Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nicole Van Winden. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Nicole, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?
We signed the lease on our catering kitchen February 29th, 2020. We had a list of clients and events, we were a vendor at the local D1 football and basketball games. March Madness was about to begin and we were set to be there selling food! Business looked great.
Less than 3 weeks later, the world shut down, there were no events happening and no one needed any Catering because they couldn’t leave their homes. That moment was terrifying. We had to make a choice whether to cut our losses and get out of our lease or if we wanted to persevere.
We decided to persevere. We spent a couple months doing the renovations and updates to the kitchen ourselves. We created several Ghost Restaurants out of the catering kitchen and started offering DoorDash and by a stroke of luck, we introduced ourselves to the businesses nearby and found there was a need for a private aviation caterer.
We have never worked at a college football or basketball game again. However, we are the number one aviation caterer in town. One of our ghost restaurants turned in to a bakery and we provide pastries to local coffee shops and thankfully business has continued to grow. We have corporate events, weddings, parties and more. It looks like 2024 will be our most profitable year to date.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
We own Atlas Catering and Events & Dam Good Food Concepts. We love the food industry and had spent over 15 years working for other people in various positions before opening our own business.
Our key to success has been to be flexible. We find a way to make things work even when something goes wrong. This is always important when working events, because things can go wrong, but the goal is to make sure the client never knows. In addition to providing great food and great service, we also provide a seamless experience!
How’d you meet your business partner?
Marcus and I met at work like many people do. Only we were working on an international cruise ship where he was the fine dining chef on board and I was assistant cruise director. So one of my jobs was to host his cooking classes each week. So I made jokes about his cooking and I don’t think he thought they were funny!
However on cruise ships you live and work onboard for a 4+ month contract, so over the next several months apparently my jokes grew on him and now 16 years later, I really can’t imagine working without him. We are an incredible team.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
In order to build our reputation we made a conscious decision to keep our standards high. This means that we are not the cheapest in town, probably not even close. However, we know that our name and our brand stands for quality and when someone sees our name they know they are going to be getting a delicious product.
This caused challenges early on when money was tight, but I’m thankful we didn’t compromise. We could have done things cheaper, but then it wouldn’t have been as good.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.eatdamgoodfood.com
- Instagram: Atlascateringtucson
- Facebook: Atlascateringtucson
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolevanwinden?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
Image Credits
Nicole van Winden