We always do an annual Thanksgiving meal donation to Northwestern Settlement for 400 people so those in need can enjoy all the delicious traditions of a Thanksgiving meal. COVID-19 has destroyed our industry and continues to have a profound impact on our company. The events industry has been hit the hardest and so many of our favorite companies have already closed their doors. We have been hit hard, really hard, but there are so many people that are in need more than us. We really weren’t sure how we were going to make any donation work this year because of COVID-19. That is until we got a little help from our friends!

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It is so hard to believe that we are halfway through October and already thinking of Thanksgiving. One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is all the traditions and memories associated with the holiday. My job as a kid was to set the Thanksgiving table. I took this job very seriously. When I was about 7, I made salt dough turkey cut-outs and then hand-painted them with my sister and cousin. My mom still uses them at every place setting to this day. As I got older, I was in the kitchen with my mom all week leading up to the big day and those are some of my favorite memories cooking all day with my mom.

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One of our favorite things about Catering by Michaels is the different cultures and religions on our team. Many members of our team are not familiar with the Jewish holidays when they join our company. Since these holidays are a big part of our business, we always take the time every year to teach the traditions and cuisine of each holiday.

On Yom Kippur, people will come together for fasting and prayer from before sundown on the previous night until after sundown on the day of the fast. This means no food or drink is consumed for 24 hours. Foods that are comforting, filling, and requiring minimal preparation are the perfect foods to eat after a day of fasting.

Food and Tradition

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My name is Lisa Ware and I am the Director of Business Development & Special Projects at Catering by Michaels. I have been writing about our journey through COVID-19. If you have not yet read the previous episodes – be sure to start from the beginning!

The Great Pause

I have been staring at this screen for hours trying to find the words to describe the roller coaster of emotions we have been through in the past three months. My last blog post was all about the abrupt shutdown so forgive me that I am going to fast forward a little bit. The weeks that followed the abrupt shutdown have all blurred together, but the emotions throughout remain the same. In my head, I have dubbed this weird time as the great pause. When we held our all-team meeting in mid-March, never did we ever imagine we would still be in this position in mid-June.

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My name is Lisa Ware and I am the Director of Business Development & Special Projects at Catering by Michaels. I have been writing each week about our journey through COVID-19. If you have not yet read the previous episodes – be sure to start from the beginning!

The Abrupt Shutdown

We all arrived to work the Monday after our all-team meeting and the day started out like usual – for about an hour until we realized that we actually have to figure out how to abruptly shut down our business. The scramble began. We close our business for a few days every January to give our team a much-deserved break after the insane hustle of the month of December, but we do not actually fully shut down, more like a deep clean. This was a true shut down – of everything. Let’s talk about the first layer – events needed to be rescheduled, deliveries needed to be canceled, 200+ employees needed help filing for unemployment, all the questions from our team needed to be answered, our initial policy for how we were going to handle what would be hundreds of rescheduled events needed to be made, the templates for our sales team needed to be written so we were sending out universal messaging to all clients, our offices and kitchen needed to be deep cleaned, signs needed to be made for all the doors saying we were closed, vendors needed to be notified, deliveries needed to be canceled and the kitchen needed to be shut down. More on the kitchen soon. That could be an entire blog.

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