Crisp Catering Switches Gears to Deliver Family Meals

Joe Thompson has been in the restaurant industry for 38 years. His story of hard work is one you've probably heard before – first he was a dishwasher and then in management, before he and his wife took "the leap of faith" of opening their own place 16 years ago – but his response to the pandemic has been unique. Since launching their meal program in March 2020, the Thompson family has used their catering company, Crisp Catering, to serve their community, delivering thousands of meals to residents in the Sacramento, Calif., area.

The Crisp Catering / Gold Rush Grille Meal Program

"Pretty quiet anniversary this year," says Joe, referring to the fact that April marked the 16^th year of their restaurant, Gold Rush Grille, being in operation. It, like many other restaurants in California, has been closed for months, but their location inside the March Fong Eu Secretary of State Building downtown isn't conducive to curbside or carryout orders.

"We're on the second floor of that building, and they're not allowing people up to the second floor," says Joe. "There's a 10-story building being built across the street, and the whole curbside area for us is construction trucks, cranes, and deliveries, so there really is nowhere for us to do any sort of curbside program."

Serving the Community

On March 13^th, the Thompsons learned their restaurant would have to close, and they spent that weekend shifting gears, figuring out, as Joe puts it, what people would want to eat and how to get it to them.

"We knew right away that there was going to have to be something done, because obviously we didn't know, and we still don't know, how long this is going to last," says Joe. "But we knew with places shutting down, people – especially people at risk – were going to need somewhere to be fed. They couldn't go out, most of them were afraid to go out, and there were families that didn't want to take kids out to the grocery store."

The family meals – enough to feed four people, with a salad, entree, and side – started at $25 but went up to $30 as the pandemic raised the cost of ingredients, particularly proteins, and left grocery stores with bare shelves.

They've now been able to rehire two full-time employees and two part-time employees. Their first employee reports to work before 5 each morning to begin preparing meals for the first deliveries around 9 a.m., and the Thompsons have all pitched in to make the operation successful. Joe's wife, Alison, whom he calls "our organizational arm," does the books and helps with deliveries when needed; son Joey works a separate full-time job but still finds time at night to plan routes for the next day's deliveries; and until she recently departed for her first teaching job, the majority of customers placed their orders with daughter Autumn.

"Right now, it's not about profit; it's about getting out to the community as much as we can to get people served."
– Joe Thompson, Crisp Catering & Gold Rush Grille

Each Monday, they send a two-week menu out to the 1,100 people on their newsletter list, and customers begin calling and emailing their orders within ten minutes. Their order volume has fluctuated with the availability of indoor restaurant dining and the temperatures outside, but Joe estimates they're averaging 175 to 225 meals a week.

Although the circumstances surrounding its creation are difficult, the meal delivery program has helped the Crisp Catering / Gold Rush Grille team to connect with their customers during a time when so many of them are unable to safely socialize with their friends and loved ones.

"It's kind of like it's become like family," says Joe. "If you look at [our most recent video] on Facebook [about Autumn leaving], I think we had 20 people who commented how great she was to work with and talk to, and they've never met her, but they do have that personal connection with her, even though it's been over the phone or text messaging. It's the first time these people have ever seen her, but they've been talking to her, giving her credit card information, telling her personal stories. We've found out so many awesome things about our customers and clients. It's just incredible the family we've been able to build doing this program."

Many of their customers are local families, but Joe and his team also receive delivery requests from the adult children of local senior citizens who want to make sure their parents are taken care of with freshly prepared meals, even though they may live on the other coast. Churches have also asked that meals be delivered for parishioners who are in need, and businesses have ordered the meals for their employees, too.

The Community Gives Back

While Joe and his team are working to meet the community's needs, those they're serving are in turn helping them take care of front-line workers and first responders. Inquiries from the community led to a donation-based group meal program: Once $500 has been donated, Joe and the team bring meals for 50 people to a hospital, police department, or other similar location.

Their customers, some of whom have been longtime patrons of their restaurant, are also helping the Thompsons take care of their employees.

"We have one customer who used to come into our restaurant; she calls and actually donates two meals a week to my employees," Joe says. "We make extra of the family meals and they take them home, or they want raw product [so] I'll take that same value and give them chicken breasts. Sometimes you can feed a family a lot more with 12 chicken breasts than you can with a meal for four."

August marked the program's fifth month of operation, and Joe estimates they've delivered around 5,000 meals in addition to the hundreds of meals donated by the community. Although Joe's catering experience made it possible to launch the meal delivery option so quickly, community interest and word-of-mouth advertising has played an important role in the program's ongoing success.

"It's been unbelievable the support that our customers have provided and the referrals," says Joe. "We're a fairly small company, so we don't have big budgets for advertising and all those things. We've got people that are referring us [on] the Next Door app, and we're getting phone calls."

Connections made through the meal delivery program resulted in a catering job for a 15-person wedding celebration – a small but crucial opportunity for an independent business that, like many others in the industry, relied on a PPP loan to help mitigate some of its financial hardship during a summer filled with uncertainty.

"[Our customer] told his sister to call Joe at Crisp because they'll take good care of you," says Joe. "It's better than a lot of other caterers right now; there's been a lot that have closed and that are struggling. Not that we're not struggling, but we're going to do whatever it takes to survive."

Crisp Catering is currently pursuing an Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) from the Small Business Association, and at $30 a meal, the delivery program isn't a financially motivated endeavor meant to generate profit, but Joe and the Thompson family have no plans to stop offering delivered meals to the Sacramento area.

"My whole team feels like they are really helping in the community," says Joe. "We deliver to some of these people, and we're the only people they see every day. We're trying to do what's right for the community, we're trying to help people, and in turn, they've been great to us."