In March, Kristen and I went to New Orleans for a catering conference called Catersource. I know, tough life!
It is the largest catering specific conference in the country, and was an amazing gathering of hundreds of caterers from around the country and world. It was inspiring and exciting to learn about trends and what other caterers are doing. It was also such fun to be in New Orleans. The city was beautiful and the people couldn’t have been more friendly and welcoming.
The conference helps us to go outside of our box and bring new trends to Vermont. There were workshops on everything related to catering, from cost control to appetizer ideas. And there was a tradeshow with all kinds of products.
Here are some highlights of the trip
New sustainable packaging
We are working hard to use entirely sustainable and compostable packaging in our delivery service. We learned about some great new wooden trays and folding balsa wood boxes. Stay tuned. We will be incorporating these into our service later this month.
Small Plate Stations
We’ve had a lot of fun with small plate stations, and we got some great ideas in NOLA for interactive small plate stations… from brunch biscuit bars to sous vide eggs to shrimp and grits to long and narrow hotdog/kabob grills.
Presentation
Plexiglass tiers, vertical displays, rolling stations… whew! We will be incorporating a bunch of new ways to give our food displays something extra.
Crawfish are the Bomb
Our last night in NOLA, we found a little seafood shack that was pumping out boiled crawfish. I am sold. We sat at the counter each with 3 pounds of spicy crawfish. Luckily, we had a friendly local sitting next to us who showed us the ropes. Hands down the best thing I have eaten this entire year. A close second would be the boudin at Cochon Butcher…
