Paula Kraft, founder and President of Atlanta, GA-based Tastefully Yours Catering.
Happy Holidays

Now that we have that straight, does hearing a holiday salutation make you shiver - wondering how you’re going to get catering fulfilled for a flight that falls within the super- busy holiday schedule?

This time of year we are inundated with holiday celebrations - one right after the other – there’s no time to recover from the parties we attend or the flights we organize. Wow . . . no wonder we’re all exhausted!

As a catering source, my business faces several different issues to you as you place your catering order; whether you’re a pilot, a scheduler, a dispatcher, a flight attendant, a handler or a passenger’s assistant. As you can imagine, this is the time of the year that many caterers, restaurants and other food sources count on to show a profit for the year. I read a statistic recently from one of the food service groups that said as much as 28% of the yearly sales of some food sources occur from mid November to mid January.

Keeping that in mind, you might have some difficulty at this time of year getting in touch with catering sources that are not dedicated full-time aviation caterers.

Are the staff setting up and serving a party somewhere? Are they closed for the holiday? Are they delivering food for an office event, or are they struggling with the preparation of all that additional seasonal fare? And how will their extra staffing issues and shopping nightmares affect your order? Who will prepare it? A part timer, a day laborer brought in as an extra pair of hands, or the trained aviation expert you normally work with?

Have I got you thinking yet? Maybe you need a bit of shake-up

Now I know you’re thinking, “well, they should plan for all this” - right? Not so fast. Where do all these people come from? How could they forget their driving skills all at the same time? Why didn’t the navigation system divert me to another route before I got stuck in this mess? Can we put the blame onto someone else?

We are a business used to last minute pop-up orders.

But as I’ll explain, there are a lot of things out of the control of your global food sources. We must work together to overcome the potentially destructive challenges we face during the holiday. I use the term “destructive challenges” because they can ruin, cause undue stress and disappoint during the holiday season.

Here’s what we can do together:

• Call your catering sources early in all your regular destinations to find out if their hours of operations will change. That means now, not the day before you arrive, but now. If your passengers tend to make a regular trip at this time of year, call ahead and ask. Arm yourself with information to be prepared.

• Find a back-up food source in those markets just in case. Possibly a hotel. Speak to the chef today and ask questions about possibilities, oven pans and plates.

• Is your catering source requesting a delivery time further out to compensate for potential traffic?

• Encourage your flight crew and passengers to be flexible during this season in their food choices.

• Inquire about alcohol purchases as people will drink more during the holidays. A little hot tottie at the end of a long day and a chilly night might be just the thing for your passengers. Remember though that there are markets where it is illegal to buy alcohol and resell it - and your aircraft could be confiscated by local authorities if caught buying from an unlicensed source.

• Have back-up favorite food in the pantry to prepare on board in the event of a failed delivery. This can be a challenge if your aircraft is not equipped to cook on board, but, there are wonderful tapenades from artichoke and red pepper; to olive and pesto that can top a piece of baked fish or chicken over a salad for an entrée. There are nice prepared soups that can be enhanced. I digress again . . . I was looking for a personal shortcut to prepare a dinner for my father quickly so I took a container of corn chowder from the pantry and added the meat from a lobster tail, a couple of sliced scallops and shrimp and a small potato, shredded, and made him a fantastic meal. I didn’t have bread or rolls at home so I took some Matzah cracker and spread on some chive cream cheese and toasted it in the oven until it browned. Poof! a meal in 4 minutes (shred the potatoes to cook almost instantly).

• Plan and call ahead. Let your catering source know you may (yes may, not confirmed), have a flight headed their way and you wanted to give them a heads- up.

• Ask your food sources about any seasonal or holiday specialties you might piggyback on when you place your order. If they are making tons of their in-house special bread pudding with warm sherry sauce for parties, then that might be a good back-up dessert if time prevents them from having your Chambord raspberries in a meringue cloud.

I must digress again for a minute to share one of my holiday memories:

There has never been a holiday that occurred without these cookies sitting on a plate to eat, safely locked in an airtight container to sneak a small snack as you passed by.

My grandmother taught my mother and then I was taught as soon as I was able (oh, about 4 or 5 years of age). I was put to work making cookie balls and learning the feel of all of the doughs and the look of them as they baked to just the right doneness. It was a family tradition. Years of holidays working as a well buttered team creating the quintessential treats. Until my young daughters could stand on a box next to me and be part of the baking team, they were always our dough samplers and sugar sprinkle elves (Now we know you shouldn’t eat raw cookie dough for food safety reasons, but this is still one “law” I break even today. (How else can I see if the dough is just right?). I have my mother’s rolling pin and cookie press, my grandmother’s scalloped cutter for her sugar cookies, beaten up, bent and reshaped from years of use, and I treasure them as if they were worth a million dollars. Sorry, I keep running into memories of holiday joy and want to share it with you, but, let me get back to the task at hand . . . ordering catering during the holidays:

• Ask your catering source if they are going to be doing a lot of parties and do they occur mostly on the weekends or will they have parties during the week, do they have a party crew and an aviation crew?

• Ask about special item shopping, if you are a regular client with them, ask for the non perishable item to be purchased in advance and held for your next flight. In Atlanta, we find Voss 330ml water in plastic bottles difficult to find and when we do find it, we buy all the store has and hold it for those special request passengers which only want the Voss water so they are not disappointed. Your catering source can do the same for you.

• Confirm that a regular aviation staff member will oversee the production, and packing of your potential order.

• Ask if they have planned extra delivery personnel and have additional vehicles rented to cover aviation and holiday events.

• Ask if their vendors are able to fill pop-up orders or that they will be able to run your request up in the middle of this holiday season.

• Ask if they need additional advance notice for orders, for example; a normal quick turn isn’t possible on Friday and Saturdays in the month of December; an order request must have 4 hours notice rather than 30 minutes.

• Be prepared to take what is possible without getting up set that the catering source is unable to provide your exact request.

• Be patient and kind. It is our goal to be perfect in every mission we provide food or supplies for, but, circumstances outside our control may prevent perfection.

If by chance your catering sources haven’t given thought to their ‘holiday plan’ before your call, your list of operational questions will certainly urge them to put their emergency response plan into place.

So . . . if your travels bring you to Atlanta, be sure and ask for your free sample of our famous holiday cookies to be included in your next order or request one of our many seasonal specialty items such as our pumpkin mousse with sugary crisp and chewy homemade gingersnaps. I leave you with my recipe for holiday joy:

Recipe for Joy

• 2 buckets of love and compassion

• a large amount of kindness

• an unsurpassed amount of peace

• 2 containers of generosity

• a container of thoughtfulness

• a bundle of forgiveness

• a handful of memories

• a pinch of laughter

• a package of sparkle

• a smidgen or two or three of fun

Toss together with great passion and excitement, adding extra of each ingredient as needed to create perfect joy. Spread throughout the world and watch it develop and grow.

Let me introduce myself . . . 

My name is Paula Kraft and I am founder and President of Tastefully Yours Catering, an aviation specific caterer, located in Atlanta, Georgia for 35 years.

Aviation Catering is a science not taught in Culinary School; it’s a function of experience, experimentation, basic trial and error, with constant feedback from flight crews and clients. It is a two-way communication. It is vital that this information and knowledge be shared throughout the industry. To this end, I have worked as the Chairman of the NBAA Caterer’s Working Group, a subcommittee of the NBAA Flight Attendant Committee, the NBAA Caterer Representative to the NBAA Flight Attendant Committee, for 9 years.

Currently I am an active member of the NBAA Flight Attendant Committee Advisory Board and the NBAA International Flight Attendant Committee, Women in Corporate Aviation, Women in Aviation International, National Association of Catering Executives, International Flight Catering Association, the International Food Service Association and the International Caterer’s Association.

I have coordinated training programs and clinics for NBAA, EBAA and BA-Meetup conference attendees for over 10 years, created mentoring programs for caterers and flight attendants to broaden their aviation culinary skills, and to assist them in adapting to the unique challenges and constraints found in catering for general aviation. I recognize the need for training and have worked closely with flight departments, flight crews, schedulers and customer service reps at the FBOs to ensure that catering specific training provides information and skills necessary to reduce risk while assisting them in their job duties that include safe food handling, catering security, accurate transmission of food orders, and safe food production, packaging and delivery.

I fell into aviation catering quite by accident. I was the in-house caterer and bakery supplier for Macy’s department stores in Atlanta when catering was ordered for a Macy’s customer which was soon to change my life. After the client enjoyed the catering provided, I was summoned to the client’s corporate office to provide several of the items delivered through Macy’s to the executive dining room. Within a week, I was providing food for the flight department and my first order was for the President of a foreign country (as I was too be told soon after). So, here I am, some 35 years later, still loving every minute of every day in aviation catering.

©BlueSky Business Aviation News | 20th November 2014 | Issue #297

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