Most experts advise small business owners to draft a plan before launching a business. But Scott Growth
began with a blog. When he started writing about food and recipes, he found his passion and built a
platform for a new business. Growth owns The Chubby Cook, a corporate catering business and
recreational cooking school located.
Homemade-style food
The company, which was established last April, specializes in homemade-style food with fresh
ingredients. While the corporate catering order has a 10-person minimum, individual customers can
order home-style dishes, like chicken paprikas, braised beef short ribs, and real macaroni and cheese
to go.
Right ingredients
The staff has a definite opinion on what makes good food. The salad dressing and barbecue sauce are
made from scratch, in-house, said the executive chef Michele Lavecchia. And Chubby Cook does offer
fried foods. When it comes to his business, Growth settled upon the right ingredients after a couple of
false starts.
Catering business
Originally, I just wanted to do a cooking school, but I couldn’t get insurance, he said. Instead, he started
catering and ran a lunchtime carry-out in front of his business. But expenses ate him up. When
remaking sandwiches with fresh ingredients, you have massive amounts of spoilage, he said.
Although he closed the take-out operation in October, something good came from the experiment. He
said it brought lots of exposure that helped with the catering business. The visibility was welcome, even
though his blog had 8,000 views each month and about 4,200 followers on Twitter.
I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner at (age) 9, she said. With an Eastern European background, she
grew up making chicken paprikas, stuffed cabbage, and other items on the home-style carry-out menu.
But necessity pushed her into cooking professionally.
As a single mother, she relied on income from catering to fraternal and social organizations. That
journey carried her to the La Casa Bella party center and to the Sattler Hotel, where she was a grand
chef. She also established her own company, Michele Fine Catering. Eight years ago, after her children left home, she pulled out of catering and became a flight attendant. She left that profession when her daughter suggested LaVecchia consult with Growth.
Staffing service
Growth cooked lunch for her. They talked and began to work together. Growth said he knew he
needed someone who had more experience than he did if the business was to grow. He owned a
physician staffing service before starting The Chubby Cook. Although cooking and creating recipes are his
passions, he was green when it came to meals for parties and large events. He’s looking for more
consultants, too, especially when it comes advice on to future cooking classes. The company got
insurance and the sessions.
