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