking and all that
kind of tone. And we both playedit up and do do all kinds of
cool stuff. But yeah, and weboth kind of run the plates out.
(42:23):
But I kind of hang out explainwhat it all is answer questions.
We promote questions. You know,we kind of, you know, encourage
pictures, you know, we encourageposts, you want to film anything
like you know, we were all aboutit. We love that we can kind of
let the guests be as it evolvedor not as they choose to be. I
tell them hey, do you want tocome stand next to me while I'm
(42:44):
cooking up the stove and askingwhat I'm doing. I love that you
can you can you know this isyour home, you can do anything
you want here. You know, we arehere to show you put on and show
kind of teach inspire anything.
So yeah, we encourage everybodyto be as in it with us as as we
are as as a Tuesday. I thinkyeah, I think people really kind
(43:05):
of like that would be kind ofgive them like the opportunity
to say, Oh yeah, I do want to dothat. Or like No, I'm okay.
We're just sitting here andeating that time. And we didn't
even get into this. So you guysare twin brothers. Yes. Yeah.
What's the what's the dynamic ofthat? Like, do you guys work
together? Well, I mean, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, no. So we wereputting them together. Yeah.
(43:25):
Yeah, we live in the same house.
So again, we've always beenreally cool. Growing up, we were
always best friend says we growup. And then we started going to
culinary school in high school.
So we like went to tech school,MIT in Jemison, right here for
culinary arts and kind of jokeright to tell people like, no
reason why we did that, bro wasbecause we got an hour and 15
minutes less school every day.
(43:47):
And that sounded cool. Itsounded fun. And we got to get
on a bus and go somewhere else.
And, and culinary was ago, youget to eat that sound. That
sounds cool. And we fell in lovewith it. And it was the best
decision we ever made. Butthey're the second year our
class has merged together. Andso from there, we kind of
started working in the kitchentogether. And we started doing
this together in that space, ifyou will. Then we got our first
jobs. And we our first job wegot together just through a
(44:10):
family friend. And so that wasour first time working together.
And so from that, you know, wealways just a lot of providing
working our parents instilled agood work ethic in us. And so
like, every time you go to arestaurant and you prove
yourself to be good restaurants,we're always hiring. So we came
in chef, just so you know, like,I have a twin brother who's just
as good as me. And he loved towork here too. And if I could
(44:32):
bring him in, you know what Imean? And so we always kind of
ended up like someone would gosomewhere they bring another
person in. And you know, so thathappened a lot of times. Yeah,
we did work at a few placestogether for a while. It was one
of those things we saw a lot toolike if it Steven Nick
congruence all day. Nobody cancompete with us. You want to
name like tomorrow, if it'sfucking John and Gabby on it,
like, Tony ain't gonna be thesame. You know what I mean? So
(44:55):
yeah, we got really good atthat. And now y'all again, we
live Together, we do have themtogether, we are now really
falling into our roles. Yeah.
And in the business, the others,like we were saying, when we
first started, we just stoppedand started. Yeah, this ball
Selena has a balls to the wall,we know how to cook food, we
know how to entertain. Let's dothat. And we're worried about
everything else as it counts. Sonow we're really kind of
(45:18):
starting to fall into our roleshere, which was, I think we all
speak for myself, well, whichwas the most frustrating factor
of every day, not knowing who'sgonna do what are you going to
handle Instagram posts or liveon the handle? Are you going to
handle emails? Were my iPhone tohandle shopping? Where are you?
Yeah, am I ever going to tripmore and you're going to prep
more, I'm going to quickly moveon. Now we're really kind of
falling into what our roles are,essentially. And I like the old
(45:42):
T we're excited. And yeah, theteamwork of it, y'all. being
twins, the RFR avatar, wholefloppy lives. We were taught at
the youngest age possible thatwe share every day. Yeah, and
that's just how it goes. Soputting that into our business,
and having I guess thatbackground really kind of helps
us to be able to do what we do.
(46:05):
Like, today, for an example, youknow, he had to get his own fix.
So I'm gonna go do all theshopping, you know, like, you
need to go do this, or I do willalso handle that. So one of the
questions I've really beenexploring this season with
people is, what does it mean toyou guys to be a chef,
the first thing I guess, Ithink, like comes up just by
feeling into it is like yonourishment, also that same
(46:26):
thing. So nourishment, I feel asense of responsibility. Again,
we probably have a, we probablyhave different views and some
other chefs, we're into, like,the indigenous culture, and
we're into, you know, we're intonature, like, we understand
that. And, you know, like, we'resupposed to be here, like,
humans are no different than anyother animal, we just so
happened to figure out how tofucking make these computers and
(46:47):
cars and, and buildings, alsothe kind of shit but like, we're
supposed to be stewards of theplanet, and we're supposed to be
taking care of the planet. And Ifeel like in ours, at least in
our business, like, we feelpersonal responsibility to show
people of how they can also dothat, and how they can eat the
way that you know, that promoteskind of generational wealth of
(47:07):
the planet and our people. Andagain, when you do those things,
you're more nourished, and itfeels better for you if you're
buying anything by I think beinga chef really is the only way at
least, you know, again, in myopinion, is the only way that
you can do what she just said.
And people will listen to youwhilst I teach it. You can be a
teacher and somebody Addison'sit to be a chef, to me, seems
like yes, you are a teacher, ateacher of our natural foods are
(47:31):
nourishing foods of what theearth provides us. We all have
to eat. Yeah, we all need to eatand we all I think can try to
agree that a lot of the foodthat we're eating in our world
as often boys.
So a to us I think being a cheftoday is represented or
explained as being a steward ofthe Earth, fucking train and
(47:54):
teach people that you can live acredibly nourishing and
delicious lifestyle through foodand local local community local
things and, and feel great aboutit. We've really loved having
you guys on the show today.
Thanks so much for coming on.
There's dirt in Indiana. Readytime. Yeah, everything you need
to plug before you get out ofhere. Any events, anything? I
mean, I'll put all your info inthe show notes. Our website is
(48:17):
www dot service. So it's NCR BIAs is where you spell our name
and what we call our business.
So it's service dash events.com.
We're on Instagram at serviceevents. And that's really about
it. Yeah, you can sign up forour email, your email list. Put
it on through our website. Yeah,sorry about it. Awesome. Well,
we'll have all that in the shownotes. And to our listeners,
(48:39):
this has been Chris with theChefs Without Restaurants
podcast, go to chefs withoutrestaurants.org To find our
Facebook group, mailing list andcheck database. The community's
free to join. You'll get gigopportunities, advice on
building and growing yourbusiness and you'll never miss
an episode of our podcast. Havea great week.
Have you ever worked with a sibling or family
member? If so, how did it go?
Now? Could you imagine startinga business with one? On today's
show, I have Nicholas andStephens service, identical twin
brothers who founded serviceevents, a private dining service
based in Bucks County,Pennsylvania. He learned how the
brothers pivoted during theearly days of the pandemic to
(00:20):
start their business. I thinkyou're going to be inspired by
their commitment to sustainablecooking. And if you're a
personal chef, or hope to beone, I hope you'll pick up some
practical advice on how topossibly grow your business.
This is Chris spear. And you'relistening to Chefs Without
Restaurants, the show where Ispeak with culinary
entrepreneurs and people workingin the food and beverage
(00:42):
industry outside of atraditional restaurant setting.
So I've taken a few unplannedweeks off from the podcast, but
it feels good to be back. Didyou miss me? So the service
brothers began their culinaryjourney at middle bucks
Institute of Technology, wherethey both enrolled in the
culinary arts program. They thenwent on to earn their
associate's degrees in Hotel andRestaurant Management from Bucks
(01:04):
County Community College beforehoning their craft in
professional kitchens. Theirpassion for Farm to Table
cuisine flourished during theirtime as chefs to party at the
mainland Inn where they tackledeverything from full animal
Buttrey to gardening, and somuch more. Later, while
volunteering at Quarry HillFarm, Stephen learned about the
wolf program, I travel for workopportunity on organic farms. So
(01:26):
when the pandemic forced thebrothers to leave their
restaurant jobs and 2020 seekinginspiration, they moved to Maine
for two months to work on flyingpond farm where their vision for
service events began to takeshape. Today, Nicholas and
Stephen share their story andpassion for culinary arts and
sustainability, combining theirlove of cooking with their
dedication to being stewards ofthe planet. And before we start
(01:47):
the show, I just have a coupleof quick words. As always, if
you go to chefs withoutrestaurants.org You can find
links to all of our social mediaaccounts, including our
Instagram and our privateFacebook group. If you'd like to
subscribe to our newsletter, oradd your info into our chef
database for possible gigreferrals, you can find those
links as well. And this week'sshow will be right up after a
word from this week's sponsor,the United States personal chef
(02:10):
Association.
USPCA AD (02:11):
Are you a personal chef looking for support and
growth opportunities? Look nofurther than the United States
Personal Chef Association withnearly 1000 members across the
US and Canada,USPCA providesliability insurance,
certification lead generationand more. Consumers can trust
that their meal experience isensured and supported by USP ca.
(02:33):
And now for a limited time, save$75 on new membership and get
your premier listing on Hire aChef by using the code
TaxBreak2023 at USPCA.com. Plus,if you have products or services
to sell chefs and their clientsshowcase your business on hire
chef and USPTA websites with ourgreat introductory packages. To
(02:57):
learn more about membershipadvertising or partnership
opportunities, call Angela at1-800-995-2138. Extension 705 or
email apratherer@uspca.com
Chris Spear (03:12):
Hey, guys, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for
coming on. It's really good tohave you here today. I think you
know that I like to start theshow by talking a little bit
about backgrounds and such. Sowhy don't you give me a little
overview about how did we gethere? How did you end up
starting your own personal chefprivate dining business.
Servis Events (03:34):
This kind of came from kind of out of the blue
from some girl, when Nick wasthe head chef of this
restaurant. It's calledardonagh. He opened that they
started doing brunch service.
And they had a lady who came invery frequently. And her and
Nick knew each other on a on akind of like first name basis.
And she gave me one day and sheasked the server to to ask him
to make her daughter veganpancakes. And Nick made before
(03:56):
and walked out to her and shewas so happy and so grateful for
that she came back about a weeklater. And she kind of pulled
him aside and said, Hey, Nick,do you guys do private events,
and began being a chef at arestaurant and he was thinking
she was asking about that? Andit's like, oh, we actually just
open. We don't really havepackage deals right now. But
you're here all the time, wecould probably get a manager and
(04:17):
filter paperwork out and kind ofget something together for you.
And she kind of pulled them in alittle closer and was like no,
no, like, you do private events.
And we always laugh and jokewith like the guests we get kind
of comfortable with what waslike, a fucking time for that.
Like no, I can't come cook foryou in your house sleeping in
the closet here. And so that wasthat was also before COVID Yeah,
(04:39):
so you know, we're both chefsand restaurants. So like
thinking about going to cook atsomebody's house outside of work
almost seemed possible. Andyeah, so it came from and it
kind of told me about it and westarted talking about, like LLC
names and shit that we reallydidn't need to get started. And
you know, that was again likeyou said before co
Unknown (05:00):
Have it. So as quickly as we kind of thought about it,
we got swept back into work. Andnothing really ever came from
it. until months was later thatwe went and took a trip up to
Maine, we watched a documentarycalled The biggest little farm
on Hulu. And we were reallyinspired by that. And we look
back into the program calledWolf. And if you ever heard
about Wolf is only through yourwebsite, I found that I had
(05:23):
never heard about it before yet.
So just for anyone who islistening, Wolf is worldwide
opportunities on organic buyers.
And I found out about this whenI volunteered a farm to get a
job and a farm to tablerestaurant. And they told me
it's weird to travel for free.
So again, you offer your work,and you get free housing and
free food from the farmer or thewolf host, if you will. And so
after watching this documentaryand being kind of stuck at home,
(05:47):
and nothing really was going on,we decided to go take a trip to
Maine and live on this farm fortwo months. And while we were
there, we shared the idea thatwe had with the family. While it
was like right before we went toMaine also, he wasn't working in
his restaurant at all, if theyclose completely for six months
without doing anything. I wasonly doing like a day or two
(06:08):
jobs takeout kind of stuff. Andshe cooked for our grandparents.
And one of our close our closefriends that we met through the
restaurants, I kind of did thiswhole kind of private dinner, I
always forget about that. Yeah.
And so we kind of had the ideaof but nothing set in stone
never really thought it couldever be a business. Yeah. And
(06:31):
then when we met the main, wekind of share our idea and share
these two dinners that he hasdone already. And the family
kind of really took this ideareally took it into process, the
end kind of like gave us all thetools that we kind of needed to
think about how to actually runthis as a business, not just
like a little kind of sideproject. So let's let's kind of
(06:52):
pause really quick and kind ofshuffle things around. We'll
we'll get right back into thisthat you guys were, you're both
cooking and we'll get into yourbackground a little bit. But you
were cooking in restaurants upuntil say COVID, right? Yes, a
little bit of coke. So from youknow, 15 years old, until COVID.
So we're gonna be again untilthe Day on March 15. And they
(07:13):
said you can't look at workanymore. I remember Bo packing
up the French onion soup thatyou're going to pull out for two
weeks. And some things we couldfreeze that we could use again
when we came back and two weeksand I know I remember the whole
mindset of like, alright, thisis what we can use. This is what
we can use take this home withyou cuz it's gonna go bad if not
and and never went back to thatrestaurant again. Guys working.
(07:33):
Were you at the same place? No.
So I was at a place called Siteblue. It's a small French bistro
in Doylestown, where we're from.
And I was the opening executivechef at a place called Arden
enough we didn't drink. It waslike a Mediterranean restaurant
woodfired pizza and Nick andmore pasta that we opened right
before the pandemic to be opento two months, two and a half
(07:55):
months prior. And yeah, that wasfun. So you guys were both what
like laid off furlough just kindof indefinite break, whatever
that scenario was called. Andyeah, and try to wait off. Like
he said he was doing a day, aday a week slot. And it was all
kind of I don't know, it was allyou know, onto the table. Yeah,
(08:15):
at that point. So everybody canfind employment, like we were
told that we shouldn't do. So.
Yeah, I was probably onlyworking once or twice a week,
only doing takeout and all thatkind of stuff. And we actually
had a sister restaurant calledCasey prime Steakhouse. I was
sous chef there for like fiveyears. And we essentially merged
both of our kitchen staff intoour one restaurant. And we're
(08:38):
doing both menus out of our onekitchen, which was Yeah, which
was a pain in the ass. But youknow, Ryan got to do what you
had to do to kind of survive atthat point. So when did you guys
then decide to go to Maine? Likewhat was that? So that was I
think, I think it was like thefirst few days of May. Again,
man, we just watched thisdocumentary. It's called the
(08:59):
biggest little farm again, foranyone who wants to check it
out. And the idea as adocumentary is this couple buys
a farm in LA. And the concept ofthe farm is that everything has
to be in harmony with nature.
And we talked about this at allwire events. And, and the
example I always use is, when acoyote comes and eats your
chickens, you don't just killthe coyote, because the coyote
(09:21):
is kind of keeping balance ofour ecosystem around us. And if
you can manipulate thatecosystem to work for you. It'll
naturally you know, stay sustainyour fire, but they we kind of
took that documentary and welike most chefs, it seems like
love the outdoors, lovegardening, love all of that. So
we kind of took that as ourfuel, if you will, to kind of
(09:44):
walk back into this program tokind of make this change or to
do this kind of life changingkind of thing because when we
heard about this, five or sixyears prior, we just weren't in
the right headspace to have allthese things down. There was no
time no money, no car
Servis Events (10:00):
Since five, six years ago, now, where I held the
government's timeless to beheld, we have time money, and we
were really good and competentat what we were doing. So it all
kind of just aligned that it waskind of a good time for us to go
do something like that. And wetalked a lot about, like, the
idea that, like, skills areperishable. And we were sitting
on our fucking couch all thetime, like, not only do you lose
(10:21):
the physical culinary skills,but you lose, like the mental
discipline, the mental toughnessthat you get in the kitchen. And
so we kind of say, like, forlack of better words, we were
starting to feel salt. And, youknow, we didn't really want to
want that we've put a lot oftime into kind of being people
we are. And so we're just tryingto look for literally anything
we could have done at that pointin time to just keep ourselves
progressing and keep that kindof attitude. And, and that
(10:43):
behavior, I guess, going and,and that was kind of the outlet
we found. And thank God, we did,yes, they really helped us kind
of make this into more of areality and give us kind of some
cool ideas and concepts that webrought back with us and put
into all of our events. So whatkind of things were you doing
when you were up on this farm?
So it was all on organicvegetable farm? So obviously,
most of the time just weeding.
(11:05):
Yes, there are tons of weeding.
But we kind of took that whichwas cool. And
Unknown (11:11):
we did a lot of our our own stuff educating. So when we
were kind of hanging around thehouse again, we also helped
with, you know, doing somebaking and we did butchering, we
slaughtered and evisceratedchickens, were there. The family
again, because we got very closewith them allowed us to do
things that never let anybodyelse do. So we were you know,
making fresh cheese, you know,baking bread every day making
(11:32):
tortillas like the whole familyof you know, canning, all of the
things that you would do on ahomestead it well, this family
did. And we kind of say like,when in Rome, we just hop right
into what they were doing. Yeah,we just did everything nowadays.
Because we were there to reallylearn and to kind of grow like,
we had questions abouteverything I read. It wasn't
just a farming practices andstuff like that. It was like,
(11:55):
how do you guys do this? Well,yeah, you don't we were there to
learn about organic farming, butalso about sustainable living.
Like that's what we want in ourown personal lifestyles, and we
want to live that kind of wholelife. It's this isn't just
something we preach about. It'ssomething that we actually, you
know, want to also do and tolead by example and going and
learning how they how they livedand what they did and what it
(12:16):
took to do that was like areally cool eye opening
experience. That like reallyinspired us to come home and do
the same thing you know, yeah,so yeah, I guess in a nutshell,
why don't we ding Yeah. Well,data harvesting Yeah, edging,
arching lettuce and yeah, likewe were saying, like, we took
the weeding aspect andeverything and we would self
educate ourselves on identifyingthe weeds we were picking and we
(12:37):
also started kind of doing withour speakers of our chef
background. We started doing alot of the inventory in a lot of
the like, like the harvestingand like the composting and like
we kept track really well oflike, what we brought in what's
going out how they were doingthe orders, what we composted
that day, because we wereharvesting it was the first time
playing cucumbers. So we wereharvesting like honestly broke
(12:58):
1000 pounds every couple days.
Yeah, and they were only sellinglike 200 So they were just like
art compost on whatever you willdo, you can with all but so just
you know, having my backgroundwith that I think helped us a
lot of being able to kind of runthe show for that and it was
exactly what they needed at thatpoint in time with the kind of
family issues they were havingand having us there was was
really good for them. Did youhave experience doing that stuff
(13:19):
before like were you gardenersat home have you done have you
done butchering before I did soat the it's called the like
mainland in so I volunteered atQuarry Hill floor when I first
ever heard about Wolfing to geta job at the mainland it and
that situation was like youknow, Koi hell foreign presents
the mainland it was like theirsister, you know, restaurant,
(13:39):
whatever. So we did all thebutchering stuff from there
while we were working at themainland. You know, we're
Catholic trees and making maplesyrup. We were raising bees and
spending honey, we did our ownhot sauces or vinegars or in
cured meats. We took care of awhole garden outside of the
restaurant, we did a herb gardenfarmer Baldino and we did a big
grow up in the basement in thewintertime was growing herbs and
lettuces and things like that.
(14:02):
So yeah, it wasn't like majorexperience. But you know, not
just like, I'm sure as you know,like, We're fucking workers,
bro. We can go do anything. Sogo along this farm, that's all
they asked for it was you know,you could actually just work and
we had no problem doing that. Sowe fit in really well there and
they really appreciated us andwe want to learn a lot and we
love being outside. We lovebeing in the dirt. Yeah, we love
(14:22):
being dirty. Yeah, so ya know,just fun for us. You don't have
yet for you. It's been a gardenback at your house, like back
home. So it's funny. So we'vehad like all of these big
ambitions and we'll be learnedand me and what we're going to
do we got back andI planted a garden before we
left and I went to Maine. I hadtold my girlfriend like just let
it go does it doesn't matter youknow, she's gonna take care of
(14:42):
your client if I go to shit. Andso we had anything for grilling
and we're getting big plants andeverything like that and so you
have this big ambition of allthese things we're gonna do and
we're gonna buy an apple treeand we're gonna bla bla bla and
when we came homeI guess we had a really for the
first time and you know kind ofwith
COVID the earth got to kind ofrecover a little bit. And so we
(15:05):
had to get really good winterhere in Pennsylvania. And so we
have a big sugar gum tree nextto our house that I think ended
up growing a couple inches andevery kind of direction. And
then as we started kind ofgetting into working the soil
and kind of added some compostto it, like our soil was so much
clay Yeah, so it was like ashard as a desk that won't
sitting at you on and union mindto, that's what I know. And then
(15:28):
just with our business are in tokind of take off and things
getting started. At this pointin time. It's just easier for us
to buy it from the people. Iknow we absolutely will. Yeah.
Again, we have our gardens andwe have little things that we
had always around the house andwe're doing little stuff but to
have an actual garden right nowis it's not something we that we
have, it's a ton of work. Imean, this time of year, even
(15:48):
when I had like slow periodswith my business, it was still a
ton of work the weeding thing.
Like if you guys ever want toget paid to come weed my garden,
I'll pay you to like, I mean,it's just it's it's a lot. So I
try and grow things that likepeople maybe that I can't buy,
like I have some really coolheirloom seeds. But like, if
it's just going to be tomatoes,I'm so much better just buying
them from someone around here.
(16:10):
There's a funny saying that goestide nine and the garden stops
for nobody.
So no matter how slow you are,how busy you are like that
should still growing out there.
It's not going to stop foranybody out. It's got it. It's
always funny. I think every timewe've gone away for a week we
have a garden you come back andit's like 10 times bigger than a
wilderness oil. Well, at leastwe just had a bigger Yeah. Or
(16:30):
it's completely dead becausesomeone didn't take care of it
for you. Yeah.
One or the other. So yeah, wedefinitely love we'd love all
this job. Yeah, we we like do alot of foraging and the spirit
of summertimewill have on our menus. The wild
forage pesto's and we do apickled ramps out every spring.
There'll be really enjoy andstuff like that. We love doing
(16:52):
the mushroom people whichmushrooms a lot. We don't serve
those we do ourselves. Yeah. Sohow did you really start the
personal chef business? Likewhen did you start that? And
what did that first event looklike that? You did? We had this
idea coming back from me. Weactually cut our our trip two
months short. We're split intofour monitors. They always say
for two, we came back we tookabout three weeks really to like
(17:12):
kind of reassimilate back intolike reality and just decide to
zone that was in May. We wereawesome. We're in the middle of
nowhere. Yeah. So coming backand seeing all the traffic and
everything we had here it waskind of like a readjustment
period. And then we kind of justsaid, Fuck it all and put it
out. We always as Chancellor,I'm straight up the same way
(17:35):
coming up in the restaurant, wealways felt some sense of
loyalty to the restaurants weworked with. So we didn't want
it to reflect poorly on us. Wejust came back didn't tell our
restaurant that was like, Oh,hey, we're running our own
business. We were both Salford,our jobs back. That's that's why
we were both when we were away.
We both got letters saying hey,you're welcome to come back to
(17:56):
work, you know, whatever. So weboth had these offers come back.
That's why he's kind of sayinglike, didn't know if it'd be a
bad thing. If I came back. Itwasn't like, Hey, show up. Just
so you know, I haven't talked toyou in eight months. But I'm not
coming back to work. Yeah. Andyeah, we got to a point where
you just said fuck it. And wejust made an Instagram page. And
because this is what we've beendoing our whole professional or
adult, our adult lives, like,when we put something out
(18:19):
saying, Okay, this is what we'regoing to do. It was always how
people were kind of like, it'sabout time you're doing that.
God Yeah, soil. Our first ourfirst event was not great. I
mean, it was, like instanttable. It's funny looking back
on, like what we wore, yeah. Andlike, while we were thinking
about, like, you know, we stillare, you know, what we what
we're trying to portray backthen, like, again, first time
(18:41):
we're like, there's nobodytelling us what we can and can't
do. So like didn't really knowif he wanted to wear the chef
jackets or if he wanted to,like, I don't know, just be more
t shirt casual and to kind of bemore of ourselves and, and so
just finding looking back onpictures and just seeing like
what we're wearing and yeah, orwhat we were serving the food
was so good. But yeah, to see itwasn't as like as it is refined.
(19:02):
Yeah, so we actually, lastmonth, cooked again for the
first strangers we ever cookedfor when we first started, like
two October's ago. Yeah, and I,I know, they told us also, but
like their experience just nowcompared to the first time it's
fucking blew out of the water.
It is cool to see and to nothear guests tell us like, Yo,
every time you guys come here,it's way better. So we kind of,
(19:26):
like I'm sure, like, you know,kind of take it upon yourself to
look at what you're doing,adjust a little bit, think about
better ways to do things. And,you know, we kind of keep
telling ourselves if we justkeep making little improvements
over time. We're gonna have madea gentleman Yeah, we'll have a
major a major change. Yeah, sowe do not first came back and
put this out. And I mean, we'dsay You know, we've done a lot
(19:50):
more since then. But you know,from that first weekend event,
we've done at least one a weekor weekend you know, since then
we're now doing about three orfour
A week, which is kind of rightwhere we want to be. It's been
technical, we'll spend a lot offun, you know, again, the people
we get to meet as we do it, andto see how it's like, constantly
growing, it was fine. We werefirst starting with being
(20:11):
excited that like, our filingcabinet is starting to fill up,
getting more papers, my filingcabinet and all this, like, just
those little things that we'venever done anything like this
before, or ever had anything ofour own. Kind of like this, you
know, we were always justrestaurant dogs. Did you have
any business experience becausethat's what I find a lot of
people like their chefs, theirrestaurant people, but running a
(20:33):
business like a real business isvery different. So we have our
associate's degree in Hotel andRestaurant Management. But aside
from that, no, like, we kind ofkeep joking around. And we sit
down with accountants now andall this kind of stuff. We're
always like, listen, bro, like,we are back of the house train
chefs. And that's it. You know,I never did any the front of
house management, or any kind oflike, closing the books at end
(20:53):
of the day or so. No, in thatsense. No, we don't. But our
dad's been entrepreneurs wholelife, you know, we've kind of
been around it a little bit,you're never going to be ready,
and you're never going to knoweverything. So your best bet is
to just start. And once youstart, you're gonna learn as you
go, and you're gonna figure itout. Like, you don't have to be
an account to start your ownbusiness, you don't even know
(21:15):
how it happened, do your ownbanking to start your own
business like, so we've beenfinding a lot of that stuff of
just as you go, like, it almostforces you to figure it out end
to end to find out how to do it.
And so that's how to spend themajor thing for us is just
getting started and getting theclientele and get some money
coming in. So we can keep doingthings and work out with you
know, and now we're just we'regetting into kind of the serious
(21:36):
aspect of things and gettinginto our taxes for the first
time and, and all that kind ofcool stuff, or not cool, but
stuff you have to get done.
Right? Yeah, for me, it doesfeel it does feel cool. And we
take pride in the fact that likewe can generate our own money,
and we can pay our own taxes. Soyou can do all this kind of
stuff. And where are you findingyour customers?
(21:57):
It's mostly honestly, where amouth? No, I like like we were
saying so we've been in thissame box county area our whole
lives, essentially, our parentshave been here, you know, Lions
too, you know, we have, for lackof better words, like a very
good, like, hate reputationaround here. So like you said,
but we didn't start this a lotof people will they go great
(22:18):
about time someone came with totry it a lot of referrals, a lot
of word of mouth and socialmedia. Yeah, man, then our own
website. And that's really it.
We don't we don't pay formarketing ads, we don't pay for
like direct mail campaigns.
Like, we don't really doanything of that because we had
just been saying that word ofmouth kind of gets the job done.
(22:38):
And it's been I guess, extremelybeneficial. We obviously be
handout on pamphlets toeverybody our events, you know,
we can talk about it everywherewe go. We have them in like you
know, local shops around towndown, I'll get to sit on the
calendar and you know, whatever.
But that's that's kind of reallyit. And I think the fact that we
use only local companies andlocal produce and local farms.
(22:59):
So when we go and we talk to thepeople who work there, or the
farmers and it's not they thentell all of the people who come
there about us and so it's kindof just is being community
driven. It takes a village andyeah, we got a whole village
kind of around us. Yeah, it'sreally helping us. Yeah. How far
do you do? Like what's your kindof travel radius? Like do you
(23:20):
feel like you're gonna have toexpand that at some point? I
know like local only gets you sofar at some point then you kind
of have oversaturated we didn'twe like you know, we try and
source locally, that does notmean we only serve locally does
that like we've gone to all thebeach towns at where are you?
Um, I'm in Frederick, Maryland.
So I'm like two hours away fromyou. He's gone to like, you
(23:42):
know, down down to Jersey. We'refrom Pennsylvania like Southeast
Pennsylvania. So yeah, we'regoing down to New Jersey, which
is about two and a half hourdrive. You also you talk five
out to driving but no roundly dothat for for bigger parties.
Yeah, he 10 people stuff likethat. Yeah. But our average or
average drives about 40 minutes,you know, what, half hour,
usually? 40 minutes? Yeah,wherever we go. Yeah, I don't
(24:04):
know if it's good or bad. AndI'll be honest, if you have no
problem traveling or coming toyou, if you seem like a really
great person, we're gonna dowe're gonna have a good time
waits, and you know, what, allthat kind of stuff. You know,
obviously, our time is importantto us. But I think nourishing
people and serving them goodfood and kind of raising the
awareness of what's around us ismore important than that. So we
(24:25):
will, we will kind of go theextra mile to come further than
we have to do this. There'll bealso shopping while doing it.
And how many courses do you guysnormally serve? And like, what's
your price point? I mean, you'reseven courses and is to a
knowledge person. And nopushback on that with pricing.
Like how do you find no again,like so it's one of those things
like I don't want to sound thisway either. But like it's one of
(24:47):
those things that have to saylike, oh, this is too expensive
and like you just aren't Are youaren't applying for us? You know
what I mean? You know, yeah,we've heard that but we've also
had people who've been with usseven times who tell us that
there are precious artShoot cheap. Again. Like, we
bring absolutely everything,everything like, we try to make
it. So if you're at arestaurant, what do you bring to
a restaurant, bring yourself, wetry to make it that literally
(25:11):
you come into your own kitchenand you sit down and you get up
just like you would interact.
And that's it. And that is it.
You know, we bring the menus,we'll be bringing napkins bring
water and water glasses, youbring a flower bouquet, we bring
a speaker for music company ifthey don't like they don't have
it on their on their own. Weread all the cookware all the
play where all all thesilverware again, and then we
(25:31):
take it all back with us andclean it up at our kitchen. So
there's no cleaning up in yourhouse. There's no clanking
dishes around while you'retrying to eat enjoy a meal. It's
it's very in and out for us andvery intimate and special for
the guests. And then we do a lotof interaction. We do a lot of
this. There's a lot ofconversating there's a lot of
talking, you know, there's a lotof our personality that comes
through when we do these events.
(25:53):
Yeah, people love hearing ourstories. And we love hearing
those, which is most importantthing to us of why we try and
why we do these smaller events.
Yeah, we don't do you know, wehaven't done yet or anything
like that. We don't do the microweddings, you know, our biggest
party has been like 11 people.
And you know, because we get tonow meet everybody over there.
You know, like, I want to leavehere like nothing's your dog's
name. And knowing your kid said,y'all, we want you to kind of
(26:14):
know the same about us. And youknow, we're, this is more than
just serving you food. It'sabout trying to, you know,
create a cannabidiol connectionsand community relationship
building. And I think because ofthat, you know, we haven't we,
we've had guests who have bookedwith us seven times, you know
what I mean? So like, there'sthings like that, that, like
we're starting to see now.
Because it's gotten to last ayear, just like in China saying
just the saying yes. And goingout and doing these events as
(26:37):
far as they were, or whatever itwas, like, we're seeing all
those relationships now startedto come back. And mostly
everybody who reaches out to usnow is from Oh, you cook for my
cousin, or you cook for youknow, my girlfriend's sister
over here. And, oh, I saw yourpamphlets in store here. And
they only had getting greatthings to say about you. And
then as far as menus go, howdoes that work? Are you kind of
(26:59):
working around what yourcustomer likes? Do you guys have
a set thing, seven courses is alot of dishes to do. I always
say if you hate beats willalways work with you to make
something that you like. But wechange our menu every single
month. That's why we are sayingthat we've had people book with
us seven times or so becausethey want to try the new menu
every single month. So we changeit every single month with
(27:21):
what's coming out what thefarmers are producing with what
local people are having. Itkeeps us excited, it keeps them
excited. We have our set menu,it's always updated on our
website, we always send out aemail campaign telling everybody
about it. And like I said, ifyou don't like it, where to
absolutely hate whatever we haveon the menu, we will then at
(27:42):
that point work with you tofigure something out if you
really, really want to have us.
Yeah, we've had people like wewere doing a lot when we first
started like pick your proteinkind of thing like your chicken
administering was one price,steak doc lamb, fish, pork,
whatever else was another pricethat we have like steak and
lobster as another price. And aswe've got into the winter menus,
(28:05):
not as like colorful, were funas the white beans spring and
summertime. So we kind of gotrid of that pick your protein
option. And now the menus moreso set and we kind of
incorporate meats kind ofthroughout the menu, whereas we
cook mainly vegetarian. Whatwe're trying to highlight, like
local produce everything. Themenu is mostly vegetarian until
the entree. Well, yeah, everymonth we try and change it. We
(28:27):
try and stay relevant. We'retrying to do different things.
Again, look like you're sayingwe're trying to keep ourselves
familiar people's eyes and keeppeople thinking about us. And
you know, oh, just because youcouldn't get a date this month.
Well, when you see the emailcampaign about the new menu, you
might want to look back intoyour calendar for February. See
if you have a day in Februaryyou want to focus for but you
don't get into this thing wheresomeone reaches out to you and
(28:49):
says hey, you know, it's mywife's birthday. I really want
to do strip steak and make amolten chocolate lava cake. We
do. So we do that. Yeah, again,like like he like he was saying,
like, we put out this menu, cuzour biggest thing is about
creating awareness level food,eating seasonal, being
connected, connected to theland, we kind of see the
spiritual side of food and foodbeing a medicine. So that's kind
(29:12):
of really big for us. Where hesaid, Dude, if you want strip
steak and walk in lava cake,bro, we're gonna do it for you.
Yeah. And like, we have noproblem with that. But we kind
of do see a lot they like a lotof people don't know what they
want. Or they're uncomfortablewith telling you what they
actually want. You know what Imean?
So yeah, a lot of people usuallyjust take the menu and we had
before told people like listen,like, I know some of these
(29:34):
things are a little unique orthere might be a little
different from what you've eatenand and not assigned. So but a
lot of the restaurants aroundhere are fairly mediocre others
around honestly, I'm likethere's nothing that's like
there's a few that are likepushing the envelope and doing
kind of cool things. So we'vetold people like listen, if you
don't have an allergy, just tryit. Just give it a try. You
(29:55):
know, you might find somethingthat you've that you've really
liked that you've never triedbefore. And you know, just
becauseIf you didn't like the way your
mom cooked can beets doesn'tmean you like the way that we
cook really good, fresh localones. You want to look at
brussel sprouts now like nobodyate brussels sprouts for like a
couple 100 years. It's like,well, yeah, because they were
just boiling frozen brusselsprouts and it's my number one
selling vegetable right now thenI'll sue.
(30:16):
Donald off that, like, Dude,we've had so many people tell
us, if I wasn't in my friend'shouse, trying to be polite, and
you put this menu down in frontof me, I would get up and walk
away. But as you're sitting hereand eating through the entire
menu, you have completelychanged my entire mind on
asparagus, or beets or turnipsor whatever. And like that's all
we that's really the only reasonwhy we started this. Yeah, I
(30:37):
can't tell you how many grownmen you've served. You've never
eaten a radish. Yeah. You know,saying like, it's like that.
It's just like, it's it's stillwild, you know. And once they,
they once they open their mindto it, and they conquerable with
us being there and everythinglike that. Like, they always
really enjoy it. And neverthey've told us like, listen, I
would probably don't think aboutordering ordering the students
when I go out again, or if I seehim on a menu somewhere else.
(30:59):
What are some of your favoritethings to make? Pasta? handle
handle classes? Debit myfavorite? We do. We offer pasta
classes, our two that were kindof filling up and getting pretty
popular with Yeah, we honestlydidn't like just a lot of like
vegetable cookery. You know, Iknow that sounds kind of broad.
But um, we've always seen like,anybody can put salt pepper on a
(31:20):
steak and sear it and make ittaste good. And put on a grill
and chop it up. Whatever. Butlike, it's hard to make, you
know, a carrot cvwd with duckfat, you know, tastes amazing.
Yeah, we got like, we weresaying we've taken vegetables
and had people be like, Yo, thistastes nothing like, you know,
brace on over that. And we justhad on the menu for the last two
months. Like everyone's alwaysgone with so wicker she and you
(31:40):
know, a nice flavor. And I justreally don't like that. And
okay, well, if you cook it thisway, and you add these flavors
to it, like it kind of gets veryneutral flavor. And he kind of
just takes on everything elsethat's kind of around it. And so
he had his own vegetables in arolling pasture and doing kind
of dough work like that, likemore more hands on things. Yeah,
start starting like pastry alittle bit more, as we're forced
(32:02):
into it. Now.
We don't have a lot of pastrytrading. That's been cool,
though. Because like we werealways very concerned with
even even before this with,like, you know, if I take a job
as executive chef Walden, whowas teaching me about food,
which is a very naive mindset,you know, I see now. So we were
(32:22):
always kind of afraid to go ifwe work for ourselves, like
who's teaching us? And honestly,bro, I think we've learned more
about food and everything elsein the past a year than we have
in any restaurant, or, you know,learning from yourself and
pushing yourself and now you getto look into things do you
actually want to cook yourself?
And you know, which is which isreally exciting and fun for us.
And there's so many resourcesthese days. I mean, with the
internet and the availability ofbooks and knowledge. I mean, I
(32:45):
tell the younger people, youknow, I'm 45 When I was in
culinary school, I didn'tliterally even have the internet
until I was a sophomore, right,like, and they didn't even take
that as a reference for thingslike you had to do a report on
like foods of Spain, I had to goto a library. I hope they had a
book on the foods of Spain,which, you know, 1995 probably
didn't really they had like oneor two, you know, and now it's
(33:06):
like, I was just telling someonethe other day I taught myself
how to butcher a pig's head bywatching like a Chris Cosentino
like YouTube video, you know?
That's amazing. That way it's sofunny you say that and like,
because we're we're like, whatfairly resistant to technology.
Like when we remain we did likesome why we made our own aprons
(33:26):
we did sex out, like knitted ourown kind of dish rags and stuff.
And we always say to that, like,how did you guys learn all this?
Where do you learn the strongbargain during the middle of
fucking nowhere? Like, yeah,they will only always say
YouTube videos. Like, like, why?
Like, why can't Why can't it bea book by kind of doing
something like this like, and sowe started to now more so like,
I just learned how to likereally make like passive gray on
(33:47):
you know, on YouTube videos wedid in a French restaurant, like
a really classical like therewas a way of doing it. But I
couldn't get that to work. Icouldn't remember all the
technique. So I can just watchYouTube videos and guide
perfectly got it perfectly.
Yeah, watching someone dosomething. I mean, reading it. I
(34:08):
mean, everyone learnsdifferently, right? Like some
people can read it and pick itup. But when you see fully
visually, the visuals areprobably good for at least you
know sort of chefs like us andit added that I've always wanted
to be that way the Golf I readit but like you know, we have
the old, like no technique booksthat are pictures, and then
trying to explain it and brosway easier is watch a video, ya
know what I mean? Then trying topiece some of these pictures
(34:30):
together and see what they'redoing on in between. And so now
what like are you just going tokind of continue on this path of
what you've been doing. Are youin? are you integrating new
stuff into what you're doing?
Right now we have through ourour backgrounds, we have the
understanding, at least in arestaurant, it takes at least
five years for you to really tryto say hey, we weren't here you
(34:53):
kind of made it so we understandthat we are still and will be
for a few years in that growingstate. So
Right now what we're trying todo, or what we see, we're going
to do is keep doing what works,keep improving what we're doing,
you know, if anything, we'llstart maybe doing a little more
marketing again. And we do havea lot of new things happening.
(35:16):
Pasta class is a big one. Yeah,just started recently do pasta
classes. Again, we were tryingto find ways to like the
weekdays, weekends fill up, noproblem. Yatra. As you know,
like, it's very easy to getpeople to book Friday, Saturday
and Sunday. So the past theclass has been a cool way to
kind of do more weekday solve asign as long, it's not as
expensive. And then we actuallyhad somebody, which is another
(35:37):
thing we're, you know, which is,yeah, adding these little
things, where it's offering likea wine pairing and wine class
with it, we had a girl reach outto us named Charlotte Adams, she
reached out to us and she hasher master's degree in wine and
vineyard science, from like theUniversity of Bordeaux, or some
really long French name fromFrance. And so she reached out
(35:58):
to us today, like, yeah, I wouldlove to work with you, is there
a way we can figure out how todo a partnership kind of thing.
And so we're gonna start tooffer, you know, if you want to
pay, you know, X amount of priceper person, just $35 a person
plus the cost of your wine,we'll bring her with us, you
know, she'll work with you, youknow, to order the wines and
local places of people she kindof is associated with help you
(36:19):
do the ordering, she can eitherpick it up for you. And then
she'd come along with us theevents and she teach about the
wine, and she pour the wine andexplain kind of why it's going
with each course. And you knowwhy she chose this and what's
kind of special and cool aboutit. We've told people you know,
we can offer you, you know, winerecommendations, we'll send it
to a friend and we'll getrecommendations. Like I'm not
buying it. I'm not providing it.
I'm not pouring it. I don't evenwant to open that can of worms
(36:41):
really and you know, with thelegalities and elegance, at
least in Pennsylvania,Pennsylvania is stranger and
their alcohol walls are justridiculous. Like, we don't even
want to even put our foot inthere. So yeah, so having this
girl now is kind of our, ourbridge. Yeah. to that. So yeah,
we're excited about that. But itreally man like, what's next is
(37:02):
just keep pushing, keep goingand meet more farmers. If we
could have like three or fourlike week like mother farms were
like, Yeah, we only get fromyou. And you know, we know
what's coming. We know you'regrowing kind of certain things
for us, which we do have acouple of these in the work we
have, you know, some BlackbirdFarm is a big one near us who we
sat down with and donec wentover his foreign plans, what he
(37:25):
has coming and he took anythingthat like we would maybe want
him to grow up for us. We spentthe whole last year just kind of
cruising around andexperimenting with places and
meeting people and going tofarmers markets and talking and
networking and blah, blah. Andso I think it'd be cool to just
as we go over the next fewyears, like really establish the
people we want to work with havethe set people this is what
(37:45):
we're doing. They're behind us.
We're behind them, you know,kind of relationship and what
hasn't worked for you anythinglike is there anything you were
doing when you started thatyou've kind of just like
shuffled off? Yes. And you triedto do like, like a three course
like weekday dinner, that wouldhave been, you know, half the
price, which when when we saythree courses, it's a museum use
(38:08):
booths, of course a second anintermezzo, then the third, then
dessert, so it's totally fivecourse yeah, but we just don't
count the intermezzo. And theamuse boosh, I don't know why we
sought to do the work for them.
But we just need to stall. Andso doing that will try a way to
kind of come in and be half theamount of time we can be in and
out and like an hour and a halfnot, ya know, and it's half the
price and you know, help weekdaybusiness. And, dude, it was just
(38:29):
two people's hypertrophy blocks.
That'll work. There's two of ustoo. So you know, I mean, like,
you guys got to split the money.
Like, I'm a solo show for the,for the most point, it's not
worth it for me to do that.
Exactly. And so it was that wassomething that just like, Yeah,
we just did two of them, and itwas for the same person. And so
that was like, Alright, we justgot that kind of kicked to the
side. And we also we tried doinglike kinda like meal prep stone
(38:54):
when it wasn't really mealprepping. It was like, we would
go to our farms and ourconnections, and we would get
all the produce, and we wouldn'tmake you like a big batch of
quinoa salad like that. Butanyway, yeah. So when we were in
meeting, the family, how theyeat was kind of on a whole meal
rotation. So it's the same thingon Monday, the same thing on
(39:14):
Tuesday, the same day onWednesday, but it was variety
driven yet and we're never tiredof it. So we saw that and we're
like, man, that'd be so cool tokind of help people implement
that into their lives. Becauseit took the stress of making
dinner and month kind of foryourself. So we tried doing that
for people doing this, you know,bulk Trek and stuff like that.
And we did a few of those too.
But one of those things that wekind of realized that was way
(39:37):
too much work wasn't enoughmoney weren't getting enough out
of it, like led to it's takingour attention away from what is
working. Like, that's a scratchthat also. What we saw again,
was with the whole like, youknow, meal meal, no rotating
like they knew exactly what theyhad to shop for every week. The
other wife knew exactly how manyounces of pasta she had to cook
(39:58):
every day.
He knew exactly how many poundsof meat you to pull out of the
freezer. She knew exactly kindof what the whole next day would
look like, because they were onthis schedule. And we thought
was fascinating to be honestwith you, their whole family was
all homeschooled. They're all inlike, their 40s are all you
know, the kids and everything.
But so they were saying, like,you know, when they were all at
homeschooling everything theywould do one day a month, they
(40:18):
will do all the prep for theentire month. You're gonna get
your clicker for one day for theentire month, and you're just
free shit and pull it out. Yeah.
So we kind of tried doing thatfor people and everything. And
it does, yes, it didn't take offdidn't wear well. And if you're
charging $200 for like a highend dinner, like you're not
gonna get anywhere near that forthat meal prep kind of stuff,
(40:38):
right? Okay, so we're never,we're never no matter what we
do, we're never willing tojeopardize the quality. So we're
never not willing to go to thefarms, we're never not willing
to buy the farm meat, which isno matter what expensive, which
I believe around it. So we weredoing like, you know, we're
going to give you all thereceipts, and we're going to
show you if they were buying,and you're gonna give us the
(40:58):
money back for the food. Andthen we're gonna charge $500. On
top of that, for us to do allthe all the shopping all the
prepping again, we're driving tofarm. So it's a lot of driving
around the county and goingdifferent places. We're going to
use our containers that you'regoing to recycle and get back to
us. And then we're going to prepit, get it all labeled mad
Cavanaugh and drop it off toyou. We also we would write kind
(41:19):
of sheets and how to reheat it,what you could put with what
what looks good together, how todress it and all that other kind
of stuff. So like it was it wasa lot of work. And yeah, it just
didn't really didn't really workand it was taking away from our
private event business will win.
And then it was a lot which islike where we're starting to see
now and try to like, as much aswe can move away from it was a
lot of chasing people down. Hey,are you want to do it again this
(41:41):
week? Hey, like, are we preppingagain for you this week. And the
more time we're spending on onemail is trying to call off the
people the last time we'recooking and getting the things
that actually matter? Doesanyone help you with anything?
Do you ever bring like extraservers to events? Or is it just
the two of you will bring likemy girlfriend who has like fine
dining sorting experience, butthat's only for like, parties of
(42:01):
like 10 or more. So to answernow not really like so I think
sauce sauce at events. I do alot of the serving, like I do
all the talking and I do all thespilling we serve the dishes and
Teller aisle is everything likethat. We both do the plating and
he's more so the back of house Ijust didn't cooking and all that
kind of tone. And we both playedit up and do do all kinds of
cool stuff. But yeah, and weboth kind of run the plates out.
(42:23):
But I kind of hang out explainwhat it all is answer questions.
We promote questions. You know,we kind of, you know, encourage
pictures, you know, we encourageposts, you want to film anything
like you know, we were all aboutit. We love that we can kind of
let the guests be as it evolvedor not as they choose to be. I
tell them hey, do you want tocome stand next to me while I'm
(42:44):
cooking up the stove and askingwhat I'm doing. I love that you
can you can you know this isyour home, you can do anything
you want here. You know, we arehere to show you put on and show
kind of teach inspire anything.
So yeah, we encourage everybodyto be as in it with us as as we
are as as a Tuesday. I thinkyeah, I think people really kind
(43:05):
of like that would be kind ofgive them like the opportunity
to say, Oh yeah, I do want to dothat. Or like No, I'm okay.
We're just sitting here andeating that time. And we didn't
even get into this. So you guysare twin brothers. Yes. Yeah.
What's the what's the dynamic ofthat? Like, do you guys work
together? Well, I mean, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, no. So we wereputting them together. Yeah.
(43:25):
Yeah, we live in the same house.
So again, we've always beenreally cool. Growing up, we were
always best friend says we growup. And then we started going to
culinary school in high school.
So we like went to tech school,MIT in Jemison, right here for
culinary arts and kind of jokeright to tell people like, no
reason why we did that, bro wasbecause we got an hour and 15
minutes less school every day.
(43:47):
And that sounded cool. Itsounded fun. And we got to get
on a bus and go somewhere else.
And, and culinary was ago, youget to eat that sound. That
sounds cool. And we fell in lovewith it. And it was the best
decision we ever made. Butthey're the second year our
class has merged together. Andso from there, we kind of
started working in the kitchentogether. And we started doing
this together in that space, ifyou will. Then we got our first
jobs. And we our first job wegot together just through a
(44:10):
family friend. And so that wasour first time working together.
And so from that, you know, wealways just a lot of providing
working our parents instilled agood work ethic in us. And so
like, every time you go to arestaurant and you prove
yourself to be good restaurants,we're always hiring. So we came
in chef, just so you know, like,I have a twin brother who's just
as good as me. And he loved towork here too. And if I could
(44:32):
bring him in, you know what Imean? And so we always kind of
ended up like someone would gosomewhere they bring another
person in. And you know, so thathappened a lot of times. Yeah,
we did work at a few placestogether for a while. It was one
of those things we saw a lot toolike if it Steven Nick
congruence all day. Nobody cancompete with us. You want to
name like tomorrow, if it'sfucking John and Gabby on it,
like, Tony ain't gonna be thesame. You know what I mean? So
(44:55):
yeah, we got really good atthat. And now y'all again, we
live Together, we do have themtogether, we are now really
falling into our roles. Yeah.
And in the business, the others,like we were saying, when we
first started, we just stoppedand started. Yeah, this ball
Selena has a balls to the wall,we know how to cook food, we
know how to entertain. Let's dothat. And we're worried about
everything else as it counts. Sonow we're really kind of
(45:18):
starting to fall into our roleshere, which was, I think we all
speak for myself, well, whichwas the most frustrating factor
of every day, not knowing who'sgonna do what are you going to
handle Instagram posts or liveon the handle? Are you going to
handle emails? Were my iPhone tohandle shopping? Where are you?
Yeah, am I ever going to tripmore and you're going to prep
more, I'm going to quickly moveon. Now we're really kind of
falling into what our roles are,essentially. And I like the old
(45:42):
T we're excited. And yeah, theteamwork of it, y'all. being
twins, the RFR avatar, wholefloppy lives. We were taught at
the youngest age possible thatwe share every day. Yeah, and
that's just how it goes. Soputting that into our business,
and having I guess thatbackground really kind of helps
us to be able to do what we do.
(46:05):
Like, today, for an example, youknow, he had to get his own fix.
So I'm gonna go do all theshopping, you know, like, you
need to go do this, or I do willalso handle that. So one of the
questions I've really beenexploring this season with
people is, what does it mean toyou guys to be a chef,
the first thing I guess, Ithink, like comes up just by
feeling into it is like yonourishment, also that same
(46:26):
thing. So nourishment, I feel asense of responsibility. Again,
we probably have a, we probablyhave different views and some
other chefs, we're into, like,the indigenous culture, and
we're into, you know, we're intonature, like, we understand
that. And, you know, like, we'resupposed to be here, like,
humans are no different than anyother animal, we just so
happened to figure out how tofucking make these computers and
(46:47):
cars and, and buildings, alsothe kind of shit but like, we're
supposed to be stewards of theplanet, and we're supposed to be
taking care of the planet. And Ifeel like in ours, at least in
our business, like, we feelpersonal responsibility to show
people of how they can also dothat, and how they can eat the
way that you know, that promoteskind of generational wealth of
(47:07):
the planet and our people. Andagain, when you do those things,
you're more nourished, and itfeels better for you if you're
buying anything by I think beinga chef really is the only way at
least, you know, again, in myopinion, is the only way that
you can do what she just said.
And people will listen to youwhilst I teach it. You can be a
teacher and somebody Addison'sit to be a chef, to me, seems
like yes, you are a teacher, ateacher of our natural foods are
(47:31):
nourishing foods of what theearth provides us. We all have
to eat. Yeah, we all need to eatand we all I think can try to
agree that a lot of the foodthat we're eating in our world
as often boys.
So a to us I think being a cheftoday is represented or
explained as being a steward ofthe Earth, fucking train and
(47:54):
teach people that you can live acredibly nourishing and
delicious lifestyle through foodand local local community local
things and, and feel great aboutit. We've really loved having
you guys on the show today.
Thanks so much for coming on.
There's dirt in Indiana. Readytime. Yeah, everything you need
to plug before you get out ofhere. Any events, anything? I
mean, I'll put all your info inthe show notes. Our website is
(48:17):
www dot service. So it's NCR BIAs is where you spell our name
and what we call our business.
So it's service dash events.com.
We're on Instagram at serviceevents. And that's really about
it. Yeah, you can sign up forour email, your email list. Put
it on through our website. Yeah,sorry about it. Awesome. Well,
we'll have all that in the shownotes. And to our listeners,
(48:39):
this has been Chris with theChefs Without Restaurants
podcast, go to chefs withoutrestaurants.org To find our
Facebook group, mailing list andcheck database. The community's
free to join. You'll get gigopportunities, advice on
building and growing yourbusiness and you'll never miss
an episode of our podcast. Havea great week.
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