Adam Torres and Tiffany Darrell discuss Mega Mix Expo.
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Show Notes:
Listen to Mega Mix Expo coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres and Tiffany Darrell, Owner of Tiffany’s Catering, explore Tiffany’s Catering and the upcoming Mega Mix Expo event at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California.
About Tiffany’s Catering
Tiffany’s Catering is the premier one stop shop full service catering for any event and any occasion. Serving over 14 different cuisines of comfort food with an upscale twist. Specializing in American, BBQ, Caribbean, European, Italian, Latin, Mediterranean, Asian and Chef Inspired Fusion Cooking! They also offer delectable and delicious Vegetarian, Vegan, and Gluten Free Menu options. Their company is known for outstanding food, exceptional personalized service, and memorable events.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to apply. All right, so today I have Tiffany Daryl on the line, and she is the founder and owner over at Tiffany’s Catering.
Tiffany, welcome to the show Oh, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. All right, Tiffany. So I’m excited. I know this is our first time talking. However, I did get word that you’re going to be at the Megamix Expo that Tony and his team are hosting over at the Santa Anita Park on March 12th and 13th.
Me and Mission Matters, we’re going to be there. We’re going to be doing interviews and we’re going to be doing some of the media coverage around the event. So just to make sure my info is not wrong, you’re going to be there, right? Absolutely. We’re going to be there both days. And we are going to be showcasing all the services that we do.
So people need to stop by because we’re going to have all kinds of treats that they can take. Oh, dang. Yeah, and we will have food. Samples as well as what kind of samples? Hold up. What do you mean? I’m going to be by the booth for sure. But now it’s before lunch over here for me, what kind of things are you bringing?
I am going to be doing a Tuscan themed set up. And so we are going to have some Tuscan appetizers as well. Some desserts for, for my bakery as well. So they can get both a savory and. Amazing. And a little birdie told me maybe, isn’t that, isn’t this like a special day for you too or?
It is. March 12th is my birthday. Oh, take that. Hold up. So you can’t, so what you’re saying. I’m like, but you can’t bring your own birthday cake. That’s wrong. No, I’m just like. You know what? If they decide to surprise me with something, I’ll take it. I’m going to tell Tony, Tony’s going to hear this. Tony, you better have a cake over there for notice I’m just trying to get some cake right now.
Well, if they just send me a shout out because I am going to be by the stage, then hey, I love a small shout out for my birthday. How did you get started, Tiffany, as a business owner and like in this business? Like, were you always like cooking or were you always a business owner? , like you get to Tiffany’s catering?
Well, I always knew from a very young age that I was going to be a chef. And so food was kind of like my everything, my world, my love, my passion. And so I actually went to two culinary schools. I also studied abroad in Florence, Italy, at the Apicius Culinary Cooking School there.
But then when I came back I finished my degree in Hospitality Restaurant Management. I actually started working for Red Lobster as a service manager and a bar manager and a culinary manager for about five years. So I did corporate for about five years, but all the while I was catering on the side.
Wow. And Catering became such a huge part of what I was doing. And I decided to walk away from my job and to pursue Tiffany’s catering full time. And that was back in 2008. Wow. Hold on 2008. So you’re saying, hold on, you’re saying, so the whole world is melting down right now, right? It’s 2008. Like financial crisis, housing crisis, people are losing their homes and then you go to start a business.
Did people think you were crazy? They did. How did you, but how did you, but how did you push past that though? Like, cause that’s not easy. Like in all reality, like people were in pain during the, we can laugh a little bit now, but people were in pain. Like they were losing homes. They were very, very situated.
I’m saying this for the younger, younger generation. They’re like, what are they talking about? It was painful, right? So how did you, how did you push past? Well, you know I had a lot of support, especially from my family. My mom was my hugest support system, and we would go, we would feed people. But the main thing, and I even learned that through COVID, because we were able to push past through COVID.
And those are two huge major hits for anybody in the hospitality business was the recession and COVID. But I learned that. No matter what, people will always get together and people will always need to eat. So I was in place of necessity. After a while. So we were still cooking and we were still able to do events.
We were still able to move forward. It wasn’t as great in 2008, but still push past. Yeah, we still had people who needed our services. So we were able to continue, but it’s difficult, but you still have to write it out. That’s a part of business is writing it. Yeah, talk to me about some food. What kind of things do you specialize in?
You mentioned Tuscan for the Megamix Expo, but just in general, talk to me a little bit about the food I prepare for lunch in a little bit. Get me hungry over here, Tiffany. I hope I’m not too hungry because we’re not there for some reason, but we do everything. We do over 16 different types of cuisines, everything from barbecue to Mexican to Mediterranean to Italian to French cuisine, whatever cuisine.
Basically, my chef and I were trained professional chefs and we took in every type of cuisine and in every type of in the industry, like full service or, you know, small service parties to parties of yesterday. I fed almost 2000 people. So yeah, you name it when it comes to the food. And we can do it.
What’s one of your favorite dishes that you’re known for? And I know there’s a bunch of them and I know you can do any cuisine, but what are you known for? What do you like? You know what? We always get a lot of requests for either our barbecue or for our appetizers, we do a lot of cocktail parties and we make a lot of different appetizers and they’re all very well seasoned, very well presented.
And so a lot of people ask for our Mac and cheese bites. we do Maryland style homemade crab cakes. We make a lot of different vegan and vegetarian dishes as well. As far as like the barbecue If you didn’t bring up the barbecue, I was going to ask you because I’m a big barbecue fan.
So go ahead. Talk to you about the barbecue too. He’s definitely a pit master for sure. He definitely gets down on the cue. We actually make our own marinades. We make our own sauces. We actually have a smoker, so we smoke the meats and he’s great when it comes to brisket, and ribs, and tri tip, and even seafood.
One of my loves is seafood. That’s my favorite food to eat. And we barbecue seafood, so we’ve barbecued crab legs, we’ll barbecue salmon, we barbecue shrimp, and it’s just delicious. So those are the things that we’re known for is doing our own barbecue as well as making really flavorful bites.
Yeah, and you’re located in Monterey Park, right? California. What areas do you serve? We serve all over. So yes, we’re located in Monterey Park, which I feel is very centrally located because we’re right there at the 60 freeway and the 710 and the 10 is all right there. But we go all over.
We’ve gone up to Chula Vista. We go up to the mountains. We’ve gone all the way to Palm Springs. It doesn’t really matter as long as. people are in need of food, we can be there. So we service all over. I would say like a 60 mile radius would be preferable, but we have gone beyond 60 miles of our location in Monterey Park.
And I also see that there’s a whole bakery component to this as well. Maybe get into that a little bit. Cause was looking on your website and I see Tiffany’s bakery and man, that was getting me going too. And I don’t even have a sweet tooth, but it looked delicious. Thank you. Yes. So I actually started out in Monterey park opening up a bakery.
Oh, wow. And yeah, so we were open at the time seven days a week. You can walk in, get cupcakes muffins, fresh homemade bread high end pastries, but we, that’s been, especially after COVID closed the bakery. So it’s just pure catering and we do online. bakery moving forward. So you can order all your desserts, all your pastries for whatever event that you’re having.
And we will deliver it set up for you. If you need full service set up for it, we can do that. And we do everything from 3d artwork cakes. We can do custom cakes. We do wedding cakes. We also do mini desserts. That’s very popular with us. People always order our little mini desserts. And We do cookies.
We do everything. And it’s all detailed and it’s all custom. So whatever theme that they have, whatever flavors that they want, that’s what we’re doing for this client is whatever it is that they need or want, they can get. What do you think sets Tiffany’s catering apart from, you know, some of the other caterers out there?
Not talking bad about anybody, but you know what I mean? What do you think sets them out? What do you think makes you special? Well, we’re unique because, we are one stop shop and you can get pretty much all services that you need for your event through us. It’s all in house. When it comes to the cooking, we actually make everything from scratch.
We pride ourselves and. Fresh, quality, chef driven meals. When it comes to rentals, I own a rental company. I do party rentals as well. So if you need table settings, you need tables, chairs, lens, whatever it is that you need, decorations, centerpieces, flowers, balloons, it doesn’t matter. We can set up from beginning to end, including the take down and break down your event.
So, I think that kind of makes us unique because a lot of, you know, catering companies may specialize in one type of food. Maybe they’re just into, barbecue, or they only do soul food, or they only do Italian or whatever it is. We’re doing multiple types of cuisine. And we offer the setup and decoration and event planning and we have the bakery component.
So I think for us, that’s what makes us unique. You’re not dealing with multiple vendors. You’re not dealing with so many different hands in the pot to get your event done. All you do is come to Tiffany’s Catering and we will make sure you have a successful event. Fantastic. Well, Tiffany, this has been a lot of fun having you on the show today and learning more about what you do over at Tiffany’s Catering.
That being said, if somebody wants to follow up and learn more and connect with you and your team for their event and for some of this delicious food that I’m looking at the website on how do they connect? Oh, well, they can go to the website. I have actually two different websites for the catering.
It’s www.tiffanyscatering.net, and then for the. Rentals are the party rentals. It’s www. tiffanystabletop. com. They can order online as well for the bakery. When they go to my website and then if they’re on social media, they can also click to link to those websites. My Instagram is tiffanystabletop.
com. T I F F A N Y S underscore bakery. And I do have a Facebook page as well, and that’s Tiffany’s Catering forward slash C A. And they can call me as well personally. Fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll put some of those links , in the show notes. So you can just click on the link and head right on and check out what Tiffany’s up to.
And speaking of the audience, this is your 1st time with Mission Matters, and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re doing new content, releasing new interviews, and hopefully bringing you new inspiration. To help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Tiffany, hey, I’m looking forward to seeing you at the Megamix Expo. For everybody that wants to go check us out and, and meet us up there. It’s megamix expo.com. Again, megamix expo.com. Real easy to find. And the event’s gonna be March 12th through 13th, and that’s gonna be at the Santa Anita Park.
And that’s in Arcadia, California. It’s a Beautiful racetrack. There’s a beautiful mountains behind there, and it’s just really a picturesque event. So come on out there. I look forward to saying hello and whoever comes out and again, Tiffany, thanks for coming on. Oh, thank you so much for having me.
It was awesome. Thank you.