EP 15: Take the Stress Out of Catering Your Event with These Food Tips and Trends

Jeff: Welcome to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about how to plan and execute an unforgettable event that will dazzle your guests and generate more income for your organization. From fundraising and securing trendy auction items to event production and logistics, get the best tips and advice from seasoned fundraising and event professionals who have been in your shoes.

Jeff: Welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about the many ways that you can make your fundraising events better. I'm excited to have back Kristen Wheeler from Handbid. Hi. And also, we've got a special guest today. Pretty excited about this one. Brandon, why don't you introduce yourself and tell the folks on our podcast what you do.

Brandon: Yeah, my name is Brandon, and I own Coast to Coast Meal Prep and Coast to Coast Caterers. We're a local catering company and meal delivery service based out of Castle Rock.

Jeff: Awesome. I got to meet you because you originally supplied one of the food trucks for one of our fundraising events.

Brandon: Correct.

Jeff: And then from there, we brought you in to do additional catering for us for other fundraising events.

Brandon: Definitely.

Jeff: One of the things I enjoyed in getting to know Brandon and the conversations we've had over the years is that I just felt like you were on more of the forefront of where some of the fundraising events were going. And you were super flexible to work with because we were trying to figure some things out too, in terms of how we would want to evolve our food service and the things we were offering at our fundraiser. So thank you for coming. Before we dive into some of the trends and other things that we're seeing, let's talk more about just in general -- what are the things to look for when you're doing an event with a caterer? When I started my event for the first time, I was the caterer. And then when I got sick and tired of making fried chicken for 100 people and we were getting more people involved, we brought in a catering company. But it's been a while, right? So it'd be interesting to kind of start there. When you're talking to charities or folks that are having events, what kind of questions are they asking you, and what kind of things are you explaining and showing them that demonstrate the types of skills and abilities you have that help make their event great?

Brandon: Sure, yeah. I think communication is key, right? Providing as much information up front to the caterer that's coming to do the job about the type of event you're having. Is this a full-blown sit-down, formal dinner-type catering job, a fundraising event, or is this way more informal? We've seen in the past few years that bringing in multiple food trucks has been a popular theme, and I'm noticing that people are starting to get away from that a little bit and get more into just bringing in a caterer to handle the one thing. You're not dealing with the logistics of different menus, multiple different people who have different beliefs in the way they run their business. You're bringing in one person that you can coordinate with and lock down a menu that's cohesive and everything like that.

Jeff: Okay, so you're talking about the menu. But what about the format or the style of the food service itself? Are people typically coming to you and saying, "I want a seated plated dinner," or "I want food stations," or "I want food trucks," or are you helping them figure that out?

Brandon: I think I'm noticing that I'm helping people figure that out more often than not. Lately, I've been seeing that more often than not, people are wanting more of a buffet-style service. I haven't seen a whole lot of sit-down plated, unless it's a really formal event or a wedding. But if it's more of an event, that buffet-style service is what most people have been after. But yeah, they really kind of lean on me to answer that question for them, I'm noticing, more than them coming to me knowing that information.

Jeff: So walk us through that process. How do you walk them through that to get them to the arrival point of whether a buffet tends to work well, or stations might be a better fit, or what the format looks like?

Brandon: I think that question gets answered rather quickly in the type of event that it is, right? If this is a really high-end event where you're doing VIP tables and that kind of service, the direction is going to go to a plated dinner, multiple courses. If it's more of a concert or where people are moving about, then it's going to make more sense to do more of a buffet style where people are coming through the line and it's more of a social gathering and people are going to move about and talk to each other more. I think that's more of the direction you'd want to go.

Jeff: Okay. Well, in my event, I think we went through all of those. And I'm not going to call them phases because in some cases, it just makes sense. One's not an evolution of the other. But we had the seated plated thing. Then we moved to buffet. Then we eventually moved to food stations. Then we eventually moved to food trucks. And then we moved back to you, where I would say it was a little bit more food station-style. But there are pros and cons of all of those. What I saw with the plated dinner is they take a lot longer. I'm not going to say they're more or less money -- that probably depends more on the menu. But they do require more staff because you're having to drop plates and pick them up. And it was just hard. In our event, it was kind of hard to time that with everything else going on in that room. Because you definitely don't want waiters walking around picking up and dropping plates if you want your people paying attention to some video or some speech, right?

Brandon: Correct. Yeah, that's more timing. If you want them eating while a presentation is happening, then a plated dinner is definitely the way to go. It's a little bit more involved, a little bit more convoluted, like you said, but a good caterer will be able to time that out. Be quiet with the service and allow for the presentation to happen. And I think in that style of an event, the dinner is kind of part of the event, right? Like it becomes a level of part of the event as opposed to saying, "Hey, we're going to provide a great meal. You're going to sit down and enjoy. And the event is about the fundraiser over here or the thing happening over here or the concert or whatever it might be."

Jeff: Right. But I think during an awards ceremony, an awards presentation where there's a speech happening and you want dinner to happen progressively through that, then a plated meal makes sense. That way everyone's not getting up and walking through the buffet line and you're waiting for everyone to take a seat.

Brandon: Yeah, that's a good point.

Jeff: It also lends itself to needing a good run of show. I think we did another podcast episode on that. If you're going to have your caterer time that properly, then it sounds like you'd want to let them know what the accurate order of events is going to be so they know.

Brandon: Correct. Right. Yeah.

Jeff: So let's stay on plated dinners for a second. I used to joke and call it the rubber chicken dinner, right? Especially when it was at some of the hotels around here. Let's talk menu for a second. How do you evolve or how can you spruce up a plated dinner menu so it's not just the steamed vegetables with a piece of chicken and the honey mustard salad dressing meal?

Brandon: Yeah, I mean, that's all about the chef, right? Creating a menu that's got some diversification of flavors to it, and it's not just protein, starch, and vegetable. Sauces go a long way. You can take just chicken and turn it into Tuscan chicken by doing a really nice creamy spinach Parmesan-based sauce to top on it and really take it to a whole other level.

Jeff: And that's great. And then I would imagine every caterer, as a standard part of their offering, has to offer the vegetarian or the vegan or the gluten-free option. How far does that typically go?

Brandon: It can go pretty far. I'm not personally, as a chef, a vegetarian chef. I don't always cook that way, but I do provide that food, right? So depending on how many you have at the event -- if it's just one person or two people, it's a lot easier to kind of work around it. If you've got 15, 20 people at an event, it's not that difficult to actually throw a tray of pasta primavera out. I mean, there's a whole laundry list of good vegetarian dishes that you can put out a whole sheet tray of specifically for that vegetarian crowd.

Jeff: How about 1,100 people and their dogs?

Brandon: Just gets a little bit more complicated.

Jeff: We've done that a bit. And the irony is -- I don't know if they learned this the hard way or the easy way, but it's a completely vegan menu. Because they didn't want the dogs smelling the protein and going crazy over it. Because you are in a ballroom with a thousand people and their dogs who sit next to the owners. So anyway, I thought that was pretty funny.

Brandon: That's an event.

Jeff: Yeah. And I will tell you, I didn't sit down and eat that because I was obviously more on the working side of this. But I was impressed with what some of those vegan plates looked like.

Brandon: Good. Nice. There are definitely people that specialize in that. And if that's the type of event you're doing, it helps to look into which caterers specialize in that. Because if you find some -- I mean, like I said, personally, I don't specialize in vegan. And so for me, can I come up with a vegan menu? Yeah, but is it going to be as good as somebody who specializes in that? So I think looking for the right fit with that catering company is the right path to start to take, right?

Jeff: No, I like that. And I think it's also being honest and true with your clients, right? In the sense of, "Hey, this is what I'm really good at. This is kind of my wheelhouse. I can do a great job and feed your guests an amazing meal with these types of dishes or this type of theme or event. This other thing over here, yes -- but..." And I think a lot of caterers, I wish they did more of that. That they would say, "Really, honestly, this is kind of outside of my spectrum of expertise."

Brandon: Sure.

Jeff: Okay, so we kind of sidetracked on dogs and vegan. Okay, so then the buffet. We moved to the buffet, and the challenge I had with the buffet was -- and I've seen events where they dismiss you by table, which I was like, that just sounds like camp. We're not doing that. So we just let people eat. And I remember we had an event one year at the Broncos field house. It's a big, gigantic room, and we had probably 350 to 400 people there. I just don't like seeing 200 people lining up to eat, right? I just didn't love it. And I don't feel like the caterer was well prepared for that. That was the last year we did a buffet.

Brandon: Got it.

Jeff: And I was like, I don't know. To me, we went to the food station thing the following year. And that is almost like indoor food trucks, right? I mean, you have different spots around the venue where you can just pick up a small plate of whatever it was. And the most famous one was the mac and cheese bar. Because we have kids at our event, and that one was the one that did draw the line.

Brandon: Yeah.

Jeff: Although, it's funny -- kids don't want bacon and all this amazing stuff in their mac and cheese.

Kristen: From the box.

Jeff: I know. I was like, yeah, and it's got amazing cheese options on top. Oh, no.

Kristen: My son would not eat macaroni and cheese unless it came from the blue box, he said. It has to come from the blue box or it's not mac and cheese.

Brandon: There's way better box mac and cheese than the blue one.

Jeff: No offense to the company that makes the blue box, by the way. I'm sure you're selling millions of dollars of it. It's a staple.

Jeff: No, but you can do things like that. You can do stations. And I've even seen events where they will do food trucks. And I think food trucks are an option where you pass on the cost to your guests. So maybe a school event or something like that. But I've also seen food trucks catering events. Can you talk about your experience with food trucks and how that worked with having multiple food trucks there?

Brandon: Yeah, we have done a few events like that. And you brought up a great point, right? When you're planning out the budget, that's the key determining factor of which direction you're going to go. And if you really want to pass on the cost to the people coming to the event, having a food truck charge the customers without you having to take on that financial responsibility is a good way to go. I have done multiple events with our food truck where we were hired by the venue to do the catering. Brewfest Under the Stars is one of those where we just show up and bring food and put it out. And it's really fun for the guests because now they've got a bunch of different types of things that they can get, whether it's barbecue from that truck or burgers from this truck or whatever. And they're getting this perception that they're getting free food from the food truck because the food truck is just catering. All you can eat, just small samples, just slinging them all night long. And it's really fun. As a food truck owner, it was fun to engage with the guests in that way because usually at events like that, we've got a canopy out front and we're out front. We're not stuck in the truck and we're engaging with the customers. And so it was really fun for the guests as well as for us.

Jeff: When you do it that way, it sounds like you've kind of narrowed the menu down. You've got a couple of things that you're just making a lot of.

Brandon: Correct. It's not the short order, pick off my menu on the side of the truck.

Jeff: Absolutely. Yeah. Because that was the thing. So we moved to food trucks, and you were one of them the first year we did it. And the reason was we moved to a concert format. We still have the Kentucky Derby and whatnot, but we were having a band come in and we just had a big change in our cost profile. So we're like, okay, we're spending a lot more money in these other areas. We don't want to just significantly raise the price of the event. So we went to food trucks, and they were significantly cheaper. I was shocked to see how much cheaper they were. And then I started to realize, I think one of the reasons is that we were spending a lot of money with our old caterer on staff. They would provide tables. If you're doing a seated thing, they would provide all the tables, all the chairs. I mean, they were an amazing company. They really are. But the problem was that food was just a small portion of that bill. And then when we moved to food trucks, there's a lot less staff involved. And of course, we heard all the complaints. "Oh, if you move to food trucks, people are going to have to wait. You're going to have lines. People don't like to wait for food at a venue like this." And I said, okay, so that's where we started talking to you and Byron and some other folks to say there's ways around that. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're considering food trucks, there are ways to make it really work, we found.

Brandon: Yeah, you can offer a limited menu, like you said, and determine that ahead of time. So if it's a chicken truck, you can say, "We want to supply a three-piece meal with a side of mashed potatoes," and then the food truck staff can just always have those menu items cooking so no one ever has to wait.

Jeff: Correct.

Brandon: Yeah, that tends to be what bogs down food trucks or any event, right? Too big of a menu, trying to do too many things at one time. If you can narrow down to two or three items and do them right and do them well, you can do them fast.

Jeff: Yeah. No, it really worked for us. And it really started to open our eyes. So let's talk about the menu. We kind of dabbled in it a little bit and we'll get time to dive into some of the trends. So, menu. You mentioned earlier that you have your areas of expertise. When people are coming to you, are they coming because you have those areas of expertise, or because you've been recommended by somebody else, or because they feel like you kind of fit their theme?

Brandon: I think more people come to me because I've been recommended by somebody else. I think that's generally where it starts, or they've had my food at an event. I get a lot of that too. Like, "Hey, we were at this event and we had your food. You were amazing. We're thinking about doing this over here. What do you got?" I think that's the bulk of it, really.

Jeff: Okay. So now I say, "Hey, we're having this under-the-sea, super high-end gala type of event." Are you going to sit down with them and help them craft a menu? Or are they saying, "I want steak or chicken"? Are you giving them two or three menu options?

Brandon: Yeah. So I start with a template or a base point, right? We've got our Hawaiian-themed menu, we've got our southern barbecue menu, we've got an Italian menu. And then under each of those menus, we've got mains and multiple side options that you can choose from. So if you did the Hawaiian menu, you can do teriyaki beef and katsu chicken -- coconut katsu chicken. We've got Hawaiian mac salad, Hawaiian fruit salad, all these different sides, white rice, whatnot. And so you can kind of use that as a base point to say, "Hey, this looks really interesting. What about this?" And then we dive deeper and talk about what you're doing.

Jeff: Like, "We're doing a country concert."

Brandon: Okay, well, let's maybe not do Hawaiian. Let's stick over here and maybe do some southern food or something that matches the vibe. And then the conversation continues. Are there a lot of vegetarians there? Is this whatever? Okay, well, we're not going to do full barbecue. Right? And so it's really communication and conversation, having a set guide to get them to say, "Oh, that looks really interesting." And then talk about why that looks interesting. And what about the event ties all this together?

Jeff: Sure, right. And so do you have a meeting with folks and do they get to taste some of this food?

Brandon: I've done tastings before, yeah. Typically it's just usually done over the phone, or I'll meet in person if you want. It depends on the job, right? If it's a wedding, I'm 100% meeting with these people. We'll be doing tastings and things like that. They need to know what's actually happening. But yeah, a meeting is very, very important.

Jeff: So I would imagine if it's a wedding, the bride is 100% making the decision on what is being served.

Brandon: Absolutely. Yeah.

Jeff: So how does that change, I wonder? And I'm going to throw in some of my own stories here. But when you're dealing with an event committee for a fundraiser, have you seen some interesting debate amongst them about what they want to put on the menu?

Brandon: Oh, definitely. Oh, yeah. Everyone's got different tastes, right? And everyone's got different ideas of what they want to see there. And so trying to get kind of everyone reeled in is like herding cats sometimes.

Jeff: Oh, it is funny. I know. I was telling Brandon this story earlier. At our event in the past with our old caterer, there would be a couple years that would go through and I'd be like, "God, I don't know. I didn't really love that item." I just didn't love whatever element it was, whether it was a course or a passed appetizer or whatever. So finally I was talking to the caterer and they're like, "Why don't you come to the tasting next year?" I'm like, "You guys do a tasting?" So I go to my wife and I was like, "They do a tasting?" And she's like, "Yeah, my sister and I go every year." I'm like, no wonder.

Jeff: So I take another board member. There's two guys and two women that go to this thing. And this thing is fancy. We get there and they've got the menus laid out and the chefs are coming out with their appetizer ideas, their main course ideas. We're going to have these food stations -- these are what we're going to taste. And they're serving you drinks and you really have to pace yourself. Oh my God. It was so awesome. It's like a free gourmet meal.

Jeff: And I was like, okay, this is so much fun. We're turning this into an auction item. So this is free advice for anybody listening. We actually would auction off a spot at the tasting table for a following year's event. So you got to pick the menu for the following year. But it was interesting in the room with the four of us in these debates because you have picky eaters. You have people that don't like certain types of things, or the dish felt like it was so perfectly assembled. And then it's like, "We don't like goat cheese, so take that piece out." And this is going to taste terrible without goat cheese, kind of thing.

Jeff: So anyway, there's a little bit of that. And then there's just certain committee members that are cheap, right? And they don't want to spend the extra money. "Well, this menu is X dollars a person, and this menu is X minus 20%. Oh, let's go with the cheaper menu." No, let's not go with the cheaper menu. Let's let our guests enjoy the food. So there was a lot of that going on, and I'm sure you probably run into that.

Brandon: Definitely.

Jeff: Maybe in that case, you just sit on the sidelines, right, Brandon? Let them hash it out.

Kristen: Well, here's a case study for you. I was part of an event where I was the new event manager coming in, and we were looking to save costs. We weren't looking to serve the rubber chicken, but chicken was cheaper. And I said, "What if we had a nice chicken dish?" And the contact for the venue who'd been doing this event for years -- no lie -- scoffed. Outright scoffed at me. If she could have fired me, she probably would have. And she said, "There is no way that your guests will come to this event ever again if you serve chicken."

Jeff: What would you say in that scenario?

Brandon: That's a great question. I don't know what I would say. I would say that chicken is absolutely a dish that can be served. It's just how you prepare it. And so I think that's where tastings come in. I think a tasting is a great idea because if you can show a great chicken dish and show that this isn't just a plain old boneless, skinless chicken breast on a plate --

Jeff: Your Nashville hot chicken was a gigantic hit at my event, by the way.

Brandon: It was one of my signatures.

Jeff: Best chicken I've ever had. A tasty one. I guess that's how I'd respond. Have you had my Nashville hot chicken? Maybe you won't get fired.

Kristen: There were entire email chains about different cuts of steak and which ones we could afford that weren't going to be $150 a plate.

Jeff: I'd be honest with you, and I'm not turning this into a cooking show, but I think steak can be a little harder to get right.

Brandon: Oh, 100%. Absolutely.

Jeff: Because some people like it rare.

Kristen: That's why they wanted the most expensive steak.

Jeff: Everybody eats their chicken at the same temperature. Right? I mean, I don't know. To me, I love a good steak. Don't get me wrong. But I'm also like, that can be tricky.

Brandon: It can be very tricky. I've seen so many get picked up off the tables and sent back because they were overcooked, undercooked, you name it.

Jeff: Correct.

Brandon: Yeah. And when it comes off the grill, it's one temp. When it sits in a hotbox for 20, 30 minutes, an hour, the event gets delayed, and now it's just sitting, waiting. It's just hanging longer. You're risking overcooking.

Jeff: I know. Dangerous. Very dangerous.

Brandon: I know.

Jeff: And I'm a chicken thigh guy, which is way lower class than chicken breast, too.

Kristen: So I think that every event planner or event manager I know has had the nightmare of running out of food at their event and having to order in pizza or sandwiches. I think that's the top of everyone's mind because you want people to enjoy the food. You want to have enough food, but maybe you don't know until the last minute exactly how many people are coming to your event. We've talked a lot about last-minute RSVPs and ticket purchasers, and you don't want to turn people away from your event, but you also need to provide an accurate headcount for your caterer. So as the caterer, what advice would you give to event managers who are trying to dance that dance?

Brandon: Again, communication is key, right? It all goes back to that. And I think that events that go the most awry are the ones that don't have enough communication between the venue and the caterer back and forth. Obviously, the earlier you can get that headcount, the better. And I like to look at it as a scaling-down process as it gets closer to the event. So when you're first in talks -- "Hey, we've got 150 people coming, we think" -- and now we're a month out. "Hey, it's looking like we're getting a lot more ticket sales than we thought. It might be closer to 200. We're still not sure yet." Okay, great. From my perspective as a caterer, I'm already changing things in my mind of how I might execute on that event.

Brandon: I do stress from my end to my clients that at least four or five days out, give me as accurate a number as you possibly can. I never cook the exact amount of food I need. So if we've got a job for 100 people, I'm already -- the client doesn't know this -- but I'm already cooking for 110, 115 people. So if that number gets bumped up in the final hour, it's very rare that it's going to get bumped by more than 20%. There's something really wrong if your number is going 20 to 30 percent higher or lower than you expected it to be in the final hours. If it does, it does, and we've got to scramble on our end to make sure we've got the food for it. But giving that information to the caterer as you've got it and as early as you've got it is going to help them, as they have a lot of logistics from grocery shopping to prepping to cooking and everything along the way.

Brandon: I mean, there's no perfect answer for it except for just communicate, communicate, communicate.

Kristen: Yeah. And I think in most cases, what are you asking for, a 72-hour window?

Brandon: Yeah, generally. Three to four days is usually what I ask for.

Jeff: Yeah, and Kristen's right. It's tough, right? I mean, even at our event, I got people buying tables on Saturday morning for a Saturday night event. Oh, something fell through. We decided to come. Sure, but you can't eat. That's right. I tell Carrie -- Carrie, what's up? Did you tell Brandon how many people are coming? She's like, "We plan for an extra 30. We're fine."

Jeff: And where I thought that worked out better for us is because when you're ripping out a lot of the staff and a lot of the tables and chairs or anything else you're not using anymore, you have more flexibility in your budget to maybe go over a little bit. And you have a lot of food to eat if they don't show up and eat it.

Brandon: Correct. Yeah, I think padding on both ends, right? Like even the event you're just talking about, you guys already had factored an additional 20, 30 people beyond what you expected. And on my end, I was also padding it on my end as well. And so there's flexibility there. And I would rather have leftover food than have you be short.

Jeff: Yeah. And I did lose this battle. I don't win every battle in my charity -- I actually win few of them. But I wanted an after-party food menu, and Brandon was all set to make it. And that will always compensate for running out of food. And what was it? I wanted burgers and fries. Pretty much not even pizza. I wanted burgers and fries. I was like, that would be the amazing 11 p.m. after-party. And he's like, "Yeah, man, I'll whip that up, no problem." Of course. And then I have the board rolling in -- a couple of my relative board members that were like, "Killing that. It's not in the budget."

Jeff: That's okay. But think about that. That's another backup plan -- to have some cheap food that you serve as quote-unquote after-party food. And if people come and you run out of other types of food and they're still hungry, there you go. You've got that.

Brandon: Definitely.

Jeff: Look, I know there's a lot of really generous people out there that feed their volunteers the plated meal. You don't necessarily have to do that. You can have your caterer create either a separate menu for volunteers that's a little bit more economical, maybe buffet style. Or -- I mean, I've seen stacks of pizza boxes. It can be worth stepping that up a little and actually having your caterer do it. But I think that's another thing that can help you.

Kristen: Sure. Similarly, like that last event where we had a separate buffet line for the band, you could even do that for staff, right? Create a separate menu, even if it's not as fancy. You don't have to be slinging pizza boxes, but you can set up a separate line with some different food for your volunteers and your staff.

Jeff: Yeah, and I call it a staff menu. And it's not necessarily a downgraded menu, maybe just a different format. And I think that can definitely work out.

Jeff: Now, the interesting thing is with the band, obviously we hired a national band out of Nashville, so I got the list of everything they wanted. Down to the brand label of the Cokes and everything else.

Kristen: Yeah, that rider was fun.

Jeff: But they were blown away by the food service, so that ended up really good. Okay, so let's talk about -- we're going to wrap up here real quick because we're definitely going long on this one. Let's talk about some trends. We kind of touched through them throughout the entire podcast. But what we're seeing -- and we were just chatting about this in our Handbid weekly meeting -- we're seeing a trend towards the more casual types of events. So these are the more maybe stand-up, and I'm going to say buffet-table style, not buffet style, but where you're not necessarily going into a ballroom anymore. We're seeing more people doing food stations. We're seeing more people doing food trucks. It was brought up that now people are starting to see food trucks at weddings. I think that's interesting.

Brandon: I've done a few.

Jeff: Oh, yeah? So talk a little bit about that. Because you've evolved, I would imagine, some of the services you've provided because of that.

Brandon: Yeah, we did have our food truck at two different weddings. And the second one came from a guest that was at the first one. They were like, "This idea is fantastic. We want to do that." I definitely agree with you. I mentioned earlier that buffets are becoming more trendy. And I think that's right in line with what you're saying, that it's becoming more of a casual thing. That high-end, six-course plated dinner, I haven't seen around in a while. It's been a minute, and I think that people are realizing that you can have a casual feel, keep the price point a little bit lower, but that doesn't mean you necessarily need to sacrifice on the quality of food. Just the way that it's presented to you is different. You've got to get up and go get it, but you can still have high-quality food in more of a casual environment.

Jeff: And it doesn't have to come in the red checkered tray either, right? I mean, I've seen some really interesting events where they've gotten really creative with some of the ways they actually serve the food.

Brandon: Correct. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. There are a lot of different ways to present in the containers that you provide, whether it's disposable or non-disposable. Like you said, not just in a checkered boat.

Jeff: Yeah. Well, awesome. So thank you so much for attending this podcast with us. It's been a great conversation. I'm sure we're going to have a lot more to talk about as it relates to food. We are going to do an event, by the way, this year. As soon as I figure out what we're allowed to legally do, I'll give you a call, Brandon.

Brandon: Awesome. Look forward to it.

Kristen: I'm hungry.

Jeff: I know. I know. I'm waiting for the comments from you all that say, "Give us some menu ideas." We'll bring Brandon back on. Maybe that time we'll actually get some forks and knives out and taste some stuff.

Brandon: That'd be great.

Jeff: All right. So until next time, thank you guys for attending our Elevate Your Event podcast. We wish you all the best in your fundraising event, and we will talk to you soon.