We were lucky to catch up with Jamie Poe recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jamie, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

I think family businesses are wonderful. I grew up with an Aunt and Uncle who started their apparel business 40+ years ago and still work 5 days a week together to this day. They are also still married! So I suppose I grew up with that proof of concept and am lucky to have a husband who’s up for the adventure. It takes a certain type of conditioning to be able to make it work, but the pros for us by far outweigh the cons.

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?

Poe and Co. is a Santa Barbara based catering and meal delivery business. We are a wife and husband team of chefs who left restaurants and hotels to provide a more intimate food experience for our clients.

As two career chefs who wanted to have a family, we needed to figure out where in the industry we could shift to without leaving it all together. We are so proud of what we’ve made of this choice: we’ve been able to support small farmers and makers whose work is bedrock. We have created jobs for others, paying hourly wages that bypass the going rates (and not dependent on a tipping model). We’ve been able to offer flexible schedules, manageable shifts, and a learning environment that models a functional workplace. We’ve trained many industry newbies with diverse backgrounds who are attracted to a different kind of food service experience.

The work we bring to our clients is the fun byproduct. We supply a level of cooking and service that stands on the shoulders of the bar we have received in our training. We do this for sometimes 200 people at a time- in a new setting- a skill set within itself.

We are also getting ready to launch our first product line which is very exciting.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We put a lot of effort into producing the best possible products using the skills and resources we have. We don’t cut corners or sacrifice quality to make life a little easier. We also are in the people business, so being friendly and helpful is crucial. Simply responding and following through plays a major role in the reputation we’ve cultivated. If we can’t respond right away to someone, we tell them that we will circle back and then we do it. We’ve learned over time that clients really appreciate guidance and not too many options, so we’ve really honed in on what we offer and why we offer those products/services. Essentially we treat every event, product, and order as a project and we make sure that we are managing all aspects in a very holistic way.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When Covid came, we were projected to have a record-breaking month. We lost all of our event catering business overnight. My stomach dropped with each email that came in- and with all of the ones that didn’t! We went into survival mode: we had a 1 year old at home and I was newly pregnant with our second child. Our lucky break was that we had already started a meal delivery service wing, and we just double-downed on that end of the business. It hands down carried us through the pandemic.

Catering is not for the faint-of-heart and it’s a job that requires an enormous amount of technical skills, stamina, logistics, creativity, and an aptitude for people. When you are able to work under so many stressors and parameters, it’s a superpower.

Contact Info:

• Website: poe-and-co.com
• Instagram: poeandco

Image Credits
Meg Sandu, Megan Welker, Anna Delores