Meet Chef Jay

We recently connected with Chef Jay and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Chef Jay , so happy to have you with us today and there is so much we want to ask you about. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others developed certain skills or qualities that we are struggling with can be helpful. Along those lines, we’d love to hear from you about how you developed your ability to take risk?

I develop the ability to take risk by realizing I can have more of a great outcome by just being myself. What I mean by this is taking a risk has its advantages and you can network with so many people by taking a risk. I don’t look at things like taking a risk; I look at life and my dreams and I take a chance at taking a risk and I know that will benefit me in the end.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’m Chef Jay and I have a catering company and I love to cook for others. This passion came from when I was seven years old. I remember one day I wanted to prepare my mom breakfast in bed; I made her breakfast and it didn’t turn out great but it was the thought that counted when she seen how much effort I put into cooking her breakfast. From that day forward I could never stop watching food network and I was so inspired to run the shots and run my own company. I have been cooking for ten years plus and been running my catering company since Febrauary 3, 2021. It has been truly a blessing to be able to do what I love to do. My goals and my dreams is to own a food truck and go to all the big events and have all new people try my food. Every year I give back by donating food containers to the homeless. I have been doing it for three years straight and it has been very inspiring to feed others. In the future I plan to open up more businesses after I get my food truck; I want to have charity events to give back to my community as well. I look forward to cooking and seeing how the strangers that I meet and the food that I have prepared for them. The looks on their face is so amazing and that’s what keeps me going. When I cook and when the customer tells me how good my food is ; I always get super excited. Overall I’m just happy and excited to be able to continue to live out my dreams.
I have no events but I recently just finish with my client on July 13th, 2024 and she renewed her vows. It was beautiful and I was so help she trusted me with the food part. Thank you for reading my story and I hope this inspires you to follow your dreams as well.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The most impactful skills in my journey is the quality of food I serve to my clients or customers. I create my meals with passion and love and when you cooking with love the food tastes so much better. Instead if you just cooking for money, your food will look like it was just thrown together. I continue to make sure each meal has my passion so that it can be tasted in everything I have cooked or served. One of the most hardest things that I have consistently been having a problem with is staying flexible for my customers . Catering isn’t a 9-5 job ; some days there will be no work, while other companies that I have to compete against are bringing into multiple clients. Working hours within my business pretty much works out for me. I’m really trying to work on consistency clients to continue to build my business up. The advice I would give to someone who wants to be a catering chef is know your target audience, choose your service style, save money, use your signature dish, and most of ALL prep like a professional to save yourself some time. Finally, the most important thing about running a catering business is paying attention to every detail. What I mean by this is paying attention to your setup of the food, the smallest things matters the most. The presentation of every item must correlate with each other and fill in gaps and add candles and beautiful items to make your buffet table beautiful.

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

My ideal client is people that have businesses already. For example, if cater to a bank or a huge business which would bring in more profit and bigger clientele. They will probably require catering services from small meetings to weekly lunches. Some of my clients comes from social media and often times I connect with people from other events and networks to build my clientele.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: ChefJayGoodEats
• Facebook: ChefJayGoodEats