We were lucky to catch up with Brian DePaulis recently and have shared our conversation below.

 

For me, it was really easy, My company name carries a two fold meaning. First and foremost it’s to honor what God has done in my life. I struggled with addiction in my 20s, I was able to get sober and I attribute that to surrendering my life to Jesus Christ. Since that day, I have overcome many trials and I want to elevate in My craft the way God Elevated my life. Coming back to Winston Salem from a bigger Metropolitan city, I can see the food seen is a bit behind here, Elevated Catering Company is my way of using the talents and gifts God gave me to elevate the food scene in my hometown.

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?
Sure, my name is Chef Brian Depaulis and I am the owner of Elevated Catering Company. I started working in the restaurant industry when I was 16.
I immediately fell in love the adrenaline and the energy of the restaurant environment. I attended college in Wilmington for a hotel and restaurant management degree. During my culinary arts class, I became enthralled with the culinary aspects of cooking and creating art on a plate. I spent time working in several restaurants on the kitchen side and on the business side, I was also a corporate trainer for a large chain for a time and opened several restaurant locations. Eventually I ended up in Raleigh and my career really blossomed in that environment, I got the opportunity to work under some great chefs and at some fantastic restaurants and have spent the latter years in my careers working in Fine dining. I put in a lot of time, and a lot of it for free, just trying to sharpen my skills and gain as much knowledge as I could from some of the talented Chefs I worked under. The long and grueling restaurant hours and sometimes toxic busy restaurant life led me to a job in Catering. The switch breathed new life into my career. We were getting to be a part of some of the most special moments in peoples lives and bringing joy to their celebrations with food. I fell in love with that adrenaline rush all over again, and the vision for my own company came out of that. At Elevated Catering Company we offer fine dining catering and pride ourselves on partnering with other small local businesses and farms to bring the clients vision to life. Whether it’s classic cuisine done simple and fresh or an elevated menu that would surprise all your taste senorsies, we are all in on delivering the creative vision for our clients.
I also do restaurant and small business consulting, I love being able to share the knowledge that I have gained to help others start their small businesses with a model for success. 

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Well, first of all my industry is not easy. It can be toxic at times…a lot of long hours and then you also have a lot of addiction wrapped up in all that which I unfortunately participated in that. I struggled with alcohol and drug addiction like many in this industry just to escape. That lifestyle ended up catching up with me and landed me in prison. But God had a plan for me, that got me sober and relationship with God. I fell back in love with wanting to cook again and do it right. I started building this vision for this business so that we could do it right and have a healthy environment in the process. Going through all that I feel very confident I can overcome just about anything I put my mind to at this point. God has given me a strength and resilience to want to overcome the challenges in life and help those around me do the same. I find strength,community and achievement with my team and my families support.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
So I might have a more unique story than most. I got a work release job from prison where you can work a job out in the community and make money to help you transition on your release, you can get up to three years of that. I was able to get 2 years and 10 months work release. I got a job in the restaurant industry starting off as a dishwasher and worked my way up to Executive Sous Chef. During my work release I was able to pay back my restitution pretty quickly and save and invest the money I was making, before I left there I was making more money than some of the guards at one time. I started this my company with all my own capitol from the money I made during my work release. What started off as a bad choice turned into a lot of good choices that led me to having this successful company. You can always turn your life around and you’re not defined by your bad choices and past mistakes. I am very proud of my accomplishments and we actually just won best caterer in the triad with YES weekly magazine amongst numerous other awards and we are only in our third year!