How 5 Caterers Got Happily 'Into the Weeds'

1. Choice Cooking
Chef Ryan Brown
Brooklyn, N.Y.
After burning out on long restaurant hours, Chef Ryan Brown of Choice Cooking decided in 1999 to try his hand at being a personal chef. While Brown loved to cook (he studied at The French Culinary Institute and worked at highbrow restaurants including Jean Georges and Picholine), he didn't like being stuck in the back in a kitchen all the time, he says.

His opportunity came when a friend who already had a catering business in the New York City area said she was moving and asked Brown to take over her clients.

"It started from that," Brown says of the small dinner parties he would cater.

Choice Cooking now has two fully functioning divisions -- a personal chef business, from which clients in the New York and New Jersey areas can get locally sourced, organic meals delivered to their doorstep, and a full-service event-catering business. The two complement each other, especially during the recession, he says.

"Catering can be really seasonal," Brown says, while the personal chef business "tends to be opposite. When it's slow with catering, [customers are] at home" wanting a good hot meal that, of course, someone else cooks.

"The catering business at the end of 2008 and all of 2009 took a big hit, which started to come back in 2010 and really come back a lot in 2011," Brown says. "People are much more relaxed and want to spend money and have an event, but during that tough time my personal chef business more than doubled. New Yorkers, even in tough times -- they don't cook."

Brown has catered for Al Gore, Lacoste and Macy's(M), among others. He has also served as a consultant for Weight Watchers(WW) and Extreme Workout, a competition for super-athletes in Europe.

Especially this year, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are the busiest time of the year for Choice Cooking. Brown brings in more hires to staff events.

"Catering is about the client. It's not like you have a restaurant, you make a menu and people come and eat the food. You really have to be able to hear what the people need," he says. "And they don't always tell you."

"What I love about being a caterer is it's always different," Brown says.

But those are also drawbacks, he says. Each event and client is different, and "You never know what you're getting into" -- which is why an ability to welcome the unknown and think on your feet is what separates good caterers from the bad ones.

"There's all sorts of weird little things you have to be prepared for and work in less-than-ideal environments," he says. "You could be the world's best chef, but you have to know how to deal with a client who invited 100 more people than you thought."