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Twenty years ago, Mark Michael started Occasions Caterers with his fraternal twin brother, Eric, in his Georgetown apartment with $500 and a beat-up delivery van. Fast-forward to 2007: Occasions is a $25 million business that handles 30 events a day. Co-founder and CEO Michael talks about feeding quirky requests, biking the Alps and happily spinning many plates.
The biggest event I've ever catered was the president's dinner in 2002. It was at the old convention center -- a sit-down, three-course dinner for 6,500 people. The president and vice president were there. I didn't talk with them; we work with the Secret Service. The fact that I'm around so much, there's a comfort level there. The Secret Service guys know my face.
My most popular catering request is a dish called corn souffle, one of our signature dishes. It has corn, sugar, cream and butter -- all of the major food groups. We get requests for it a couple times a week. We get people asking for the recipe regularly. We've had it eight or nine years. We got it from an employee, Michelle McQuade, who passed away three years ago from cancer.
The most unusual request I've ever received was to make pate out of a duck a congressman hunted about three years ago. He gave it to us at his residence that day; it was already plucked and stripped. We had to put it the Cuisinart, and it still had the buckshot in it. There were pellets of lead flying all around the kitchen. We threw it away. We also did a sweet-16 party two years ago where they asked for all of the food to be pink. |
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My favorite delicacy is foie gras and soft-shell crab.
My favorite comfort food is bread. I'm a carbo guy.
No one would guess catering can look much like a law practice internally. We're on the computer working on documents a lot. It's so detailed-oriented. We create an environment that's quiet and studious. We don't play classical music, running around tossing bonbons into each other's mouths. Though I fantasize about that.
The hardest thing about starting a catering business is ....psychologically, it's difficult. When you first start you're so anxious to please people and you don't have the experience so you're constantly judging your self-worth in the eyes of your customer.
The best thing about working with my twin is we don't have silly conversations about meaningless stuff. We know each other so well I can pretty much always tell what he's thinking when somebody asks him a question. I don't always know how he'll respond. We don't fight like we used to. We used to call it Sibling Rivalry Catering when we first started in 1986.
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