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By: REAL Services + Home Comfort Experts
At REAL Services, food is more than just something you eat, it’s a critical part of the nonprofit’s mission. Meals on Wheels is one of the vital services the nonprofit provides to the community, but funding for the program is often tied to money at the state and federal levels.
That’s one of the reasons George Hawthorne, the director of nutrition and transportation at REAL Services, decided to push forward with full-line catering at the nonprofit.
“The profits that we’ve made from Simply Catering to You have helped offset the budget cuts we’ve had over the years at the federal and state levels,” he says. “This program — along with our food truck — have been extremely important in helping us meet the needs for service for all of our homebound clients that no longer can prepare meals for themselves for either a mental or physical reason.”
REAL Services had been dabbling with small catering services since the late 90s, according to Hawthorne. But when he took over as director of nutrition in 2009, he decided to go all-in.
“I decided we might as well go full bore [with catering],” he says. “If we’re gonna be dabbling in catering we’re going to do it right and we’re going to do it all the way.”
Today, Simply Catering to You offers catering services for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for everything from simple box lunches to business meetings and weddings. All of the proceeds from catering go directly into the Meals on Wheels program to support meals being delivered, supplies, and food.
Hawthorne says that the nonprofit requires a minimum of 25 people for catering services, but they’ve catered for up to 500 people in the past. Simply Catering to You offers a full menu online, and Hawthorne says the Polish and Italian buffets are some of the most popular options. Despite having a menu, Hawthorne takes pride in the flexibility of food he can serve and he relishes it when people challenge him to make something different.
“We tell everybody to let us know what they’re interested in eating. We don’t want to lock them into only ordering off of our menu. We’ll discuss with you what you’re looking for and try to meet your needs,” he says. “If you don’t like what I suggest, throw something else out there. Everybody’s taste is different, you know? So, we try to accommodate.”
The nonprofit doesn’t have a venue for interested people to rent for catering, but it can serve anywhere a client rents or uses. Despite COVID concerns slowing catering services down the past few years, Hawthorne says the nonprofit is back to serving food around 260 days a year.
“We just hired a third person to help us out and run the food truck to hopefully free up my chef to do more catering jobs. We have the capacity to expand, and we’d like to expand,” he says. “When people need something, we want to be there to do our best at making them happy and making sure their event runs smoothly.”
