Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Zaldivar.
Hi Lisa, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
In 2007 I was working as a sales consultant for a medspa and the company went out of business. My husband asked me what I was going to do next and told me that I should do something that I loved . I had always loved entertaining and cooking for my friends and family and I was tired of my destiny being in other people’s hands, so I decided to use my severance pay to start my own catering business. What a leap of faith that was!! I convinced the philanthropic group called the “Golddiggers” that I was a member of to let me cater the dinner meetings we had once a week when the previous caterer quit. I lied and said I had been catering for years and they bought it and let me cater the meetings. That went well and before you knew it the members were hiring me to cater their private parties. After that, one of the girls that used to babysit for my 2 older kids became a pharmaceutical rep and she hired me to cater all of her lunches, which was like 5 lunches a month. That went well and my name got passed around the pharmaceutical reps and before you knew it I was catering for 5 different reps 20-25 lunches a month. That went on for about 5 years and then pharm rep budgets got cut and the lunches were less lucrative so I started picking up hours in a kosher catering company. A friend of a friend of mine by the name of Les Harrow was the head chef at Executive Catering, which is the largest kosher caterer in South Florida, and he hired me to work in the cold prep stations. I do not think I was prepared for what was about to happen to me. I had never worked in a commercial kitchen as a chef before. The atmosphere was super intense. Perfection was demanded and being slow got you called out by everyone. I honestly did not think I was going to make it in this kitchen. It was there where I met Akensville Paulville “Kenny”. He was my much younger station manager. He was from Haiti and he was the one that helped me navigate this brand new high pressure world that I now found myself a part of. Up until now I had only catered lunches and house parties (and 1 wedding when I was 8 months pregnant, but that’s another story for later)
Now I was part of a team that was catering super high end bar and bat mitzvahs, lavish weddings that looked like they should be in a movie and other high end events where no expense was spared! The food we were kicking out of that kitchen was FANCY! it was there in that kitchen that I learned how to scale up my business, and the art of presentation. And make no mistake, it is an art. Chef Les I guess saw something in me and he took me under his wing and showed me how to plate like a rockstar, garnish impeccably and be able to do that for events from 20 people to 500 people. He taught me how to properly hold food so that when it finally gets to the client it tastes and looks just as good as it did the moment you first made it. These are skills that you must have if you are going to be successful in this business of catering and I will forever be grateful to all the chefs that I worked with in the Executive kitchen.
While I was working for Executive, I also still had my own catering business, which is not kosher, that I was working. But now I was incorporating all the new plating and techniques that I had learned at Executive into my menus. And that was a game changer! I added the tagline “ elegant food for everyone” and I started getting more high end events and weddings and now my catering company was really taking off. When I had bigger events, I hired Kenny to come work for me, so some days I was his boss and some days he was mine. I still hire Kenny to this day to help me with the weddings and bigger events that we do. Good help is hard to find in the catering world and Kenny is the very best.
Eventually, I left Executive because I could no longer work for both companies, and because I needed 3 hand surgeries for all the overwork and stress that I had put on my right hand working for both companies for years. So I took a hiatus, had the hand surgery, recovered and then went back to work at my own company, Truly Tasteful Events. Things were going great. I was getting consistent work and each job paid better than the last. And then Covid hit. I was able to ride out the pandemic at Miami’s Best Pizza., where I took a job as a manager. Luckily for me, I was able to survive covid. Most of my catering friends were not so lucky. It was very sad.
In the last quarter of 2021 I left Miami’s Best Pizza and went back to Truly Tasteful Events full time. To my surprise business was GREAT! People were throwing parties and that meant business. I started picking up big clients like the city of Coral Gables, Pinecrest Police, Pinecrest Parks and Recs, Carver elementary, Baptist Health, Coral Gables Sr high school, and I started Private Cheffing for my wealthier clients and things just kept rolling from there.
Today I cater everything from weddings at Deering and Thalatta Estates to Thanksgiving lunch for all of Carver elementary to birthday parties to baby showers. You name it, we do it. And we do it all from rentals to dessert. We are a full service catering company. We’ve been in business now for almost 20 years and I’m looking forward to many more years of making “elegant food for everyone”
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, it has definitely not been a smooth road. I had two kids under the age of 10 and was newly married to my second husband when I started Truly Tasteful Events. And within a year of starting the catering company, I got pregnant and had my third child, while my husband was in paramedic school and working for Miami Dade Fire Rescue as a firefighter. We had our hands very full. My 3rd child Zander literally grew up in a high chair in the kitchen. I remember trying to kick out the pharmaceutical rep lunches while trying to take care of a baby at the same time. I can’t even believe what I accomplished during the first 5 years of starting Truly Tasteful Events. I don’t think I slept very much.
When my older kids Nikolas and Kaylyn got into high school I hired them to help me set up the tables, chairs and linens And to wash dishes, which they absolutely hated! When they got a little older than that, I hired them and their friends to be servers at the parties and I taught them how to prep hors d’oeuvres.
Finding good staff that was available when you needed them was also difficult. But after working in the kosher kitchen I made alot of new very talented “kitchen” friends and that has actually been one of the biggest reasons why I have been able to grow my business the way I have, because I have great help. And speaking of great help, when my dad retired I hired him to start making my hors d’oeuvres for me. He needed extra money and I needed someone very reliable to help me at a moments notice. He loves repetition, and he’s a perfectionist, so he’s perfectly equipped to make me 100 of the same hors d’oeuvre with zero problems it’s a win-win.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Truly Tasteful Events?
Truly Tasteful Events is a full service catering company. We do everything from rentals to staffing to catering. We cater both high end weddings and events for large gatherings to small intimate dinners with Private chef services. We specialize in giving top notch service with high end food for prices that won’t break the bank. Our motto is “Elegant food for everyone.“
Everyone should have the best that life has to offer and that is what we aim to deliver, every single time.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
I grew up on Key Biscayne in the 1970’s.
I had an amazing childhood out on that island. I think my most favorite memory is when I got to decorate my bike and ride it in the bicentennial 4th of July parade. I was 5 years old. My dad took me up to the parade to line up to start the procession and it started raining so they postponed the parade and my dad and I waited. It out in the Donut Gallery restaurant. I was crying because I thought the parade was going to be cancelled and I wasn’t going to be able to ride my bike. The waitress at the Donut Gallery gave me donuts and sat at the window with me and my dad, promising me that the rain would stop and the parade would go on.
And then it did. The rain stopped and I got to ride my decorated bike in the parade and throw candy to all my neighbors and friends while my dad ran the length of the parade next to me!
Best Day Ever 😊
Contact Info:
- Website: Trulytastefulevents@gmail.com
- Instagram: @trulytastefulevents
