Chef's Showcase - SYSCO Corporation

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Chef's Showcase

Venue With A View

Executive chef:  Kevin Gilday
Maître d' and operations:  Mark Karakas
Business started:  1990
Concept:  Special events, meetings and concert dinners on a historic wine-making property set high in the hills above the San Francisco Bay area
Types of events:  Weddings, parties, corporate seminars and celebrations, and summer concerts
Event capacity:  From 20 to 1,500 guests
Menu features:  Tri-tip grilled with fire-roasted pepper sauce, hoisin chicken salad, roasted boneless Cornish game hen, red snapper with potato crust, chocolate banana éclair, white Russian ice cream
Average number of weddings a year:  100
Some 2002 performing artists:  Elvis Costello, The Temptations, Los Lobos, Merle Haggard, Chris Isaak, Lyle Lovett, Boz Skaggs, Al Green, Diana Krall

What does it take to pull off such a wide range of foodservice scenarios in one location? - Questions & Answers

Kevin, please describe what The Mountain Winery is and why it's such a popular place for events and concerts.
The winery, chateau and grounds originally were built in 1905 by winemaker Paul Masson, and the property is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. It's like a French country estate with a 747-like view of the entire southern San Francisco Bay area from both the interior and exterior sites.

The concerts are held in a "bowl" in front of the stone and ivy winery. The space holds 1,750 concertgoers. For private and corporate events, we use the rooms in the chateau or one of the gardens and terraces outside.

What sort of foodservice do you offer to the public attending an evening performance?
This year we have a new venue called the Vineyard House and Grill. It can seat up to about 300 and has a veranda that overlooks the valley. We see it becoming really big for us. There's a buffet that runs for the two hours before the concert, featuring a different theme menu for each month of the summer season.

There are several points of sale for concessions during the concert and intermissions. We offer everything from gourmet pizzas to baked potatoes. Then there are bars for beer and wine and soft drinks as well as one complete full bar.

How does Chateau La Cresta differ from an on-site catering operation?
My partner Mark and I really manage the event planning, and we develop new business. We're involved in more than planning menus and preparing and serving the food. We do virtually everything except booking the concert artists, unless a party wants to provide that sort of big-name entertainment; then we might help with that, too.

You just can't do a good job in this business if you don't have a passion to serve people.

What do you mean by "a passion"?
Mark and I are truly eager to please our clients by planning and executing a nice function for them. It makes them look good, for one thing. A lot of people throwing big events have a vision about what they want but are virtually clueless about how to handle the logistics and knowing which things do and don't work.

We meet with our clients many, many times and offer honest advice and creative alternatives to make sure that they get the best party for them and their guests. We walk them through every step. In that way we help them be successful.

Equally important, we have the ability to follow up on what happens in those meetings and make sure all the details fall into place. If that means partnering with a specialist like a sushi chef, for example, then that's what we do. That lets us really show off our own talents and in that way helps us to be successful. So much of our business is from word-of-mouth, you know.

What's your biggest challenge these days?
As is true of just about every other event venue around, our customers are more concerned about how much they are spending, more than they were previously. Not too long ago the attitude around here was "Money is no object." We'd talk about plans, just make them happen and send them a bill.

Now a lot more conversations start out with "This is my budget." We might go back and forth several times, making adjustments and negotiating before we settle on the right plans.

How difficult are the logistics involved with serving food to so many different areas of a large property?
We work mostly out of a small but central kitchen in the chateau, using satellite service kitchens at the different event locations. But we're soon going to be upgrading the facility. And now we're working out how we'll operate effectively during the renovations.

Without revealing too many private details, please tell us about what some of your guests and parties are like.
We have a pretty upscale clientele for both the concerts and the events. We average 100 weddings a year and can accommodate two simultaneously. They run the gamut from very formal to very casual. White gowns and tails or shorts and Teva's sandals with dogs in the ceremonies. We do sit-down, seven course meals, and we do barbecues.

Probably the biggest party we planned involved a client who hired a really big name act to perform for a corporate party of about 300 people. The whole thing ran him about half a million dollars.