Catering full-time has advantages over running a restaurant, local caterers say

Antonia Poland, with Dipped Fresh, drizzles chocolate on strawberries during a Valentine's Day pop-up market Friday, February 12, 2016 at Miller Plaza.
Antonia Poland, with Dipped Fresh, drizzles chocolate on strawberries during a Valentine's Day pop-up market Friday, February 12, 2016 at Miller Plaza.

It's been said that running a restaurant is like putting on a concert every night - except restaurant owners don't know if anyone will show up to eat.

Antonia Poland got a taste of that at Dipped Fresh, now a Brainerd-based catering business that she co-owns with Cynthia Wood. It initially opened about five years ago as a restaurant in North Chattanooga on River Street near Coolidge Park.

"Is anybody coming? You don't know," Poland says. "We could work 16 hours a day and not make any money."

Due to customers urging them to get into catering, the duo eventually let the storefront go.

"Now I don't have any days that are not busy," Poland says.

Poland and others have been able to turn their love of food into a catering business, which they say has advantages over a restaurant.

"Depends on how you look at it," says Virginia Cofer, who since 2000 has run a catering business, Virginia's Gourmet by Design.

Cofer also owns Petunia's Silver Jalapeño, which prepares fish tacos, burgers, sandwiches and other take-out food inside a 1971, 31-foot-long silver Airstream International trailer. Both ventures now operate at The Granfalloon event space at 400 E. Main St.

Catering's advantages, disadvantages

Disadvantages of a restaurant, Cofer says include a "huge overhead," a staff that has to be there every single day, and food spoilage.

But catering has challenges too, she said.

"No room for error. None," Cofer says. "If you burn something, you can't just go to your walk-in and pull it out and start over again. And it's very physical, because you're hauling a lot of food."

While Poland misses the regulars at her restaurant, she's grateful for a number of advantages that she says catering has over running a restaurant: First of all, Dipped Fresh is busier than ever, she and Woods know exactly how many customers they're going to serve for each job, and they have the ability to turn down catering gigs - which helps with work-life balance.

"It does make it easier to have a family life. I have four kids," Poland says.

Andrea "Chef Andi" Cagle also is happy running her Red Bank-based catering business, Kozy Cooking, which is in high demand.

Cagle spent about a week in Washington, D.C., four years ago to assist with festivities surrounding the second inauguration of Barack Obama. She had a chance to return this year to D.C. to help cater for Donald Trump's inauguration, but turned it down.

"Not for political reasons at all," she was quick to say a week before Trump's inauguration. "I turned it down because my business is so busy."

Cagle had done four catering events that day and had one scheduled the next day and the day after.

"It's never a dull moment," Cagle says.

Caterers keep busy

Dipped Fresh, which specializes in chocolate-dipped fruit and bacon, had its busiest year ever in 2016, Poland said, including some huge events - during which the business served more people in one day than it ever would have served as storefront restaurant.

"We did 3,000 lunches in one day," Poland recalls. "That was in August. Right after that, we 1,000, then we did 500 after that."

City employees have gotten a taste of Dipped Fresh's sandwiches and chocolate-dipped offerings, partly as a result of the city's Office of Multicultural Affairs' push to hire caterers and other businesses owned by minorities, veterans and women.

Chattanooga used to only hire between 1 percent and 2 percent of these "diverse business entities," according to a city report. But since Mayor Andy Berke took office in the spring of 2013, the report says, the percentage of businesses owned by women, veterans and minorities working with the city has grown to almost 14 percent.

"It's certainly been a help to us," Wood says. "It's a great avenue for exposure."

Cagle, who serves on the board of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce's midTown Council, has worked for Chattanooga, too.

"I do lunches and things for the Mayor," she says.

Inspired by love of cooking

Cagle, a native of Huntsville, Alabama, has lived in Chattanooga about 25 years. She grew up in the food business, learning at the feet of her father, who operated Joe's Barbecue.

Before running Cozy Kitchen full-time, Cagle was a chef instructor at the Culinary Institute of Virginia College School of Business and Health in Chattanooga. She also helped open Blue Orleans Seafood Restaurant, where she served as dinner manager, and worked with Daniel Lindley, executive chef and owner of St. Johns Restaurant and a three-time James Beard Foundation nominee.

Cagle has now spent about two decades years in the food business. Even when Cagle was in the medical field some years ago, she says, "People always asked me to cook. I loved it."

Poland's first step toward becoming a full-time caterer specializing in chocolate-dipped food began when she lived in Chicago and someone gave her some chocolate-covered strawberries.

"They were horrible. I said I could do better than this," she says. "That's how I got into this."

Poland, who previously worked in real estate selling homes in Chicago and Indiana, didn't know anyone in Chattanooga when she loaded up her kids and belongings and moved here about five years ago, determined to open Dipped Fresh.

'I didn't stop'

"As soon as I got on the Interstate, the trailer started fish-tailing and I got into an accident," she remembers of her departure from the Windy City. "But I didn't stop."

Once here, she networked, including by hanging out at the Sugar's Ribs downtown and through the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce.

"I would sit in there in happy hour, and I don't drink," she says of Sugar's Ribs. "You have to try to network and connect."

"I didn't know what the Chamber of Commerce was, until I got to Chattanooga," Poland says. "The Chamber has helped me grow my business, as well as the Office of Multicultural Affairs."

Running the catering business has been hard work, but Poland was gratified to hear recently that Dipped Fresh came up in an Internet search ahead of her competitors, including large corporations with big advertising budgets.

"If I can come up over those search engines, that means I'm doing something right," she says. "To be traded on the New York Stock Exchange, that's what I'm working for."

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