Dispatch From Upper Falls - The Making of a Feast

Tomorrow night, Sunday June 23, 250 people will walk across Echo Bridge and into the first annual Feast of The Falls.  A 250 foot table will be assembled along the aqueduct in Hemlock Gorge and the whole neighborhood will break bread together at a five course catered feast.

I've never worked in the food or hospitality industry so it's hard for me to imagine what goes on behind the scenes to pull something like this off, particularly because most of the workers for this event have never worked on anything like this before.

The food will be served by a crew of 25 VIP Servers consisting of most of the local elected officials and the familiar faces from the local businesses (the barber, the variety store, the antique shop, and many more) - all people who know nothing about catering.

Behind the scenes is a very experienced crew who do work in the hospitality industry and know how its done.  Staff from Dunn Gaherin's restaurant, and Better Life Food are the glue that will hold the operation together  In the middle of it all is Christopher Osborn who runs Better Life Food.  It's a personal chef/catering business in Upper Falls. 

Christopher seems to be able to do it all.  He's a local guy who grew up in the neighborhood.  He ran The Depot Coffee Shop in the heart of Upper Falls for a few years  before starting Better Life Food.  At Better Life he manages the food for every kind of event you can imagine.  Just a few weeks ago he catered a backyard going away party for one of our neighbors who just moved to North Carolina.  Now he's putting together a catered dinner in the woods for 250 people.

The scale of this event is big but Better Life Food does big,  Big by itself is complicated.  Big like this Feast is a whole different animal.  What makes this event unique is that at its heart, it's a real community event and much of the staff is the neighborhood folks.  How do you corral a bunch of eager volunteers, train them fast, and not just get food on the table, but pull off a spectacular event that people will, remember?  

Behind the scenes, there's a phenomenal amount of detail involved - first, the supplies.  Because its a community event, both Dunn Gaherins and Better Life Food talked to all their regular suppliers to kick in what they can.  Christopher's rental company (Peterson Party Center) offered a steep discount on the biggest ticket item - table, chair, and equipment rental.  Dunn Gaherin's main food supplier (Performance Food Group) donated a mountain of food ingredients.  Other specialty suppliers -Re-Stream (owned by Upper Falls native Karen Osborn Shanley), Signature Breads and Wholefoods kicked in with donations.  All the various food suppliers, all the businesses they regularly deals with have all been asked to step up with donations and discounts  ... and they have.

Once you have the mountain of supplies for a 250 person dinner you need to figure out how to cook it all.  The food preparation is scheduled over two days at Dunn Gaherins kitchen and the cooking will be done on-site in a kitchen constructed in the woods for the event.  All the details of timings, quantities of each ingredient, serving sizes etc are managed through a series of spreadsheets.  To give you an idea - here's a quick quiz.  How many cucumbers do you need for a salad for 250 people.

Next up is equipment and transport.  How do you get the food to the woods and once there, what equipment do you need to keep all the hot food hot and the cold food cold.  What do you need to serve it?  How many serving spoons? How many runners?  etc.

One ingenious part of the plan turned a problem into a feature.  Renting, handling, cleaning 250 place settings is a big expensive detail.  The solution?  Each guest brings their own plate/knife/fork/spoon/cup with them from their home.  At the end of dinner, they'll be packaged up in a plastic bag for the return trip home.  This little detail saves enormous headaches and expense but people love the idea.  The Feast is all about the community coming together for a giant meal.  The guests arriving with their own place setting makes everybody a participant in making the event happen.

Finally, the human part of the problem.  How do you smoothly and quickly deliver 250 portions of food simultaneously to 250 people using an untrained, inexperienced staff.  This is probably the trickiest piece of the puzzle.  The key seems to be to have a small number of highly trained people involved at key spots and then precisely choreograph all the details of the process.  So long as the process is well thought out and sound, you communicate well to the volunteers  and you have a minimum number of knowledgeable people to guide the newcomers, it should all work out.  That's the theory anyway.  Check back on Monday morning to know for sure.

Christopher's not worried, OK maybe a little bit.  He says once it begins, it's 100% guaranteed to be chaotic behind the scenes, as all the volunteers begin to flail a bit.  But so long as you've got it organized ahead of time and a small number of the right people to guide everyone else, and troubleshoot the inevitable hiccups, it will all miraculously work somehow.  If you're well prepared, at a certain point it kicks into gear, people hit their stride and the magic happens.

He says its no different with a meal in a restaurant.  There's many people and lots of equipment between you and those raw ingredients.  This is the same thing, just on a much bigger scale, with a mobile kitchen in the woods.

On Sunday afternoon, an army of enthusiastic inexperienced volunteers will descend on Hemlock Gorge.  Truck load of equipment and supplies will be delivered.  They'll be a huge burst of activity, energy, confusion and activity and then 250 people will be served a wonderful, magical dinner in the woods. 

That's what Christopher says will happen  ... and I believe him.