We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Liza & Trovon MacKinnon & Quetant a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Liza & Trovon, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

We absolutely wish we had started our business sooner! It wasn’t until Liza had finished college, and Trovon had been working in the restaurant industry for several years that we had the idea. If we had known the our true potential as business owners here in Boone we would have started our catering business years earlier! & Although I (Liza) am thankful for my time at ASU, if I could go back I would probably just start my business instead. Since Trovon and I come from the restaurant world and not the business world there was a huge learning curve the first couple years, and to this day we are still learning how to be better business owners. We think it is never too early to start your business, just dive in an start the journey!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We got into catering & the private chef world from being in the restaurant industry & really seeing how fast our town was/is growing. Both of us were working grueling hours serving and cooking for hoards of people, with not much to show for it after. We saw there was no lack of business in our town, in fact there was a lack of restaurants in general. There are so many people moving here and vacationing here that we quite literally don’t have enough restaurants to keep up with the demand. Bad for families wanting dinner on a Friday night- but great for us to get our foot in the door. We now create custom intimate dining experiences all over the high country in the comfort of our guests vacation homes. We save them the trouble of venturing out into the snow, ice, and crowds of people to bring them a curated multi-course dinner right at home. We have become lifesavers for those with children or large families who can’t get a reservation at the packed restaurants in town, or those who don’t have time to wait an hour for a table. We bring our guests exclusivity, peace of mind, and the most incredible meals made from the best locally sourced ingredients.

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

Word of mouth was huge for us. Although there are mass amounts of temporary visitors coming to Boone, the local community is pretty tight knit. Once we got our name out to the community, requests started rolling in. From there we learned consistency & good communication is key. Catering really requires a certain level of trust from the client & when the local community is buzzing with good things to say about your business it really helps foster that trust within new clients!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We started our business in June of 2019, just before COVID. We were terrified because we had just secured our first big client. We worked for them maybe three months before the larger client completely shut down, and we weren’t sure what to do. Instead of panicking and picking up a regular serving job, we poured into the business. We focused on advertising for small private events, created new delivery menus and did our best to build social media presence. Surprisingly our catering took off during this time. While brick and mortar restaurants were closing, we were offering a safe option for people to get real handmade meals & it really took off!

Contact Info:

• Website: Azafranchef.com
• Instagram: Azafran_chef
• Facebook: Azafran_chef
• Yelp: Azafrán LLC

Image Credits
Shannon Leopold Jamie Robbins