We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marc “DJ CHEF” Weiss a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Marc “DJ CHEF”, thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s talk about innovation. What’s the most innovative thing you’ve done in your career?
Ive managed to combine my two passions cooking & music & make it my career.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got a pair of turntable when I was 15. I taught myself to DJ & then started dragging them to our local house parties. Ultimately people wanted to pay me to do their celebrations & events. After hugh school the local bar asked me to DJ weekly. I was going to community college at locally & grabbed a job with a caterer for some extra cash as the hours were flexible. I became a good cook so the owner kept urging me to go to culinary school and make a career for myself. I blew her off for a year and one day, with no research or insight in to field, I just enrolled at NY Restaurant School in NYC. I found structure & new motivation putting on that uniform & being given that knife set. So much so I grabbed a help wanted flyer off the job board and got a job at Time Cafe in Soho. I lef the DJong behind and immersed myself in the fine dinning world off Manhattan, reading cookbooks & food magazines on the train, joined the ACF and offered to help at charity culinary events. I went to work with top NYC chefs Bobby Flay, Matthew Kenney & John Tesar & highly rated restaurants & caterers on Long Island. After working 70+ hours a week for a decade it started to burn me out so I took a job as a corporate chef which was Monday-Friday days, so I had the weekends free. Executives starting ask me to do dinner parties at their homes. It get me new inspiration. After a year I thought a key element was missing….THE MUSIC! i came up with the idea for DJ CHEF! I played music while i cooked the dinner & added in a splash of instruction & it took off! I designed a little web site and within a year Food Network called and said this so great we want to feature you on a new show “Whats Hot! Whats Cool!” which reveals all the latest culianry trends. After that aired I when on to appear The Party Planner with David Tutera, MTV, Fuse TV & MSNBC Entertainment Hot List. I fine tuned my experience and became the most sought for special birthday parties. Then a wedding magazine called me ask if i did Bachelorette parties? We laid out the whole experience and they ran the article and todaya Bachelorette Parties & Bridal Showers are the most popular private events!. I put myself to the culinary challenge & competed on Food Network’s Cutthroat Kitchen with Altin Brown, its was filled with wild sabotages and suprises but I came out the winner. With national notoriety I travel nationwide for corporate events, trafeshows & host/entertain at Food & Wine Festivals & galas. I even travel to Dubai for a 3 day store opening event.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
2020 was a crazy year and alot of business closed and our events industry was effected big time. I see alot of people left the industry. My whole calendar got wiped out and we had to quarantine. So as I pondered how to deal with this, I realized people still had birthdays. I started doing virtual birthday parties with DJ music. Then our town started a daily car parade for all the kids missing their birthdays. I offered to lead the parade with my DJ CHEF truck, I hooked up a monitor for the mic, added a light bar in the back & a 6.foot teddy bear.in the front seat with a birthday crown.. It was great. Then people were contacting me to do their private car parades, then it turned into front yard parties, so i added a birthday cake with sparkler candle and some lawn signs and I was doing a half dozen a day. When the warmerr weather came people didnt want to travel do the house party was the only way to go. I got alot of expose in a bad situation by thinking outside the box.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
I started DJ CHEF on weekends while having that day corporate chef job. I later took a new job as more of a chef / consultant that was closer to home so it made it easier to side hustle. One day the owner decided to cut me out, Probably a money saving move after I set up his corporate catering systems and marketing. That got me so mad & motivated that said to myself im going to just work on DJ CHEF full time. Once I shift my mindset to my business 7 day a week, thats when it became a full time viable business. I set up and executed my marketing, updated the website & social media & more time for follow ups and had consistent job everyweek with clients booking out in the future. After a couple years I started winninng local industry awards & getting recognition in the media.which further helped with bookings.
Contact Info:
- Website: djchef.com
- Instagram: djchefrocks
- Facebook: djchefrocks
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/djchef
- Twitter: djchefrocks
- Youtube: djchefrocks
- Other: tik tok djchefrocks