Photo: Linda Raymond/Getty Images Holly Sheppard of Fig & Pig Catering got her first cancellation on Monday, March 16. It was already too late. “We’d cooked 600 pounds of shepherd’s pie, 100 pounds of salad, and 18 quarts of dressing,” she recalls of the work already completed for a corporate client. “All this food, ready to go.”
Surprisingly, she and several other caterers tell Grub Street they’re asking clients to hold tight to their June bookings. “We’re actually still planning full steam ahead — our June weddings, they’re not, as of yet, rescheduling. I think that there is this hope that this will pass and that we’ll be allowed to resume social gatherings hopefully by June 1,” Correale says.
Chef Rossi, who founded the Raging Skillet catering company in 1988, envisions an autumn where folks are stacking their weddings on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sunday. “When the economy tanked in 2008, Friday became the new Saturday and Thursday became the new Friday. I was catering Thursday weddings that year,” she says. Now, it’s less a money-saving venture than an acceptance of the time-space continuum.
One saving grace for caterers is that they tend to operate with smaller overheard than their colleagues in restaurants. And while fashion designers are now moonlighting as manufacturers of personal protective equipment, caterers are taking on some new roles of their own. Purslane and Elegant Affairs both offer meal deliveries, too. “We had some long-term plans moving in the background that we’ve expedited given the changes,” Gabriel from Purslane notes.
I had to stop reading after “We’d cooked 600 pounds of shepherd’s pie”
Feed hospitals. Packaged food for seniors, sell prepacked meals in supermarkets. He creative
maggieNYT They start up again when there are. Riveting work here. 🤦♂️
maggieNYT Such a maggieNYT retweet
maggieNYT Rich people might have to learn how to cook. Or we morlocks could feed them. Any one have a nice recipe for Eloi stew?
maggieNYT Sad
maggieNYT They file for relief like the rest of us. 🤷♀️. Then they keep pressure on your Gov to lift restrictions as soon as reasonable.