My Wild Ride on a Carousel

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WEDDING CAKE My first partner, Roy King, was a joyful guy but also what I like to call a pat man, meaning that he had special ways of doing things and if there were any changes to what he had planned, he would get all flustered. One of our first jobs was a wedding at a local temple in Hollywood and as suggested they delivered on time and placed things exactly where Roy wanted them placed. The only thing they neglected to tell him or me was that they made a brand new cake table but it was slightly wider than usual. Roy worked in the kitchen setting up food service and I worked on the floor as a captain. So on this occasion. I did my job on the floor and Roy sent out each course from the kitchen as planned. The wedding cake was delivered by the baker and as Roy was finished with food service he began decorating the cake table, which was approximately four feet long on and casters. When Roy got done with his decorations and flambé it was beautiful. It was always planned that when Roy heard the band leader start “Here comes the Bride” he would roll the flaming table out across the banquet hall to a place where the cake cutting ceremony would take place. This evening, after dinner was served and tables were cleared of any debris, I gave the orchestra leader the ok to start the music. As the music played, I looked toward the kitchen but there was no Roy. At first I thought maybe he is not quite finished with his décor, the leader played a second chorus - still no Roy, I rushed to the kitchen, which meant that there now was no cake, no captain and now no Roy. I found Roy almost in tears trying to force the cake table through the narrow door. That little extra width just wouldn’t fit, so I suggested that we go out the kitchen door onto the street and wheel this flaming wedding cake a half a block and deliver it in the front door. That all worked fine except the mothers of the bride and groom were in the kitchen looking for us and were starting to panic. But we finally entered the front door of the banquet hall with Roy pushing this flaming cake table and perspiring, and I swear his Tux was shrinking. Little did we know that due to all the wheeling on the rough street, the locks on the legs of the table had opened. As the crowd was giving a large round of applause, and Roy triumphantly wheeled the table across the slick wooden floor, the cake table collapsed. A shriek went up from the crowd and echoed across the room. The cake thank God was on a wooden platter and the table was covered in a silky type material. So the cake slid on to the shiny floor across the hall almost back to the kitchen. The cake was not damaged and never touched the floor, but we all had to scramble to put out the flames. After a few weeks we were invited to dinner with the parents of the bride and they were very generous with nice comments and we all had a good laugh. THE LARGEST CATERING EVENT IN HISTORY Six months later, while sitting in our little three room Burbank office and reading the LA Times, I came across a story stating that a new shopping plaza was being built in San Diego, California and a Grand Opening was planned to benefit The Children's Hospital. The anticipated guest count was to be 25,000! The anchor stores like Broadway, Buffam’s and others paid all costs for the evening, so all ticket sales were given to the charity. Guests paid $25 for food, drinks and entertainment. The entertainment for the evening was Ms. Peggy Lee, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and the Mickey Finn band. Roy was convinced that I had lost my mind for even considering bidding! We knew nothing about an event of this size – how much food to order, the number of staff. But I figured we had no houses, no money and no serious bank accounts so what can they take from us if we blew it? So remembering the words of my former boss, “Say yes and then figure out a way to do it”, we bid for the opening. About two weeks later, the meeting planner called saying how pleased she was with our proposal and that she was bringing all the reps from the anchor stores to meet with us at our facility on Monday. Now even I started to sweat, as we had no kitchen facilities and no trucks, and of course Roy started to panic saying that they would send us out of town on a rail. He suggested that we drop our bid. I suggested that we give it a little thought. I went outside and saw Sorrentino’s Restaurant right across the driveway from our little office and as usual, a plan started forming in my mind. I went over to see George the owner and persuaded him to let us use his banquet room as a front for the big meeting and agreed that in return he could provide all alcoholic beverages and share in bar revenue. But Roy was still not happy pointing out that there was no Carousel Catering only Sorrentino’s. We had about $400 in the bank and I used every penny of it to rent 12 panel trucks and found a person that made stick-on magnet signs reading Carousel Catering with the phone number and plastered those on the vans and we were ready. When the meeting planner and all the big wigs arrived they saw all the vans outside Sorrentino’s, the big banquet hall and somehow we pulled off the illusion. The meeting went very well. They signed our proposal and gave us a check for $20,000, and the planning began. With the down payment, we provided 247 buffet stations, 96 bars, and 600 floor personal from wherever we could get them. Gas stations, shoe stores, restaurants and of course staffing agencies. Each buffet was fully self-contained with all the food. And in total, enough food to feed the country of Bangladesh! For example, we served something like 650,000 hot and cold hors d’oeuvres! We had 72 chefs working 72 hours straight in rotating shifts in tents provided by and on the shopping center. We had a very successful event, although we ended up making almost no money. It was said to have been the largest catering event of its kind ever performed – and most importantly, it put us on the map. We were tired but happy that we pulled it off. While cleaning up all the mess, including about 250,000 cocktail napkins, two guys came to me very drunk and asked if I could show them where the restrooms were and I did. One guy saw Herb Alpert and went for an autograph while the other drunk guy went to the Port-a-Potty. Unfortunately he stepped in just before the truck hauling the trailer with the Port-a-Potties pulled out. Apparently, he sat down in San Diego and wound up still asleep on the toilet in Santa Ana. We received some notoriety for planning this event and one of my TV interviews before the event itself was The Joey Bishop Show. Joey wanted to have us on his show and to provide a mockup of one of our crudité displays, but Joey was not so pleasant. He wanted to just make a joke of it and made it clear that he did not believe that we could set up so many stations. At one point, he picked up a black olive from the table and asked me how many olives will you be using Mr. Jones. I was so mad I blurted out 350,000 and he looked aghast, I thought to myself I lied on TV, but who will count the olives. Some months later I received a call from a rep of an olive company in Italy who wanted to give us all the olives we needed for the event. And all they wanted was a mention with a card on each station. Those olives lasted for 10 years. After getting so much press from local television, radio and newspapers, Carousel, Inc. was starting to be looked at as a serious catering service and we began getting calls from representatives of Motown, Elizabeth Taylor, David Bowie, Dianna Ross, Michael Jackson and many more.