We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jonathan Darr a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jonathan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.

Back in 2019, when our company was about 12 years old, I thought it was about time to step up our commitment to our community, and find a better way to give back in an ongoing way. I was familiar with a lot of big brands, Toms and Bombas come to mind, who had pioneered the 1:1 giving model and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could do something like that?

Then I hit on the idea of partnering with the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. We had done a group volunteer day there a few months prior and I thought this could really be a terrific partnership. It would be a way for our team to help build community and do something for those most in need. After all our job is feeding people, right? The idea was to donate one meal through the food bank, through direct cash support, for every guest that we serve at our events. Since we started doing this, we’ve donated over a quarter million meals to the food bank and are still going strong.

Of course we’ve had periods of time when our commitment to the food bank has been tough to honor, particularly during the COVID shutdown in 2020 when we nearly shuddered our business. Having this partnership gave us something to cling to and it became a symbol of hope for us. We may have been struggling, but so were many of our fellow Angelenos. At least we were all in this together!

Jonathan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Love Catering, a full service off-premise catering company based in Burbank, serving greater Los Angeles. I got into the catering industry completely by accident. I moved to LA from Minnesota in 1997 when I was 21 years old. I had always worked in the food industry, as waiter, at a bakery, at a coffee bar, a wine bar; you name I had done it. I ended up getting a job at a boutique catering company that did lots of Hollywood industry events. On my first shift I get left in charge of the whole team and just had to figure out how to make it all work. And I was hooked that very night! There’s definitely never a dull moment in off-premise catering. When I started my own company a few years later, I was determined to always be prepared and to make sure that we were set up for success.

At Love Catering we specialize in exceptional service and custom menu design using the best seasonal ingredients. We’ve been a certified green company since 2018 and that’s a cornerstone of our approach. We collaborate with our clients to produce memorable experiences with elevated food and hospitality. From product launches and experiential events, to production service and corporate meetings, to social events we cater all kinds of events. We really approach each job with fresh eyes and try to focus on the client’s needs and strive to exceed their expectations.

I’m most proud of our team. We’ve made it through seventeen years in a very tumultuous industry and we’ve continued to evolve and innovate, through many challenges and changes. Our success wouldn’t be possible without them. I’m always excited to come to work and see our team in action. They are the heart and soul of all that we do and they inspire me to do better.

Any advice for managing a team?

Well first and foremost you have to build trust with your team and always value people for more than the job that they do for you. You have to understand that people are human and have a life outside of work. And that life outside of work is usually more important than their job. People have spouses and partners, children, parents that they care for, and cuddly animal companions that are the focus of most our lives. Many times things will come up and you have to be ready and willing to let people juggle their personal and professional life. It’s a lot of give and take but it’s essential to prove to your team that you genuinely care about them.

Here at Love Catering we’ve decided to focus on company culture and intentionally creating an environment where people want to work. Last year we joined a hospitality group called MIBE (and acronym for Make It Better Every day) in order to improve our company morale. One of their tenets is “work doesn’t have to suck, surround yourself with a kick *ss team”. I just love that so much. Life is too short to be miserable!

Going through their year long team building process we realized we needed to spend more time having fun together. We’ve created potluck events, held employee appreciation days where we bring in lunch and a chair massage therapist (you rule Travon!), held a ping pong tournament, and did a volunteer outing with our partner the LA Regional Food Bank that led to a night out at a Dodger’s game. It’s been really fun to just hang out together and not take our selves so seriously all of the time.

Beyond that it’s vital that you recognize the hard work of your team. Sharing praise from clients and just reminding people how much you appreciate them never gets old. We’d started a system of “fist bumps” to recognize the hard work of our team and remind them that are being seen and heard.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

When I first started working for a caterer in 1997 I never dreamed I would own my own catering business. As I learned how to cater special events and private parties I thought to myself “I could do this”. I had always worked in the food business and loved to cook and eat with friends. Pretty soon I figured I could cook for friends and they would actually pay me for it. For quite a while it was truly a side hustle. I worked mostly daytime shifts at my catering job and could moonlight on evenings and weekends.

Over the course of a year or two I built up my clientele to the point where I could quit my day job and go full time working for myself. At the time I was working out of my apartment and I was a one man show. I did all of the booking and selling, the shopping, prepping, and cooking, as well as working the event and cleaning up after. It was a grueling four and half years or so but grinding out the jobs really helped me build my chops and understand the business from top to bottom.

After doing that for while I was determined to make the next leap and start a bigger company where we would have a full commercial kitchen and a team of helpers to take on more work. And that’s exactly what happened when I started Love Catering with two friends, who were also small, independent caterers. We essentially folded our companies together to make one bigger company. It was a welcome change for me and was a huge milestone in taking our business to the next level.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lovecateringinc.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lovecateringinc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lovecateringinc

Image Credits

Jonathan Darr, Stan Lee for Fried Chicken Sandwich Studios, Tim Hirschmann, Bryan Jackson