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

Rabbiyah, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

I hope that people will be inspired to study my blueprint; be resilient, creative, be a survivor and stay in the favor of God/Universe even if you’ve done/dpoing “ungodly” shit. I was an alcoholic/drug user and criminal for a long time. But of course thats not all I was. Like most people that find themselves in this predicament I was intelligent, perceptive, resourceful and intuitive and thrived in almost anything I focused on. I had an Islamic upbringing so I always had God, I also had 2 amazing parents who unfortunately died when my siblings and I were very young. I did a lot to survive and take care of them and myself the best I could, but soon my lifestyle (which included recreational drug and alcohol use) turned into a full-blown addiction. I got sober long enough to have a daughter at one point, but her fathers and her love for me couldn’t save me from my demons. I eventually conquered them on my own terms and in my own time. I put myself in rehab and have been substance free with zero relapses since 2/20/12. I want people, especially my daughter (who doesn’t remember my addiction, she was too young) to understand that life isn’t easy for most people and to treat them like there is a chance for them to turn their lives around no matter how disposable and unworthy you think they may be. There is always a chance for a person to be great and to pull themselves out of a dark place. Most importantly God gives everyone a talent, skill or gift that will be their key to survival and to take care of themselves financially, figure out what THAT is and you will be fine.

Rabbiyah, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was in between jobs and whenever I’d find myself unemployed I would go for restaurant jobs, usually as a server or hostess. I was hired as a hostess at a popular Italian restaurant in Bethesda MD pre-rehab, and went back after I graduated. I had only been back for maybe a month but had made friends with my GM. His name was Preston. We shared photos and such like friends do, and I always cooked and took pics of my food creations, I cooked for my siblings a lot after my parents died and for my teenage friends before that. So when one of the line cooks walked off the line Preston threw me from the safety of my host stand and literally into the fire lol. I adapted like a fish to water and by the end of the day I had transitioned to the dark-side to BOH (back of house) like a true gangsta lol. However I noticed after being there (as a line cook and soon promoted to prep cook) that my kitchen leaders- the sous and the exec seemed very knowledgeable about the science of food and I wasn’t. I asked the sous one day how he knew all of this about food history and recipes and translating quantities etc. He told me that if I wanted to move up to sous or exec and be taken seriously I would need to go to culinary school and to be certified as a Food Manager by a reputable company like Servsafe. I always liked to be taken seriously and I didn’t want to be a line cook or prep forever so I did just that, I enrolled in culinary school. I worked at restaurants the whole time I was in school, and began to notice- they were run by a lot of men. I found it weird that men never helped cook in my personal experiences. Why were they so advanced as to be running whole professional kitchens? This further solidified my intent to be a female Exec Chef one day. After working my way up and achieving this status I was running kitchens all over the DMV. I finally worked my way to one of if not the top restaurant in the USA -the coveted Mastro’s!

Then after only being there for 2 years and learning so much about being a Chef and a leader at a top tier restaurant -Covid hit. I was furloughed along with almost 70% of the team. I was super depressed for 2 weeks and really scared not only of Covid but of how I was going to support myself, my daughter and pay my very Exec status bills! I was talking to my friend Brian one night about how people might start breaking into people’s homes for food and supplies and also pondering if I might be one of those people and he said: why don’t you just do what you do best: COOK?! I went to Costco the very next day and purchased enough chicken breasts, brussel’s and mac & cheese essentials to feed 20 imaginary customers. I grilled the chicken on my brand new pre- covid priced charcoal Kingsford professional grill. I boxed them up with the help of my daughter and posted them on Instagram and the rest was legendary. As I mentioned I like to be taken seriously so I got an EIN and LLC’d the company under the name I gave my capstone project in culinary school – Off Menu Catering. Now, 3 years later I’m proud to say we are a real reputable contender in our industry. We still offer monthly dinners to the wonderful clients that got us started but we mainly focus on event catering, we have a small contractual staff and even my little sister Raqibah works with us! I’m blessed, I was able to create a sustainable future for myself based on my God- given talent, which is cooking. I’m proud that I was and remain able to create jobs for my team and future team members from my community. But I’m mostly happy that people love my food and that God blessed me with this gift.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I don’t think that anyone who is great at something is self aware initially. You watch the reactions of others and it slowly dawns on you that ‘hey I’ve got something”. The next thing that solidifies whether you actually have talent is your client. It’s one thing for people with a questionable and underdeveloped palate to like your food, but BABY when people who have eaten at the best restaurants all over the world love your food and literally put their money where their mouth is, it changes the game for you. My return and repeat and word of mouth clientele, that’s how I built my brand reputation. It wouldn’t have progressed as quickly without the weekly dinner offerings or “selling plates” as some may refer to it lol! But chile, selling plates is nothing to be ashamed of, its marketing at it’s finest as far as I’m concerned. Think about it, initially by my 7th menu I was selling 30-50 dinners 2-3x a week. Hundreds of people were experiencing a hefty sample of what I could do and my range .I was constantly changing the menu in an attempt to pin down my best sellers. Every catering in the beginning came from that pool of clients, and every referral for the bigger catering came from those clients! Social media played a pivotal role with my younger customers but for the long game; “event catering, don’t question my price” caliber of client that I wanted and got, it was and is word of mouth for sure. I also think the fact that I was also a real chef at a reputable, high end, and high volume restaurant gave me an edge on the Insta-Chefs. To be sensationalized on social media is one thing but to actually stack paper long- term is what I wanted.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

“What advice do you have for managing?”

I was a lone- wolf for the first 2 years in business, I was afraid that if I didn’t do everything myself that it wouldn’t be representative of my “brand” and frankly wouldn’t be done correctly. I also liked to keep all of my earnings to myself! I was beginning to feel burned-out and needed a reliable team which is worth more than saving money. I learned the hard way that for a long term sustainable business you need help. A big part of managing people is to teach your techniques and that is the part that is the hardest for a creative like myself. when I was managing restaurant teams I had a script- standardized recipes, a playbook passed down from corporate. On my own I had my ways of doing things that were and still are to an extent- internal and quirky, and also have to do with my own timing and inspired moments of creativity. It’s not easy to instruct, teach or translate this to another person. It was frustrating navigating this initially, my first cook, bless his heart, is a longtime friend and our interaction is similar to a big sister little brother sibling relationship. He was used to me screaming at him and bossing him around in a loving but abusive manner lol. But as I started to hire and work with strangers I knew I couldn’t always rely on this type of balance, so I returned to the drawing board- which involved management style books and advice from the bosses and mentors in my life. But really what ends up working for you is to hire people with a temperament that fits yours or whomever their direct supervisor is. I believe that whatever your style of management is there is an employee who will respond well to it, you just have to find them and hire them. Also what saves me and what continues to keep my team invested in my business is making them feel like they are a part of something that has the potential to be a future for them, and that cannot be a lie or a facade in order to invoke that response. I don’t sell dreams. I’m not that convincing, they know this will always be a reliable source of income for them and something bigger than all of us and something to be excited for. If you are excited as the leader they will be too and that in and of itself is a morale booster. I also pay them well and on-time and I let them know through these and other actions that they are loved, respected and needed. Overall that’s all that people want.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.offmenucatering.com
• Instagram: @offmenucatering
• Other: https://linktr.ee/chefrabbiyahomc (all links in one)