2020 was not the year to be in the catering business. Just ask Argyle Catering owners Ryan Davis and Colby Davis. Last year was Colby’s first year in an ownership role and the timing was off, to say the least. Chef Ryan Davis says the business suffered a 40% loss in 2020 compared to the previous year.
“And that,” he added, “was with a normal first quarter.”
Ryan approximates 20,000 meals that were not served as a result of restrictions and subsequent cancelations. “When the governor shut down social gatherings in mid-March, we had 20,000 mouths to feed that just dropped off,” he said.
It was only when Gov. Mike Parson’s order took effect that the gravity of the situation began to sink in. The cancelations began and the Davis brothers were forced to implement a cancelation policy for the first time, which applied to only those whose food had already been ordered.
“There was a two or three-month period where no money was coming in, but still going out,” Ryan said.
Argyle Catering was forced to shift gears to supplement its waning income. After scrambling and brainstorming, “Plan B” was implemented.
By March of last year, Argyle Catering began gauging interest on social media for the delivery of family meals for five. “We got really lucky,” said Davis. “We got really good support from the community.”
Those meals were delivered at a cost of $11 each, sold in increments of five. On Sundays, secretary Lesley Knoll would post the menu for the upcoming week on social media and take orders. Family-style meals would then be delivered to houses, parking lots, or “wherever they wanted to meet us,” said Ryan.
Colby said he did not mind the deliveries, saying he got to see a lot of the countryside on his trips. Ryan estimated an average of 100 lunches were served each weekday. The family lunch deliveries were “kind of a pain,” but the Davis brothers were able to develop a pretty good system.
They are still being questioned when those lunches will come back. Ryan says they may consider doing them a couple of times a week, depending on whether business lunches come back.
“Once things started opening back up, we started doing individual packed meals for business meetings and such,” Ryan said.
He had been anticipating fewer state meetings and luncheons, however, expecting that once the “forced trial” of working at home had been implemented, it would continue. That turned out not to be the case since Gov. Parson has since ordered at-home workers back to the office on May 17.
Another big help, Ryan says, was the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) providing disaster relief in Jefferson City. A couple of times a week, 60 meals were delivered to those workers on Militia Drive. Ryan says this helped supplement their income quite a bit.
Once the governor opened things back up in May of last year, weddings started coming back in but with fewer attendees. Ryan said they were doing maybe one wedding per weekend, where in the past it was three or four and sometimes five each Saturday. The same was true with funeral dinners, where before Argyle Catering might serve 150 meals, attendance might be limited to 25 dinners.
“At that point in time, anything helps,” Ryan said.
Aside from the limited dinners, event meals are not being served in the traditional buffet style, necessitating workers to plate the food to avoid extra hands on the utensils. Argyle Catering recently held a graduation dinner at which the Davis brothers were required to serve the food rather than setting out a traditional buffet.
Cancelation of the Capitol City Productions dinner theater events was yet another blow to Argyle Catering. Fortunately, the dinner theater was one of the first to reopen, according to Ryan, but “they had to conform a lot, space the tables out, masks, hand sanitizers, gloves.” Further, a machine was used routinely to disinfect the venue. Again, attendance and the number of meals served were significantly decreased.
Fortunately, the pandemic did not result in layoffs at Argyle Catering. Ryan, Colby, and secretary Lesley Knoll are the primary employees. Part-time help on the weekends was not so much in demand, however.
Shortages were not really an issue for the Davis brothers. When the March closure took place, there was more demand across the board for to-go containers, plastic flatware, etc. “Luckily our sales rep had the forethought to warn us that everything was getting bought up, so we bought up in advance,” said Ryan.
Colby reminded him not to forget the toilet paper and lack of hand sanitizer. “We ended up using grain alcohol from the distiller, adding essential oils to make it smell better,” Colby said,
“Yeah,” agreed Ryan. “We tried to get hand-sanitizers for all the vans, and they were like ‘yeah right.’”
Asked whether staff has been vaccinated for COVID-19, Ryan said the vaccination was “on the back of his stove, not the front,” but that he will get it.
“I feel like other people needed it more than me,” he said. “I will get it. I’ll do anything to get back to normal.”
Both Ryan and Colby are optimistic about a return to normal. “I think things are starting to come back,” Ryan said. “January and February (this year) were down 60 percent from 2020. March began a comeback and we’re getting closer to normal. Until sizes of events come up and the luncheons come up, we won’t ever be back to what we were running at.”
Ryan went to culinary school at the suggestion of Tom Brunnert at the Argyle Pub while he was working there as a young man. He ended up doing an extensive one-year program in California while working at AT&T during his meager time off. “When I was in high school, nobody really talked about culinary school, it was only when the Food Network came out that everybody wanted to be a chef,” said Ryan with a smile.
Anyone with aspirations to be a chef should work in the industry first, Ryan advised. “You have to be committed to your job,” he said. “When everybody else is playing, you’re working; everybody is going to the river, you’re firing up a stove; everybody is going to a wedding, you’re doing the cooking.”
In addition to his experience at Wolfgang Puck Catering, Ryan has done his share of restaurant work, including a stint at J. Bucks in St. Louis and an externship at the Ritz Carlton in Las Vegas, Nev., where he got his start in catering. When the catering business slowed down, he was transferred to the restaurant. When their catering business picked back up, the restaurant did not want to let him go. “Being from Osage County, I had a pretty good work ethic, and you don’t get that out there,” Ryan said.
He chose to move back to Argyle in 2006 because of his father’s declining health. His father, Henry, enjoyed improved health for a while, which allowed them to spend some good time together in the years before Henry’s death in 2011.
His first foray in catering in Argyle was when he was asked to cater a wedding. The family wanted to use their own beef. After consideration, Ryan bought about $5,000 worth of equipment and it just sort of snowballed from there.
“We worked out of the pub for a while until the present building was constructed in 2007,” he added.
Ryan tells a story of an early catering disaster from those days. He was still cooking out of the pub and had a 600-person wedding. The pub had only a six-burner stove and one oven and was not up to the challenge. Ryan had just bought two double-stack convection ovens but only had four cambros (insulated boxes for the transport of food). They now have 35-40 cambros.
There was not enough space for all the hot food in the cambros. The oven had to be on-site for rolls so Ryan decided to leave the entrée (pork chops with red wine sauce) inside the oven for transport.
“I get to Koeltztown and realize I didn’t duct tape the door shut and pulled over,” he recounted. “It was a disaster.”
He jumped over to check the damage and slid in the sauce that had spilled all over the floor. Off went his shoe, into the sauce went his sock, and worst of all, his pants split all the way down.
“I had to go to the venue with no socks, pants split with an apron over them,” he said with a chuckle.
“I get a call – bring as many towels as you can get and a pair of pants and some socks,” Colby recalled.
“We’ve been pretty lucky with things running smoothly,” said Ryan. “We had a lot of time to work into our present volume of business.”
“Every mistake offers a chance to learn,” Colby added.
By the same token, adversity and challenges bring with them the opportunity to improvise and adapt. The folks at Argyle Catering have done both during the last 12 months.