Jeff Ware
I have always been fascinated by large events. There is a certain thrill in watching 1,000 plates be plated and served in 15 minutes. In order to get my fix, I have personally chased these types of events – working on the sale and execution of our largest event to date with an invoice of $1.3 Million, the Lollapalooza catering contact, a corporate event for 7,000, and many other unique opportunities. Some of my other achievements have included waste reduction and implementing recycling both at our commissary and in the field at events, transitioning from hand-written BEOs to a robust computer system for event sales and management, building a database of over 14,500 recipes, and driving the culinary vision of the company to create trends rather than follow them.
Prior to working in catering I went to school for electrical engineering and computer science. I worked in IT at several companies including the engineering department at CNN. This gave me a unique skill set in the events industry that I am now able to use to help other caterers with IT challenges, database build out and modernization, and process improvement.
• Most Memorable Meal: Franklin Barbecue, Austin, TX. It was around 11:30am, I was at least 6 beers deep, walking through the line to order my tray was very full of delicious smoked meat. The last guy before paying was slicing turkey. Who orders turkey at a BBQ place? The guy said “do you want to be happy?” I said “why not?” and he piled a pound of turkey onto the tray. That turkey made me real happy.
