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

Hi Terrence, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Earlier in 2025, I created an organization called “Y.E.S. C.H.E.F” which stands for “Youth Enrichment Service Cooking Heals Early Futures, created to help children understand the fundamentals of cooking while learning a skill to use in their everyday lives. The main focus of this organization is to help Children learn that cooking can be a great way to cope with their mental and emotional health, despite the everyday tragedies that they encounter. I wanted to design a program that was going to really impact the community and help find the next generation to come and our next leaders, and I felt this was the perfect way to get involved. In mid November 2025, I published my very first children’s, whose safety book that is used as a guide for the organization and as well for children that may see cooking as a hobby or something that they might want to do in the near future. The book entails cooking safety and also precautions to follow by in the kitchen.

Terrence, 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?

My name is Terrence Pasley and I created and own “Terrys Taste”. Terry’s Taste is a freelance catering & meal service serving in the Arlington,Va area and most of the DMV. I have been in business now for almost 10 years and my service range from catering, meal prep, desserts & speciality cakes and more. I’ve been cooking since I was a little boy and I’ve always had a very fond interest in art. I see cooking as a way of expressing ones art through food and the memories and experiences that you gain through creating dishes for those that I service helps keep business going. I started everything back in 2016 while I was in college but didn’t even have any idea or plans of running a business but over the years it has turned into something I can’t even describe. I wake up everyday being able to do what I love which is to create and be free to do my business. I haven’t gotten to the point in my career where I can work solely off my business but having financial literacy and understanding business etiquette at an early age really helped to set the ground for my present and my future.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I started selling dinners just to make extra money during college. Everyone knows that those are some of your greatest ( and worst) times of your life and you always try to make a little extra cash any chance you could so I decide to sell dinners. It became so busy with orders that I started picking up actual clients for small catering and parties. It wasn’t easy at first. When I started Terry’s Taste, I had a studio apartment and a very small kitchen. I would put two long tables in my living room and set up heaters to keep my food warm and use it as my make table and prep table. I remember I had a catering for 50 people due at Noon and waking up at 3am to get everything together and cook and deliver it. To say I’d take those times back is a understatement because I feel like it was little things such as that that helped me see I have a lot of passion for what I do and I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Always relay great communication and Customer service. If you mess up, admit mistake and work to do your best to make up for it but I also would say make sure to have a calendar and track your timing when doing business for others cause their time is important just as your and you want to make sure your giving them them upmost service you can provide but also giving yourself time to do business efficiently.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.terrystaste.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrystaste/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TerrysTaste/