Catering to Your customers and your craft

Mar 16

featuring Tommy Halvorson, Founder and CEO of Hospitality Group

Tommy Halvorson is the Founder and CEO of Hospitality Group encompassing 4 brands: Foxtail Catering and Events, Radish (co-founder along with his COO), Tonic Beverage Catering, and Green Heart Foods. Among the brands, they currently design and produce 300+ events per year, produce and deliver nearly 10,000 meals per week with their food service management program, manage beverage service for large-scale festivals, and operate a highly regarded product line.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

How Tommy got started in the food service industry
The inspiration behind his four tremendously successful brands
Bringing people together through cooking
The team that’s helped scale his businesses with their unique areas of expertise
How Tommy and his team take the stress off their clients with high
The importance of partnerships forged by trust
What keeps him passionate about his craft

In this episode…

Food has the incredible ability to bring people together. Whether it's sharing a meal with friends, family, or strangers, the act of breaking bread creates a sense of community and fosters connections that transcend language, culture, and background. When it comes to events, the culinary experience is intertwined. Bringing people together through food is a powerful way to promote community, foster social connections, and savor an occasion.

In this episode, Paige Buck hosts Tommy Halvorson, the Founder, and CEO of Hospitality Group to discuss the innovative design and exceptional cuisine that has earned him a reputation throughout the Bay Area, as one of the most sought-after food service providers. Tommy reveals the inspiration behind his four highly successful brands and the skilled team that has supported him in expanding his businesses with their individual areas of expertise.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events.

Kennedy Events creates stress-free conferences and events, providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs — from in-person to hybrid and virtual events.

To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.kennedyevents.com and schedule a consultation today to find out how we can guide you in making your event successful.

Transcript

Paige Buck 00:02

Welcome to the Kennedy Events podcast. I'm your host Paige Buck. Past guests include Pam Perez of the Chase Center, Sara Razavi of Working Solutions, and Elaine Honig of Studio 440. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Tommy Halvorson, Founder and CEO of Hospitality Group encompassing 4 brands: Foxtail Catering and Events, Radish (co-founder along with his COO), Tonic Beverage Catering, and Green Heart Foods. Among the brands, they currently design and produce 300+ events per year, produce and deliver nearly 10,000 meals per week with their food service management program, manage beverage service for large-scale festivals, and operate a highly regarded product line. Before we dive in today's episode is brought to you by Kennedy events, Kennedy Events produces stress-free conferences and events, providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs from in-person to hybrid and virtual. And you can learn more about us at kennedyevents.com. Hi, Tommy, thanks for being with me today.

Tommy Halvorson 01:08

How's it going?

Paige Buck 01:09

Going great. I am so excited to talk with you because we admire your companies, and what you have built so much. And I am actually delighted to be learning this for the first time I want to hear how you got started in this industry and how you built what you now have in these four tremendous brands.

Tommy Halvorson01:29

All right, well, I appreciate that. First of all, we love working with you, as well.

Paige Buck 01:36

So there's that mutual admiration society.

Tommy Halvorson 01:39

Yeah, it's great. It's great. So one thing I should mention, so the fire the the Hospitality Group is called the Fire Society. It's that I did not put that in the thing, because I've always been a little embarrassed. That's what I named it in 2008 When I founded it, and I had just graduated with from Berkeley in 2000. graduate in Berkeley 2008 started the business in 2009. Part of my degree was sociology. And so I was very, like, focused on this thing. And like, Fire was the thing that was going to bring us all together through cooking. I'm not sure if it's cool or not. So I'm always kind of like sounds versus writing, you know, but it just kind of cool. So that's what it's called. Um, and that is what encompasses all those brands.

Paige Buck 02:22

Okay, I'm gonna bring you back to that, because I think that is so cool. And I want to invite you to embrace that. I think that's amazing.

Tommy Halvorson 02:32

Yeah, I wrote a manifesto and everything pretty cool, actually. I started the business in 2009 as an underground restaurant called the Phoenix Supper Club. This was all like, during the the food truck revolution and all of this underground stuff was happening. I was working as a sous chef after I had graduated from Berkeley as a Sous Chef at a catering company, and learned all about the logistics of how to build kitchens and weird places to do, you know, really nice food out of hot boxes and on cassettes and things like that and so I just want to do something a little more interesting. And so I started doing this underground supper club, where we would bring on a to like secret locations, we would meet you at one location with a limo we bring you to the other location where we'd have like live music and nine courses. And we do it for like 20 or 25 people had no idea what I was doing, I'd never even had a nine course meal before, but that's what I was going to do because that's what they did at the laundry which I was like, thinking that that was the epitome so it was awesome. Lost a tremendous amount of money doing it because you can't make money doing that kind of thing. But we did it at a high enough level the were the guests that were there started hiring us to do catering those things I said I would never do I did immediately because I had to keep the lights on and so started doing catering. I was really dying for consistency within the business. So we got a couple like daily catering contracts with you know, some startups at the time. This is starting around 2010 when that was happening that was that started to go really well. Um, we were doing all of this as a feeding separate Club, which is really hard to sell catering services as an underground restaurant. So I rebranded in 2011 to Foxtail Catering 2012 We really started to grow like really get some good consistent business. So that's we moved into our facility that we have now which is which means that's when I rented a space and started to design a kitchen where we moved in 2013.

Paige Buck 04:47

So now you've been serious overhead and you have that forces you to grow more.

Tommy Halvorson 04:53

Yeah, yeah, I mean that was the first is funny because like we were doing, we were doing like a huge month in 2013 2012 would have been like $100,000 a month. And then we moved into the facility. And we would make like 20% of the bottom line or something I was doing like, you know, a big chunk of the work myself. And then we moved into our, our new kitchen. I remember being like, wow, that's not even enough to like, cover the basics, you know, like used to make this margin on this amount of revenue. And now it's like, I have to triple the amount to make the same amount on the bottom, you know, and that was, I mean, I kind of knew that was going to happen, but it was really terrifying when it did happen. But it also gave us our own kitchen, we moved out of a commissary moved into our own space, and it really kind of gave us like some kind of credibility, the first step of credibility. And at that same time, we diversified foxtail from the box to being a catering company. That's everything, we broke off a brand called 415 that did like the daily dining stuff. And then we acquired a brand called Living Room events. That was a high end wedding brand, because I could not break into the wedding, the high end wedding click. And so we just acquired a brand that was already there. That allowed us to kind of get into the high end weddings. And yeah, from there, it just kind of like I got a lot of great, great team members. And we just grew from that first, the kitchen we moved into was our whole world, it was like four it was 4000 square feet, had our offices, our tasting room and our kitchen. And now, because the building we moved into, we were able to expand on that and gobble up sweets on either side of us. And so now we have about 20,000 square feet, the what was our kitchen and our offices and our storage is now just our kitchen. And that's actually getting bigger, my built our offices separately, and we have always crazy warehouse storage and everything. So yeah, so when from me on a six foot table in 2009, with my now wife helping part time and my longtime collaborator, Rhonda, the you guys probably know she was also sitting on, she was also sitting with me on a milk crate in the attic space, like, you know, burning the midnight oil trying to get this going. So the three of us were like the OGs. And then in 2011, my current coo joined who he and I had actually worked together at a restaurant before in like in 2008. He just graduated from Stanford and I just graduated from Berkeley. And I was moonlighting as a line cook while I was a sous chef at this other catering company. And he and I would like have philosophical debates while we were working in this restaurant, which is pretty fun. Then he moved to New York and did some cool stuff. And then he came back and he joined and he started running the kitchen, then I started doing more of the business development. And then that's really kind of the thing. And Rhonda was like crushing all the events, and Britain was holding down all the paperwork. And so the four of us were the ones that like, really took it to the next level. And then Ali Grubb joined us in 2013. She's the one who's really taken the design element, which I think is something we're known for now, like to the next level. And they're all partners now. So

Paige Buck 08:12

amazing. I think, yeah, if people haven't experienced an event that you have produced or catered, and experienced your food, or remember that they've experienced your food, they would remember the beautiful visual displays and attention to the visual experience as much as you would like be likely to comment on the quality of the food, it's something new, at least Yeah, we're in the region.

Tommy Halvorson 08:39

Yeah, we were really, really excited about that it took a while for us to kind of figure out, like how we would differentiate ourselves from everybody else. Because once you get to a certain level within catering, like we can all do the same thing. Like there's like, probably five companies at the top, maybe even 10 I'm not sure but we'll just say five. And if you hire any one of these companies to do your event, they're all going to do a good job, like full stop. You know, most of them have been been doing events as long as I've been alive, which I think is hysterical. But also mad respect, because it's not easy. And so we're like, okay, so if we're looking at proposals from all of us, and everybody knows we're all going to do a good job, how do we separate ourselves and we just, you know, it's for us, it's the design our food is spectacular are we have we spent a lot of time with our on site staff like doing training and all this. But events are very visual. And you know, the food stations that we build and, and the aesthetic that we either tie into or the one that we create is a big deal. And that's really that's like we're we're pretty excited and proud about what we're able to do with with that.

Paige Buck 09:46

Yeah, I think I think of it whenever we've worked together as you're like a huge add on if there if there's a very strong visual theme already or a stated event theme, then You're, you're like the keystone of it, especially because everyone experiences the food and often like the the bar or the food station is at this at the heart of the event. Or if it's banquet, then certainly it's a significant part of the experience. So I am curious among like, those years of growth and struggle and midnight oil over the milk crate, what are some of your proudest moments or, or projects that you've gotten to build?

Tommy Halvorson 10:34

Um, well, the so from the underground side of things, this was like the first kind of thing that came to mind. I used to be like, really involved in all of the events and all the food and I wanted to like, you know, do some designing stuff and all that and people that are better at it than me, that are part of the team now. But the last event that I was really part of was this that I was really like, was mine. In 2012, it was right before we moved into our kitchen as early 2013. And we did this event to underground. And it was a color spectrum. And basically, like design this, so the menu, like every course was a different color. But it wasn't like, I'm going to put yellow food dye in this and make it yellow, or I'm going to use something out of season, because I need it for this color. Like I didn't do any of that I just did it properly. And so every course was like a was like a color through the spectrum, which was great. But the space itself, also changed color with every course that came out. So we did this whole like cool light thing that was happening. So it would like transition through and we have it was like paired with music, we had a DJ. And then we have this, like, when we got to the black course like everything, like went black. And then it kind of came back up with like a live performance that was like super cool. Um, and it just the way it came together was exactly the way that I wanted it to. And I was like, really stoked on that this is the decade ago, yeah, I'd be really interested to see what we would be able to do now with like, all the skills that we have, and resources because we had, like, not near the resources that we do now. Or the knowledge. So that is, you know, that was that was my like, for me personally for the business. Um, there's a couple actually that are that really stand out on the event side of things. There have been so many events over the last 10 years I've been really excited about, but I think that the one that I'm the most psyched on right now is actually one that we did in December for a few reasons. One, it was for a headcount of initially 5000 people, but it dropped, you know, as things have post COVID. So I think it wound up being like North, a little north of four little South before was a big, big event. And we got, we got brought in by a production company. And there were like 17 different food stations or something like that, yeah, um, plus the bars. And we designed like, we the like the the event itself had a theme. And we were tasked with, you know, not only pairing the menu to the theme, but also doing the station designed to match the theme through the bars and all that and all the food stations and I was out on maternity leave, like we I had a week old baby in my arms at this point. So I had nothing to do with this event at all, except knowing that it was happening. And my team just shattered it. Like just, I would usually drop a bunch of F bombs right now. But they just and like the stations that they designed, the Ally was in charge of an executed because sometimes you're it's like fashion over function, which is something that makes irritates me. But like that was really put together really well. And it was really it was really next level, what was accomplished and client was super happy, the production company super happy, the end client was super happy. And it was just done at like the highest level. You know, it's like, these are the events that in like, 2013 I was like, how do we get those kinds of events, you know, and now here we are not only getting them, but doing them on a really, really high level. And that was really exciting to see. Especially because I didn't have to be there.

Paige Buck 14:20

Right? Either. They can do it without you.

Tommy Halvorson 14:23

Yeah, I mean, they've been doing it without me for a while and but just like, not even physically being having to be present, like in the pre production meetings and making sure the details are covered, or did you think about this, or did you think about that? Or did you think about you know, it's like all of that stuff was covered? We had like 200 staff on site, they broke it down the way that I wanted it that I would have had them break it down if I was the one in charge of it, you know, the team just really really well really did a really good job on that. And so that was really exciting. An incredible

Paige Buck 14:53

moment and what a lovely like Pinnacle after, you know, two years of slogging through it. At least

Tommy Halvorson 15:01

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing too, because like, we we tried really hard to keep the team intact. Our company has about 6065 full time employees now, which is about what it had pre pandemic. Yeah, in there. I mean, this is this is, from our, I mean, full time benefited, you know, yeah, 40 hours a week, you know, jobs that cooks to our, in our dishwashers, and our planners and warehouse and like all of that. And, you know, during the pandemic, that we were about that size before. And, you know, we had to, we had to at least have work, but we really tried to kept about 15 people on full time. And the work that they did help generate enough work for us to get some of our hourly folks back in. And so we generated, I want to say, like, 30, or 40,000 hours of work during the pandemic, like literally putting stuff in boxes, um, because we moved into this whole like, shipping thing with you guys. And you

Paige Buck 16:00

were filling a desperate need for something everybody wanted in virtual events that were incredibly hard to execute on.

Tommy Halvorson 16:09

Yeah, yeah. And my team did that, like, you know, my wife and I were, like, buried in, you know, the financials, and the paperwork of getting all the grants and all that kind of stuff to keep things going. And we, and then obviously, I was like keeping the team intact, you're doing bi weekly, or we're doing two meetings a week, just team meetings, just to like, keep everybody, you know, yeah, cohesive. And meanwhile, our team was developing this whole box game, which we have lots of conversation, lots of fights about. But a lot of work. And it really served a really good purpose. You know, to get to get work for our team. And so when we actually had work that when I started to come back last April, we were able to get back 90% of the people that we that we had to let go. And now in some of these people are, you know, been with us from like, not always, not the beginning, but some of them were with us in the commissary. So to get that them back in, and then every, you know, we were able to, you know, adjust compensation so that it's really good for everybody. And I think that's really, we heard a lot about companies in the beginning when work was coming back, like really, really struggling with staffing, and we just didn't, because we just are, we had our team, you know, and that's getting through this last December, with, you know, my wife and I out, it has a lot to do it has everything to do with the people that are there. So um, you know, that's that's why it's, I guess this pinnacle is huge event, everybody came together, crushed it, you know, it's not just the designers, it's not just the planners, it's, it's not just the onsite staff. It's it's the warehouse, and it's the cooks and the kitchens, everybody is super rad. You've

Paige Buck 17:53

been talking I've been reminded of a feeling I've long held about caterer is that it's like, logistically, you have the skills to make something happen to like, build something, execute, problem solve for it, in a way I would only trust like a like a SEAL team or some like military execution is. And then at the same time, as you were describing your, how you were building your business, I was thinking there must be something about a chef that is like a musician where you also have that mathematicians mind of like, how, like how to make the numbers work to bring something together, even if you have to adjust and adapt over time. But you and I were talking before we were rolling about wishing that folks perceived caterers and food and beverage the way they do other trusted service providers. And what it would mean to be and what like what some of your clients, it might mean to be a trusted resource. And so like, tell me a little bit about your, like, your dream for these brands and what how you want your clients to come to think of foxtail and the other and the other brand the the broader fire society. Right. Your your man? Yeah. Yeah.

Tommy Halvorson 19:15

I mean, um, yeah, I mean, it's so challenging because like, you, at the end of the day, we're contractors, right? Like, that's what we are, we have resources, you hire us to do a job, we do the job, and then that's the end of job. And when you start to grow a catering company, like it's really hard to predict how much business you're going to be doing. You're, you don't know if you're going to be doing none or if you're going to be have too much come in and you're going to try to overreach and you're going to mess up, you know, like it's it's really hard to kind of like balance that. And so what we've tried to do is build consistency, which is the thing that I've been focused like singularly focused on like from literally the beginning because you can't To invest in infrastructure, you can't invest in people you can't invest in training, you can't you, it's really hard to do if you don't know how much business you're going to do. And so we you know, what my ideal would be to would be for the people that hire as the company's Iris look at us and look at the the, the depth of resources that we bring to the table. And not just an also do, but like a fully fleshed out program that we have, we've got the fully fleshed out events program with foxtail, that super high level, we have the fully fleshed out corporate cafeteria management program with radish, we have the fully fleshed out beverage program. And then we also have green heart, which is a really cool retail brand. But it's all of these resources that we have, that are all executed at a really high level. And it's like, look at what we can do. Now if we can just get to a place where we don't have to, like, bid on every single little thing that you've got coming on. And we can just establish like a partnership, where we trust each other. And that can help us predict more about what kind of business we're going to be doing over the next year. Like if if we know that this company has like six events that we're going to do with them over the course of the next year, then we can put a pin in it, put the resources there, know that it's there, you know, be able to know that that revenue is happening, you know, know what kind of resources we're going to need and allocate them to that specific thing. And it's, it would be so much more proactive than like the reactive nature of this industry of like we're doing an event it used to be in three months. Now it's in three weeks, can you pull this together? You know, and it's like, yeah, but man, wouldn't it be great if we could have just, you know, if we knew this, if this was on a calendar, and we it was predicted, you know, I mean, we're, we're trying to establish these relationships with with places who have like an 18 month calendar, so at least we know, like something is happening and not, not maybe specifically what, on the on the event side of things. So that it's like, you can stop chewing your nails and wondering what's going to happen. You know, it used to be the case that will pre pandemic, we were like we knew, like next quarter kind of what was going to happen. And even in early 2020, our December for 2020 was booked Now granted, all that went away. But that was the same. Yeah, that was pretty exciting to be like, we're 10 months out from December and like it's locked down, you know, that was awesome. Or like 80%, you know, um, so if we could just have relationships that were more proactive and less like, we need we need, you know, you to bid on this against three other people to make sure pricing stays aligned with Can we just, can we just trust that this is just what it is? And yes, we're going to make money. It's going to happen because we're business have to, but we're but it's going to be fair. It's all explainable. That'd be awesome. You know, I mean, one of the ways that we've combated that is with our, you know, the kind of go back to when the other questions you'd ask, which is, you know, your most exciting moments in our raddish brand, like, this is the way that we have helped build a platform underneath the events program, because that that's a consistent, those are contract based those it's consistent work.

Paige Buck 23:21

It's for current revenue coming in every month at a consistent rate. Yeah,

Tommy Halvorson 23:26

yeah. On a on an annual basis, right. So like, a lot of them are year long contracts that you're going to be doing this for this duration of time. And then there's cancellation clauses, but you've got like 90 days to plan so your your staff, you can try and reallocate, you know, it's not just, you know, it's it makes sense. Yes, business should

Paige Buck 23:45

be but and then you think, what was I thinking, getting into a business? As you're saying this? I'm like, why am I running a business that is project based, because that's what gets me out of bed in the morning. But then the business challenge of a project based thing that has a beginning, middle and dammit and end? Is has unique challenges. But

Tommy Halvorson 24:05

yeah, yeah, you have to have a massive amount of infrastructure to be able to achieve those the type of to do the type of projects that you want to do and that you're getting, you know, so

Paige Buck 24:13

there's like, business dream of like, oh, wouldn't that be less pressure, less stress, more ability to forecast and feel confident in the bottom line? And then there's the like, relationship base, like, the relationships have, like ears and space when your client conversations are? How are we going to do this not? And what are we going to do at this time? Instead of are we going to do this? What

Tommy Halvorson 24:41

are we? Yeah, the RV is hard, it'd be better about what are we doing as opposed to are we doing this? You know, it's, I get it like other companies have their own challenges and all that kind of thing, but like it would just make things easier for everybody if it was a little bit more predictable, you know, and once again, like we just we have such depth of things that we do. It's like, once we get in, it's like, why would you ever hire anyone else? You know,

Paige Buck 25:06

dream is the dream is, anytime I think of a business food need, or I'm anticipating a new event in our portfolio. I'm calling you. I know who's doing this, I'm calling you. And I have that on my calendar. It's it's a no brainer. We're calling foxtail. We're booking out booking them out for everything that's on our calendar. And it's a beautiful dream. And it's a a Sharon, for you. And for us and others in our position, I think, yeah.