Smart digital for Businesses
I’m Gregory from Sissi Fabulous Food and I’m #YOUREVENTPRO
This week we are interviewing Gregory Schaad-Jackson who together with his mother Sissi have created Sissi Fabulous Food, a London-based boutique catering company that offers cosmopolitan and delicious food cooked with the best ingredients. Gregory explains how Sissi was born and how they have adjusted the business to this unusual time.
Business description: Event/party catering in and around London, as well as Europe ( Geneve, Saint-Tropez, Vienna, Sotogrande)
Current job: Sissi Fabulous Food Executive Chef & Operations Director
One word that best describes how you work Personably
My greatest success in life is Catering the PAD London Art Fair for 10 consecutive years
My biggest fear is bad quality chocolate
My role model is Bill Gates
My favourite movie is The Great Escape
My comfort food is Gianduja
First of all, tell us something about you and your business.
We are a family business, with our founder & mother Sissi still very much involved since the inception in 2003, that specialises in private party catering as well as corporate and art events. Victoria, my sister trained with London’s best party planners and joined us in 2015. I joined in 2008 after having trained in London at the Savory Grill with Marcus Wareing and in New York with Gordon Ramsay, having switched from a career in Management Consulting. We like to have a personal relationship with our clients as well as with our staff, and as a result, all invest our heart and soul both into the planning of parties as well as the cooking of the food. We firmly believe that this personal touch differentiates us from many other caterers. Furthermore, as we have lived in many countries and are ourselves Swiss, Austrian and American we can also relate, share common values and understand the tastes of our clients.
How did you adjust your business in this unusual time?
We feel it is important to be flexible at all times, and especially now, both in terms of budgets and in what we can offer in terms of products and services. As the restrictions imposed by the government are constantly being increased, clients are no longer able to have large parties. We have therefore launched an online grocery store for our clients, offering many of our most popular traditional dishes as easy to reheat ready meals. We also offer a range of wines and pantry items such as our Great Taste Award-winning Granola. We are adding cocktail mixers and elegant dinner party dishes to this.
We have also launched a Neapolitan style sourdough pizza pop up service as well as a Mobile Espresso Bar for outdoor events such as weddings or private parties, or markets.
For clients who still want to organise a fun and original social event around food, we are offering socially distanced cooking lessons for up to 5 people (6 being the current maximum at the time of writing) in our Clapham atelier followed by a dinner in our tasting room.
Maybe versatile would be a better word than flexible!
How did you manage to keep your existing clients loyal and engage with the new ones with the recent restrictions?
We have always demonstrated a can-do attitude and so have gotten a reputation to make events happen for our clients even if they come up at short notice or if the task seems impossible! As a result, we have some lovely and loyal clients who keep coming back to us over the years. We have been so grateful for these relationships. Since the lockdown, we have been posting cooking videos for inspiration on our social media pages, and are writing regular updates on our newsletter via which we inform our existing clients of our new products and services. We will offer our existing clients a recommendation reward in the form of one of their favourite desserts from our menu.
As #EVENTPRO, what do you think it’s going to be the next big thing in the catering industry?
I would like to say food trucks, but that’s nothing new.. I think maybe dinner party kits, as these have been around but have not taken off.. now with increased connectivity, these kits could be delivered to various guests who then easily prepare the food and they connect with the other guests and hosts to have a virtual dinner party – I am traditionalist though and still love the buzz of a real party taking place under one roof!
Tell us your trick to have a good work/free time balance in your day.
My mother always had an Austrian saying, which was: “do not put off until tomorrow, what can be done today”. As a result, we are a family of night owls and will work late into the night to finish any planning or work so that the following day we have more free time or at least time to react to what the day throws us!
What is your favourite recipe to cook and your secret ingredient?
My favourite recipe to cook is Truffle Linguine (fresh linguine obvs.), in under 5 min and my secret ingredient is tartufata, a wonderful aromatic truffle and mushroom paste we get from one of our specialist suppliers!
Now please fill the gap about your five pro tips:
- Your golden rule in the kitchen taste everything & season appropriately
- How to achieve your goals: set goals, plan a strategy, plan a backup, implement it. Then if you fail, take a break, reassess and try to revise the original goal to make it more realistic. It is ok to be 2nd best.
- Best place to recharge: Nature/countryside
- A sport to keep you fit Vinyasa flow yoga
- A game for your brain: flat pack furniture assembly
Follow @sissifabulousfood
At Wegiveit we help businesses to navigate the digital transformation adjusting their Brand Strategy during this unusual time, any questions contact us.