We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mary Krikorian. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mary below.

Mary, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?

The Wedding Catering Industry is always looking for ways to present food to our clients and guests in a way that is innovative and unique. Brides especially want the guests at their wedding to see and experience something that they have never seen or experienced before at any other wedding and they want their guests to be talking about that for months afterwards.

Innovative food presentations can definitely leave a lasting impression on wedding guests. Here are a few ideas that are going to be hot trends for 2024 Weddings:

1. Late Night Snacks: Providing late-night snacks adds an extra level of hospitality and care for your guests. After dancing and celebrating for hours, guests often appreciate a tasty treat to refuel and keep the party going. It shows that you’ve thought about their comfort and enjoyment throughout the entire wedding experience.

2. Fusion Cuising: Couples and guests are increasingly seeking unique and exciting dining experiences. Fusion cuisine allows for a creative and adventurous exploration of flavors, combining elements from different culinary traditions. It adds an element of surprise and intrigue to the wedding menu, creating a memorable dining experience.

3. Family Style Dining: Family style dining fosters a convivial atmosphere, inviting guests to pass around shared platters and savor communal meals. This approach encourages camaraderie and connection, making it well-suited for intimate and family-oriented wedding celebrations.

4. Small Plate Stations: Small plate stations offer a delightful array of bite-sized delicacies, allowing guests to sample a diverse selection of flavors and textures. Creating an atmosphere of culinary exploration, small plate stations are well-suited for modern and industrial-themed weddings. This trend caters to the shift towards experiential dining, encouraging guests to engage with the culinary offerings in a social and interactive manner.

5. Plated Meals: Elegant and refined, plated dinners exude sophistication and grace, providing guests with a formal dining experience. Ideal for classic and traditional weddings, plated dinners offer a timeless and polished approach to wedding catering. Additionally, the emphasis on convenience and guest experience plays a role in the preference for plated dinners. With a plated dinner, guests do not have to wait in line at a buffet or worry about navigating through crowded lines. They can enjoy a more relaxed and seamless dining experience, which contributes to overall guest satisfaction.

6. Interactive Food Stations: Interactive food stations provide an immersive culinary experience, allowing guests to customize their meals or witness live cooking demonstrations. Whether it’s a made-to-order pasta station or a DIY taco bar, interactive food stations add an element of entertainment and engagement, making them an excellent fit for lively and vibrant wedding celebrations.

At Vibrant Occasions Catering, one of our core values is Innovation. We love creating new and exciting ways for our guests to experience their dining experience so we are very excited about the catering trends for 2024 and have already incorporated many of them into our menu.

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

Vibrant Occasions Catering is owned by husband and wife, Chef Serge and Mary Krikorian. Serge and Mary started out in the restaurant industry in 1994 with a carry-0ut and delivery pizza restaurant. After years in the restaurant industry, they were asked one day if they would cater a lunch and their catering business took off from there. Eventually, they closed down their restaurant to focus solely on their skills at catering.

When we started out, my husband and I were the only employees working out of a 1,500 square foot space. Today, our facility encompasses 10,000 square feet and employees approximately seventy-five full and part-time staff. We are excited to have the ability to cater anywhere in Arkansas with our mobile kitchen, that allows us to prepare restaurant-quality food fresh for our guests.

What Serge and I are most proud of is the fact that we are a heart-led company, which means that we recognize our staff for what they really are – the most valuable asset our company has. Culture and staff relations are actively supported with weekly staff lunches where the staff play games in order to build comradery and friendships. We also have several staff parties throughout the year and encourage Kindness Komments, little notes that are given by staff members to each other recognizing their actions above and beyond the normal, which are read aloud during the staff lunches.

Our company motto is “We Are Happy People Making People Happy” because we truly believe that if our staff are happy and enjoy what they do, that will translate into happy clients and guests.

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

We started out in a carry-out and delivery pizza business when they were in their mid-20s. After taking that business to the top 1% in the country for independant pizza restaurants, we thought we knew all there was to know about running a restaurant and decided that we wanted to open a dine-in restaurant, which failed spectacularly. After losing all of our accrued capital (and then some), we closed the dine-in and went back into carry-out and delivery, all with money we borrowed from family. Thankfully, the carry-out model worked and we were able to recover from the loss and eventually transition the business into a successful catering business.

We both wish that we had been wise enough when we were young to seek out a mentor before making such a life-changing decision as opening a dine-in restaurant with zero experience in running one. That’s what we now tell young entrepreneurs who ask – Go find a mentor with experience in your field and bounce your ideas off of them. They may not have the answers, but they can listen and help you play our scenarios to come to the most thoughtful answers.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Serge and I met while in college in a small town in Southern Arkansas back in the late 1980s. They were in the same cost accounting class and didn’t really have any interaction with each other until one morning Serge showed up on my doorstep and explained that he had spent the previous night at a Monsters of Rock Concert and hadn’t studied at all for the cost accounting test later that day. He asked me to teach him enough cost account to pass the test and offered to take me out to dinner if he did. Well, he passed with a C so he we went out to eat and we have been together now for 36 years, working together since 1994.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.VibrantOccasions.com
• Instagram: @vibrantoccasionscatering
• Facebook: VibrantOccasionsCatering
• Linkedin: vibrantoccasionscatering
• Youtube: @cookingwiththekriks

Image Credits
Lori Sparkman Photography Devin Cole Alanis Kayleigh Ross Photography