Comfort Food With Dignity

a resilient, flexible spirit. On the wake of COVID nineteen, when millions of Americans are put at risk just by going to get their next meal, one woman is doing everything she can to make sure her catering business brings it to them. Hi. Hi, how's your day going so far? Going well? I can't complain. This is Heather Public. She co owns a catering company and evans in Illinois, about twelve miles north of downtown Chicago. The name of her company is sold in smoke. We do chef to and

barbecue and comfort food. Can you tell me what's on the menu? And we do a lot of brisket, baby back ribs, pulled pork. We have a signature mac and cheese with the top secret three cheese blend, lots of cornbread muffins. You can't tell me, no, I can't. The chef behind their barbecue and secret cheese blend is DeAndre Carter. He's from the South side of Chicago. He's the other co owner. Heather is more in the business end, so

today she's in the office doing payroll and scheduling. Well, Chef Carter is downstairs with their other employees prepping meals for delivery. So they're working on tomorrow's foods. So they're making brisket chili right now. Chef is very particular on his brisket. You can get into like a whole rabbit hole with him talking about how he smokes, how many hours, all of that. I don't do a very good job listening to it all sometimes. Probably important to note Heather

and Chef DeAndre are married. Oh yeah, somewhere along the way that happened. They've also got a two year old daughter. The two met when Heather started working at Arrest staurant. DeAndre eventually became the executive sus chef for the world renowned Moto Restaurant in Chicago, a Michelin star restaurant did course feasting menus, and then we switched the game and

switched to catering. Having worked a lot in restaurants myself, I can attest that working at a place like Motto, where people travel from around the world for the best food in service money can buy, it's not worked for the fant of heart. And also having worked in catering that generally is even crazier it is, at least in a restaurant, like you have your flow of service. You know what your steps and service are, what your side work is. Every day is the same, even you know

your menu. Everything is different in catering every day. So whether it's a two person plated wedding or a hundred person cocktail party that's an anniversary party. But do you like having a job or every day is different? It's better than every day being the same. Sale's moke has been well received all around Evanson and Chicago. Right up until COVID nineteen hit, they were catering big events like

weddings and galas office parties. It's a ton of work and being a relatively small business, Heather ends up wearing a lot of hats during our normal course of things. I am the one that will help coordinate the events and the ordering of the rentals and the linen's and the execution and the timelines. She coordinates their marketing people with social media teams, taxes, payroll. I generally know everything

that's going out in the building at any moment. Meanwhile, DeAndre is busy cooking the menu for any given event in their commercial kitchen. Some of the meals have to be slow cooked for days, so he'll routinely go to the kitchen in the middle of the night just to check on it. I think that he just puts so much of his time and energy and making sure that it's perfect that I think it's just so personal to him. On the other end of the business, Heather's restaurant training

makes her equally invested in the experience. You know, I cannot walk into a dining room and not see a fork that's not out of place. I run the business side of things here, but I also think that I'm also in charge of the whole front of the house operations for our full service events. She says she misses that part of restaurant work, being on the floor serving

people one on one. She doesn't work as many events as she'd like to but I am still as obsessive about the linen's and the napkins and how the silverware has done and the flow of service, and I get like so obsessive where I can like time everything out. And despite the madness of running a business like this with so many moving parts, their combined dedication has truly set them apart in a highly competitive industry. It's it's crazy.

It's like the thing I love to do. Heather grew up in Deerfield, a suburb in Chicago, and like many people who end up in this line of work, she sort of found it after straying from a clear cut path. Would you say you were rebellious growing up? I mean I ended up in the food service distry, so I was probably rebellious some aspect for sure. Definitely grew up like you're supposed to be a lawyer doctor. She did

not do that. She ended up getting her degree in writing from the University of Illinois and then immediately went to culinary school, where she started out with a six month internship in the kitchen at Moto. This is where she met chef DeAndre, who was also knee deep in his own internship. It was rough work and I remember very specifically washing these dishes with him and asking how he liked being there, and him telling me, he's like, it's a lot of work. It's like it's a lot

of hours. But that did not scare her off. She cooked there for six months, and when she had to go back to school, the restaurant moved her to the front of the house as an employee, and on her first night, she got to serve a dish that she had made in the kitchen hundreds of times, and all of a sudden, I was able to talk to something about the food and talk to something about the dish, and I went to clear it and they told me how amazing it was, and I had never heard it before.

It fascinated me was something that I didn't get in the kitchen. She fell in love with service and became one of their observers, and after a few years at Moto, she went on to serve at other restaurants, and DeAndre It was looking to branch off and do something different on the side, so in two thousand twelve they decided to host a pop up dinner together at a local venue. Turned out great, sold out. We were an eater. We had all this acclaim. Like before I even knew what

it was going to be. It was just all really popular, really fast. But then the venue got shut down, so they started hosting dinners in their home at their dining room table. We were doing underground dinners for eight people, sway nights a week. We started. Our first dinner was in January. By April, I had to quit my job because we were just too busy. People started asking them to come to their homes to host ten person dinners,

twenty person dinners. People started asking them to cater their weddings. Yeah, it was crazy, and we were restaurant people, so we would just say yes and we would just figure out how to do it. So, like before you even actually knew it, you were a catering business exactly. It's very much like our customers turned us into a catering business. We didn't know what we were going to be going

into it, and then that's not what we are. They called their catering business Feast and Imbibe, which wasn't Barbecue at the time. They started taking on more events and DeAndre quit his restaurant jobs soon after. Heather did to keep up with the demand, and I think it was even more so because he took that leap that it was like, we just had to figure it out. Visa and Bibe was built for on site catering events, but they were getting tons of requests for drop off delivery

style catering, so they pivoted. DeAndre has always loved barbecue. Was the food that he grew up on. He grew up on comfort food. It reheats so well, it holds so well. It's you know, brazen meats and smoked meats. It's almost better than next day exactly. So we created literally a menu that would work so well for this drop off catering. Thus Sullen Smoke was born. It's only gotten crazier since they started, but today they are a very successful business. It's a lot. The rewarding part of

it is worth, oh for sure. You know, you're literally building a restaurant and creating an experience every day and being able to see people have that wow factor. And nobody comes to us because it's Tuesday night and they just need to eat dinner. It is all people who are celebrating really special moments and we get to be a part of those moments. And there are lifetime memories

which is incredible. In two thousand twenty, after seven years in operation, someone Smoke was doing well enough to the point where this past February they stopped renting their kitchen space and bought the building that she's calling me from today. Immediately after they did COVID nineteen hit, the event industry was certainly decimated. It was very instant for us. We had lots of events and then all of a sudden it was nothing. They had been prepping for St. Patty's Day,

which is a massive holiday in Chicago. They had employees that were ready to work, they had menus ready to go, a big enough kitchen space to safely work in, and they were in a city that needed to eat. So we had very early on started like we had all this food, and we were just like, we're just gonna feed people. How do we take care of the populations that need us most? Never did it even dawn on anybody that a month later it would be this more

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Like most Americans, Heathern DeAndre did not have a playbook for something like COVID nineteen. Their business, like so many others, came to a screeching hult. So when Chicago started shutting down, they figured they just keep doing what they do. You know, at the time, it was very much like we're just gonna go down with the ship. We're just gonna keep

on cooking until there's nothing left to cook. They no longer had any clients at the time, but even before the pandemic, there were lots of people in the surrounding area who didn't know where their next meal was coming from, a reality only made worse by unemployment and the closing of restaurants. So how do we feed people? How do we make sure that people have what they need? We had this idea, well, we'll cook ten meals and if people want to help and contribute to it, like great.

They called it community sponsored Meals for your Neighbors in Need. Basically, they were putting together meals that they were going to give out regardless, and they put a page on their website where people in Evanston could donate and sponsor a meal. By the time we just kind of put out the call of the community, of the community just showed up.

The first day, they ended up delivering thirty meals. The next day they did a hundred, and we were feeding, you know, to people by the end of that first week. Like it was just heartwarming and overwhelming and we were just go, go go. They quickly got funding from local organizations and start coordinating with schools to see which families

in the area might be in need. They made a donate page where anyone can sponsor delivery to essential workers to nursing homes, long term care facilities, and it's all their normal incredible menu items too. That brisket chili she mentioned at the top of the show is the meal that's going to be going out tomorrow, and every day is different. The next day is pulled pork with a

roast sweet potato and a cinnamon or butter. We really wanted to make sure that when we first first started that it was a meal that had a lot of dignity behind it. So we've always put just a lot behind it and making sure that everyone has a really comforting meal, especially during these times there's so much uncertainty. Kept our entire team employed and they're all here, which has been incredible. Have you even had a moment to zoom out and reflect on how big this has been

for your community? Yeah, I mean certainly, especially in the beginning. It was mind boggling that it was even we knew that we wanted to feed people and it was like, well, this is not what we do. It was mind blowing. We had no idea that there were going to be so many people that wanted to support and wanted to be on the same side of this, And I'm still pretty blown away. I mean we're currently doing, you know,

somewhere between seven meals a day every day. This was never Heather's plan, obviously, not COVID, not these community meals, but even this business. It's not an easy life. And seven years ago, just before DeAndre and her started serving people in their kitchen for eight people, Heather was going to stop working in the food industry altogether, and I was gonna, like get a desk job somewhere. I really thought I was done. I was like, I'm going to

go to law school. I'm gonna become a lawyer. I'm gonna have a spot for like my shoes under my desk, and it's going to be wonderful. And that never happened. I worked in the restaurant industry for seven years in three cities. The hours can be absurd, the mental pressure of a busy service can be diabolical, and a lot of people you end up working with seem like genuine maniacs. There's moments where you think I am out of this madhouse, and still I've left and come back three times. Now,

what is it that brings you back? I don't know. It's probably just the feeling that you get feeding people. You just nourished people and you got to hear their stories and it's a part of life that you just get addicted to. With or without the pandemic. Heather and DeAndre are doing just that. They're continuing to serve flavorful food that has set them apart for seven years, food

with intent and care in everybody. You know, with DeAndre being from this outside, he understands that, like people have a sense where they feel forgotten about and left out of the conversation. We really wanted food that people felt like someone cared about them. You know. We really wanted to stay away from anything that was cold. We wanted

to be things that were warm and hearty. A meal that's already done and ready to go and you don't have to worry about putting something together for your family, being able to give them a true meal where it's like a gift, something that people could enjoy. Wow, it's really incredible what you've been able to do during the pandemic. How do you think this time is going to affect Sullen Smoke when and if things go back to normal.

And we've been feeding so many people in the community for so long now, when we've talked a lot about it, how to extend this beyond coronavirus and what that looks like. Still trying to figure out how long through coronavirus we can even get through, and you know what that all looks like. But I would certainly hope they were able to continue at least some of this forever. I feel like you've been constantly hitting the ground running and adapting so far, no problem. Yeah, you know, I think a

good challenge for On the Job. I'm Otis Gray. Thanks for listening to On the Job, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. This season of On the Job is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures. The episodes are written and produced by me Otis Gray. Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens. The show was mixed by Matt Noble for Audiation Studios at the Loft in Bronxville, New York. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on I Heart

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