We Feed People, a Catering Epiphany

I love January. In Texas it is pretty much all we get as far as winter is concerned. Just enough to say we did it and long enough to be glad it is over with. January is also low season in the catering business. It is the month where J-BAR-H books 30% of our business and cooks 5% of it. So needless to say we have a lot of time on our hands to think about the year ahead. We will feed about 40,000 people this year through company picnics, weddings, corporate catering, church events and private parties. We spend this time of year coming up with better ways to add value and meaning to that one point in time where those 40,000 people's lives and ours come in contact.

So I am sitting here in my shorts shivering at the brutal 50 degree Texas winter days and thinking what is it that we do here at J-BAR-H? I mean really. It got my inner existentialist thinking and wondering at the meaning of it all. We are a catering company. We are an event planner. We help brides realize their dream weddings, but what does it all mean? At the end of the day what have we done? And then it hit me...we feed people. Pretty simple statement and clearly a matter of fact, but it is more than that for us...I mean, certainly we feed people, we are a caterer for crying out loud. But what we do is more than just bring food to an event, we nourish peoples bodies and provide a catalyst for fellowship. And as a company we have committed to feeding those who can't get a good meal on their own through missionary organizations and ministries which feed not only the bodies of the people, but their spirits. And further, we develop our people in their professional skillsets as well as their personal growth. So when it hit me that the essence of what we do is feeding people it was quite an epiphany...

For those of you who know don't know how this company came into existence, it was through church ministry. We were asked to join a project 6 years ago for a church and as they say...the rest is history. At every single turn we have been able to see God's hand in what we do. From our fantastic growth to the limitations placed in front of us, we believe our company has a purpose beyond building shareholder value...we build value into every person our company touches.

I am humbled to be able to make a living doing what I love, and to take that very same thing and make people happy. I love seeing people eating food they love and J-BAR-H loves making it and serving it to them. Even though we are faceless in 90% of the events that we do, we see the smiles and take everyone of them home with us.

Do you do what you love? If it is possible, I encourage you to start over and work from your purpose. My purpose is feeding people. What's yours?

ON BACON AND MAN FOOD...

A friend of mine is a "man food" maestro. He is king of wings, a topper in poppers and the chief of beef. Where we really cross passions is in bacon. He sends me items he finds from lurking on, who knows how many, blogs and websites. So a few weeks ago he sends me this recipe, can't even remember the name now, but it was breakfast sausage filled with chopped bacon and cheese and wrapped in, you guessed it, Bacon. My arteries were seizing as I read the recipe, but I couldn't stop reading mostly because of one phrase: "take the bacon weave and carefully wrap it around the sausage roll up..." Bacon Weave????? A new phrase immediately entered my lexicon and I went to applying this manly textile in as many places as I could. Mike had previously sent me a recipe for the "Alien Probe" which was sausage wrapped around an Anaheim pepper stuffed with cheese and smoked for a couple of hours. Meat perfection it was...until we wrapped it in the best fabric of all... the bacon weave. What was manly and awesome became somehow more manly and awesomer with the simple addition of the weave. J-BAR-H Catering fed the men of the Frank Danna Man Bash last weekend and amid the sliced sirloin sandwiches, smoked & grilled bologna sandwiches, jalapeno poppers and buffalo wings, the Bacon Weave Wrapped Alien Probe stood head and shoulders above the rest...


So why is that? Why is bacon such a manly food? And why did I go through 10 pounds of bacon in barbeculinary research? I think like so many other things guys do...bacon is bad for us. Isn't that where our most fun comes from? Jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, running with the bulls (ask Diana about THAT one!) eating 6 pound, hamburgers and entering food eating contests. If it can kill us, then it is fun. The faster it can kill us the more we will pay to do it.


So with that in mind I tried to take the bacon weave to new heights. Where could we go with this? I decided that I also wanted to mess with a personal sized bacon weave and had a lot of fun with it. When you cut the strips in half long ways and then width wise they become the perfect size for a one up and when draped over an upside down muffin pan become little bowls of goodness. First thing that came to mind was spinach salad in a bacon bowl, then I moved to spring salad, then of course flattened out it became a perfect woven topping for breakfast.
There just really was no end to what a man can do with bacon...it's everything that manly food should be.