Natalie Sorensen Fall 2019 Blog

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by Natalie Sorensen, November 26, 2019

In October I started my own small business, Natalie Marie’s private catering. I have always been passionate about creating an experience for people to enjoy great food and connect with each other. This business gives me the artistic freedom to create product and events for small groups.

A recent event that I coordinated was for my mother’s birthday, where I prepared a five-course meal for a group of 15 of her closest friends. This event was inspired by my recent travels to Barga, Tuscany. The dishes and techniques were taught to me by my host who was the agricultural chef of Tuscany. After the event, her friends expressed their enjoyment of the experience. Some of them had asked me if they could hire me to cultivate a similar event.  Natalie Marie’s private catering took off from there and inspired me to get my business started!

I am now working towards my largest event to date. Currently, I am catering an event for 150 guests in January. I will be providing canapes, hors d’oeuvres, charcuterie boards, and desserts. This event has given me the opportunity to understand all the details that go into special events and catering. For the past few weeks, I have been putting together my food costs, inventory lists, recipe tastings/ experimentation, shopping for product, and coordinating meetings with the clients.

I have been greatly inspired by my banquets course this quarter with Chef Masse. He has been such an amazing resource, and I have learned a great amount from him and his class. In banquets we learned how to prepare courses for 30-50 covers. In addition, I learned to manage my production time, experiment with plating, and how to calculate the amount of product needed. I am able to take the knowledge and experience I’ve learned from my banquets course and apply it to my own business. I am very excited to see where it takes me next. The support of Kendall College Trust has been absolutely amazing. I have grown so much over this past year and look forward to updating you on my growing business!

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