Chef David Hill & Chef Matt Geiger

Chef David Hill (00:30):

Hello. Welcome to episode three. We are joined today by Chef Matt Geiger. He's pretty much stationed in the Fort Myers area, but I think he travels everywhere. Matt, I'll let you introduce yourself.

Chef Matt Geiger (00:47):

Thanks for having me on. My name's Matt Geiger. I am stationed in Fort Myers, Florida - my business is. But I travel all of Southwest Florida and I've been cooking in the area for about six years now. And Southwest Florida has been pretty good to me so far.

Chef David Hill (01:01):

So Matt, let me ask you, as far as the areas, how far would you go north? How far south, tell me kind of the areas you cover.

Chef Matt Geiger (01:11):

We stick to Naples to kind of Punta Gorda, mostly. As far as anything other than that, we go to Marco Island quite a bit. We go even as far as Lake Placid. It just depends on the job and you know, how bad you want services.

Chef David Hill (01:31):

Sure. Do the drive just charge extra?

Chef Matt Geiger (01:33):

Yeah, we've got to charge for it because it's not really my thing. I don't mind taking the hour or two drive, but finding the staff to do it is definitely going to be a challenge. There has to be a little bit of incentive for them to drive so far.

Chef David Hill (01:47):

Sure, sure. So, well, for all of you that don't know, me and Matt know each other pretty well. We've given each other jobs back and forth here and there. Some bigger jobs. People know, like with my thing, I don't do really big jobs. Maybe I'll cook for like 30 and under. That'd pretty much be my level. Matt here likes to do more weddings and kind of like bigger events. Why don't you talk about kind of your niche?

Chef Matt Geiger (02:13):

I mean, as far as niche goes, we try to be, you know, accommodating to everybody. It has to be worth our while, and it has to be mutually beneficial for us and the client. So as far as small parties go, we have our limit on how much or how little basically you could spend. But as far as amount of people goes, we don't discriminate. If it was a very large event, like

Chef David Hill (02:44):

500

Chef Matt Geiger (02:45):

Not even 500. More than that. 500....we could handle. You know, more than that, we would have to figure out something. But yeah, we can handle up to 500 pretty typically. Right now on the weekends we're typically serving between two and 300, depending on how many events we have.

Chef David Hill (03:07):

What's the biggest you've done within the last... since you've gone on your own.

Chef Matt Geiger (03:11):

Okay. So since I've gone on my own, the most we've done with my company is 300. Small menu, nothing crazy, nothing elaborate. Just good food, but yeah, nothing crazy when you get into big numbers like that, you can't go too wild on the menus.

Chef David Hill (03:29):

So let me get into this. I mean, I haven't seen you in a while and I don't think I've ever met anybody who has gone through more changes in a short amount of time. I think this guy... he got married, he is about to have a child. Tell me all about what you got going on there.

Chef Matt Geiger (03:44):

I guess in the last two years, you know, I've been cooking for about 16 years and I was a head chef for another catering company for, you know, four years. And in that time I was lucky enough to have her support me while I was growing my business. And I was doing simultaneously both for, you know, two years of that, of that four.

Chef David Hill (04:08):

Now did you guys meet on the job? Was she a server? How'd you guys meet?

Chef Matt Geiger (04:12):

Oh, my wife. Yeah. She actually owns a restaurant locally. And I frequented her restaurant, so.

Chef David Hill (04:18):

Oh, so it was kind of a love connection at a restaurant?

Chef Matt Geiger (04:21):

Yes. Yes.

Chef David Hill (04:22):

She was your server.

Chef Matt Geiger (04:24):

Yeah. That's and you know, after about a year of going there...

Chef David Hill (04:31):

You got the courage. "Hey, let's go for a movie."

Chef Matt Geiger (04:34):

Yep. And basically I was doing a step in at a sushi bar one night and I was like, "Come in and get some sushi and you know, hang out with me while I'm working." That was it. You know?

Chef David Hill (04:47):

So does she have a lot of cooking skills herself?

Chef Matt Geiger (04:49):

She does. She does.

Chef David Hill (04:50):

So does she help you?

Chef Matt Geiger (04:51):

Um, sometimes, yes.

Chef David Hill (04:53):

Really, so she can get the knives going and chop and dice. And all that?

Chef Matt Geiger (04:56):

Yes she does. You know, sometimes it's hard having two, uh, leadership-type people in the same room...

Chef David Hill (05:04):

Sometimes there's arguments about how things should be done.

Chef Matt Geiger (05:06):

Right. But yeah, she does help. She's super supportive. Um, you know, when I need it, she's there. For sure.

Chef David Hill (05:13):

Congrats on the birth... or you're about to have a child.

Chef Matt Geiger (05:17):

So in the last two years, not only have I gone on my own on my own business, but I also got married this last January and then now we're pregnant.

Chef David Hill (05:27):

Yeah. You're gonna have a lot of fun. Having a child is one of the greatest things. You're gonna have a lot of fun. But now keep in mind, this is going to slow you down a lot. I don't know if we're going to be taking jobs for 300 anymore. I'm just going to be honest with you.

Chef Matt Geiger (05:40):

You know, I have faith in my staff and the people that are growing with me. And the idea is for my company to grow together, not just me. So I heavily rely on my people that are around me.

Chef David Hill (05:53):

Well sounds great. So let's rewind, let's start with your kind of like interest in being a chef. Like where did it start? At what age? When did you know you were gonna be a chef? Or what occurred?

Chef Matt Geiger (06:04):

You know, this has been something that I've always wanted to do. Even as a young kid.

Chef David Hill (06:11):

Which is rare. I haven't heard that too often.

Chef Matt Geiger (06:12):

You know, and I hear that too. Even when I was little, I was very independent, especially when it comes to like doing something like that. Even though my mom would have to come by and clean up after me or something like that, it was something that even as a young child, I was doing And then, you know, in middle school when you're trying to figure out kind of what's going on and you know, you take like some placement tests and it was like... doctor, lawyer, chef, whatever. And I'm like, "See, it's on the list!" And then, I get a dish washing job at 14 and now I'm like this is it.

Chef David Hill (06:49):

That's pretty much much how it happened for me. I was a dishwasher first.

Chef Matt Geiger (06:52):

Dishwasher moved up. We had a fire in my restaurant that , I learned in and the whole staff walked out and that's kind of how I got to step into getting to do other things, you know?

Chef David Hill (07:07):

So as a teen, you were kind of like doing cooking jobs?

Chef Matt Geiger (07:10):

Yeah. Yeah.

Chef David Hill (07:11):

What type of restaurants were those?

Chef Matt Geiger (07:12):

My first restaurant was a like New York, Italian restaurant. Everything from scratch. You know, squishing tomatoes by hand and like the real deal, you know.

 Now where was that? Sandpoint, Idaho. So that's where I grew up. Up in Sandpoint, Idaho. And so I mean, I worked there for the better part of my youth at least around three years...in between school and everything else and summers. I took a job for the local ski hill. We we're a ski town. And from there I had, you know, opportunities to grow even at like 18 and 19. It's a small town that I grew up in, but you know, I took what I could from there.

Chef David Hill (07:54):

Now. I think if I remember right, you did attend a culinary school?

Chef Matt Geiger (07:58):

I did not.

Chef David Hill (07:59):

Oh, you did not. Okay. No,

Chef Matt Geiger (08:00):

I did not attend a culinary.

Chef David Hill (08:02):

So you're self-taught pretty much.

Chef Matt Geiger (08:04):

Yeah. I'd like to say self taught, but every restaurant you work for, you take something from it. And I had good mentors growing up too. The food and beverage director of the ski hill really took me under his wing. And, you know, he taught me how to do cooking, but mostly he taught me how to hold myself in the kitchen. When to learn, when to talk, how to go about it, what my attitude should be, that kind of stuff. Which turned into people, wanting to train someone that's trainable. So I mean I was very lucky in that aspect.

Chef David Hill (08:38):

When you think back of being like a teenager around those years, twenties or whatever, did you kind of feel like you wanted to go to culinary school? You wish you had?

Chef Matt Geiger (08:46):

Yes, at the time that was the plan. You know, the plan was for me to graduate, go to culinary school. You know, that was around the 2008, 2009 recession. And, you know, things weren't that good economy-wise, for my parents. And ultimately, I decided not to. At that time I had got my first kitchen for the ski resort. They had made me the kitchen manager. And so I had some of that leadership experience. And from there I moved 40 miles away and became the kitchen manager at another restaurant that summer after school. And I was going to do some local culinary classes. And, you know, a semester in, I was like, "It cost me 4,000 bucks to relearn Algebra." I'm not even going to be able to start actual culinary classes for another year because you have to do your prerequisites and stuff. And I just didn't see the value in it. Looking back, it would've been nice, but I still don't think that I would be in my mindset that I'm at today...

Chef David Hill (09:56):

Yeah.

Chef Matt Geiger (09:57):

...had I gone. You know?

Chef David Hill (09:59):

Yeah. I mean, I feel like you could be successful. You don't have to go to school. When I was a kid learning, I remember one of my bosses was like, "I really think you have a lot of natural ability. I think if you go to culinary school, you'll fill in all those gaps." Because I remember my first serious job was like a French kitchen. And the chef would be like, "Hey, go grab me the Shinwa." Like shin, what?

Chef Matt Geiger (10:23):

Yeah.

Chef David Hill (10:24):

I'd never heard of it. I'm like, "So what you talking about? Oh the strainer! I know what that is. No problem. Why don't you say strainer?"

Chef Matt Geiger (10:30):

Yeah, exactly. It's all about terms.

Chef David Hill (10:32):

But I'm saying like with culinary school, it does kind of fill in little gaps of things you might not know. Like I remember also being in a French kitchen, they were like, "Hey, go in the walkin, grab me some oregano." And it wasn't labeled. You just have to look at it and know, okay that's oregano.

Chef Matt Geiger (10:47):

You just have to know,

Chef David Hill (10:49):

I didn't know what I was doing. I think I was like 19. I would say there's plenty of super good chefs that didn't go to culinary school.

Chef Matt Geiger (10:58):

You know? And this is one of those careers where, you know, the opportunity is there. The opportunity is there, if you're willing to learn and you're willing to put in the time and listen - which was a little hard when you're younger growing up. You're like, you're the big dog. But you know, you take a step back, you listen, you grow, you pay attention to the chefs around, you see what they're doing and you can absolutely make, make a name for yourself and you can absolutely be successful. You know, not a lot of careers are out there that you can do that. And the kitchen is one of those. You're not stuck on the line unless you choose to be stuck on the line.

Chef David Hill (11:32):

Right. Yeah. There's different avenues.

Chef Matt Geiger (11:34):

And put your time in. If you bounce around from place to place, how can you ever move up? So, this is a very particular career where school or no school, you can do it. You know?

Chef David Hill (11:48):

So I was going to ask if you think back when you were learning and kind of like your goals, did you envision...catering? Was that really your niche? Like what was your like master plan? Let's hear it.

Chef Matt Geiger (12:00):

No, I mean, when you're growing up the world is out there. You just want to like learn. And at the beginning I was working in an Asian restaurant and it was really cool to learn the Asian fundamentals of cooking. Because they're so much different than French fundamentals of cooking, even though they go back and forth.

 So that's always been kind of my niche, is this Asian style of cooking. And the chef that I worked for there, his mom was a Japanese ambassador. He grew up in Japan. And I mean, this guy knew what he was talking about. And going back, I would've taken more from him than I did. I kind of took it for granted, but catering was never really, even in the scope until I moved to Florida. Um, when I moved to Florida, I got a job at another Asian restaurant - a sushi joint in town. And after about a year there of being their kitchen chef, I wanted to step back and learn something. And I kept pushing to be able to get on sushi bar. And it took me about a year and a half for them to even give me a shot.

 It took a lot of prep and stuff on that I did for their side, and a lot of things that I would do above and beyond my job. And then I ended up doing sushi for another five years after that. So in my mind, I wanted to open up like a small sushi restaurant. Now I took on other opportunities that I thought might have been better. And they put me in a position to where I was looking for a job for the first time in five years. And I found a catering job.

Chef David Hill (13:46):

There you go.

Chef Matt Geiger (13:46):

And you know, it is super stressful and hectic, but it always comes together in the end. And it was just a different kind of stress. Instead of tickets spitting out at you all night where the things had to get fulfilled right away. You know, now you can plan out your week. You can plan out things. You can take things on, even though you have this big fee, but you can work around things. It's just a different animal. And I loved it. So I started catering.

Chef David Hill (14:17):

See, for me, like, as a kid starting out, I thought, "Okay, first idea. Going to be a restaurant chef. I'm going to own a restaurant, people are going to come see me right away. They're just going to want to check me out. It'll be great." Then you go through culinary school, you get a couple jobs. You're like, you witnessed some stuff in the restaurants. You're like, I don't know. I don't know if this is for me anymore. Then I moved to Florida. I'm originally from Michigan. But, um, I moved to Florida and then my first experiences were country clubs. So I'm like, "Okay, now I want to be a country club chef,." Because you're kind of around like serious individuals. I was around all kinds of people that were very trained. CIA grads, Johnson and whales.

 Everybody next to me was very level to me or even better - just really higher caliber. So I kind of liked that because with restaurants, you're going to kind of get... "Hey, you're not that great, but I'm going to work on your talents. We'll get you there." But these guys...You go to the, the country clubs, they're usually top level. They're higher caliber. And then when I finally got the job of being like a head chef of a club, I didn't like it because way too many politics. You gotta meet with these members and they want everything for free. They don't wanna pay for it. They're like, "Why can't I have lobster and steak for $20 per person?"

 Yeah. They try to talk you into everything. And I hated that. And I was like, "You know what? I don't want to be a country club chef." And then it just kind of fell in my lap where I got a... After the club business - it got sold and we were out of jobs. And I got lucky where I worked for a family full time for three years. o five days a week, I was with one family doing lunch and dinners. So that started me on this thing of private stuff. So when I was like, man, this is awesome. I got air conditioning. I'm staring at the ocean right here. This is awesome. This is what I want to do. So that's how it worked for me. I mean, I know we're like...

 So how did, how did you go from working for one family to working for dozens of families or more?

 Again, that job ended because financially just, Hey, not everybody can afford a chef five days a week.

 Right. So three years, it's a really good run. I tell anybody if you're a private chef working for a family and you get three years, consider yourself super lucky. You would be lucky to get one year, let alone three. So yeah, financially they took like a little bit of a lull there. I got let go. And then what happened is I met with another chef that's doing the same thing as me. And it was a lady chef that took me under her wing where she was going to take another job, traveling on a boat. So I took over all her clients for about a good year. She was going to travel for a year. So I took all her calls all of her business.

 She trusted you to take on her people?

 And you know what's funny? She has never had any of my food. Just trusted me. That, you know what, I think this guy knows what he's doing. I just got lucky. But we're still from, and we still give each other clients, uh, chef Cathy. I love you. But anyway, so that's how it started. And then I just created a website. And then you're off to the races. And it's like, I kind of look at it. It's like high reward with really high risk. Because if people don't call, you can't afford your cars. Can't afford your house. What are you gonna do? And I've just been really blessed that, with my business, I've done 10 years. So the thing is, if you've put 10 years into something, you should stay pretty steady, hopefully. So I feel like I've put in my time and right. It's all worked out.

Chef Matt Geiger (18:14):

Yeah. And I found that too, that once I got, you know, when you're first starting, you're like, what do I do first? Do I go hire people first? Or do I do this first? Or what can I afford to do when I'm starting the business? And when I got my website and Google up, I started getting calls. Not a lot, maybe one or one a week. Maybe, you know, at the beginning. And, but, it's because you were there when they searched and you are there. If you're not there, you're not gonna get the call. So I think the website and getting put on the internet nowadays is the first thing anybody should do. Maybe even before they open. You know, because

Chef David Hill (18:54):

Yeah. Just to get out there just

Chef Matt Geiger (18:56):

To get out there. Yeah.

Chef David Hill (18:57):

Cause when I started, I was on like page five of Google. Now I'm on page one, top three.

Chef Matt Geiger (19:02):

Yeah. And, and a few things I did when I started too, is I fed a lot of people for free just to get Google reviews.

Chef David Hill (19:09):

Your name and just get out there,

Chef Matt Geiger (19:11):

Yeah, just to get that stuff. At the time I was in this adult kickball league Right. We did it every Thursday. It was my outlet. I'd work six days a week or seven days a week. And you know, Thursdays was my day to go play kickball and then go to the bar with a bunch of buddies. And these aren't just kids. I mean, they're, you know, mortgage loan people. They're dentists. They're veterinarians. There's other college kids and stuff in there too. But there's professionals in there. And I threw a couple parties with these colleagues, 20- 50 people, whatever, and got honest reviews on my Google. So now I have real reviews on my real website on the internet. So then when someone looks at it,

Chef David Hill (19:56):

You check out.

Chef Matt Geiger (19:57):

I check out. They don't know that these people didn't pay. I did that pro bono to get the reviews so that my business would look legit. You know, and it worked out.

Chef David Hill (20:10):

I didn't do anything free back then.

Chef Matt Geiger (20:14):

Yeah. And you know, it is what it is and you know, for the cost of food, I treated them like an actual party and they're like, "You're going to eat?" I'm like, "No, this isn't this isn't my party. This is your party."

Chef David Hill (20:29):

Now back then, when you started, did you actually pay for advertising? Because I did very little, and I kind of regret....

Chef Matt Geiger (20:35):

So to this day, I don't really pay for advertising.

Chef David Hill (20:39):

But I'm saying when you first started, did you do anything?

Chef Matt Geiger (20:42):

No. Nothing outside of Facebook posts, but I never paid for any advertising at all.

Chef David Hill (20:49):

Okay. See, when I first started, my idea was I did whole foods. You know how they have like a weekly sale and they kind of talk about organic foods.

Chef Matt Geiger (20:58):

Oh no, I didn't.

Chef David Hill (20:59):

Well, they had like a little booklet that would give out recipes and whatnot. So I got involved with that where I was advertising.

Chef Matt Geiger (21:07):

Okay.

Chef David Hill (21:08):

I think I maybe got like three calls. But they were like, you know, the vegans and the real odd ball. Not that vegans are odd, but I'm just saying, you know...

Chef Matt Geiger (21:16):

The people out of the normal ordinary.

Chef David Hill (21:19):

Yeah. So I tried it out, but I think, like I said, maybe three calls and I just felt like, you know what, I'm never gonna do that again. Never gonna waste my money advertising. Just do the hard road of just putting in your time, and people will talk.

Chef Matt Geiger (21:35):

Yep. And that's it, you have to put in some time. And I now have put in three years and my phones rings every day. So every time you do a house party or something, it's 10 potential customers.

Chef David Hill (21:48):

Exactly. Every time you, you do a...

Chef Matt Geiger (21:50):

If you do a hundred of them... You know, should a lot of people, 10,000 like potential customers. And even if they're not, their friends are. So yeah. Word of mouth is the best thing to help anybody's business. For sure. Um, the only thing, you know, what I did paid for is when I do wedding expos. Oh, you know, you gotta pay for the booth and everything you go in there.

Chef David Hill (22:13):

Is it The Knot? Because they call me all the time to advertise.

Chef Matt Geiger (22:16):

So, I had the wedding wire, I tried to do their top tier thing. For one year. And you know, I'm looking at previous companies that I've worked for and I'm seeing what they do and their success. And, and I try to model after not everything, but some things that I think are worth it. And I mean, it was a lot of money and right now I have the third tier down the next to the bottom of their advertising, whatever model on wedding wire. And I get just as many results from it,

Chef David Hill (22:49):

But I mean, you're glad you're a part of that though.

Chef Matt Geiger (22:53):

Yeah, now it's worthwhile to be a part. Yes, it is. Even if you're at the very bottom of ... because now wedding wire, I don't know if you know this. There's no more free profiles. You can't just put it on there anymore.

Chef David Hill (23:04):

See, I wouldn't know that stuff because my niche, I'm not trying to really do weddings. I never consider myself a caterer. I'm more of a private chef doing small dinner parties.

Chef Matt Geiger (23:14):

Yep. And um, so you have to do some sort of something on there, but that's it, you know? I'm not running weekly ads on Google. I'm not running weekly ads on Facebook. The most thing I spend money for advertising is when I need help. And I pay, for advertisement of a job,.

Chef David Hill (23:32):

Have you had good results with like finding good help? Because, I don't know. It's very hard. It's hard. I don't know. It's hard. I just feel like Florida in general, the work ethic has much to be desired.

Chef Matt Geiger (23:44):

You know, and I thought that too. But my dad owns a, he's a paint contractor up in, Idaho. And you know, he runs a relatively big crew about 20, 25 guys and he goes through the same thing up there. I think it's a universal thing. I think any business owner when looking for help is going to think that work ethic is not good. I mean, I remember when I took my first kitchens over and when I was 19 or 20 just posting the Craigslist or something. I'd get 30 or 40 applications in a couple days.

Chef David Hill (24:15):

But, no issues with people showing up, high? Maybe drunk? You know what I mean?

Chef Matt Geiger (24:20):

That happens. But now I don't even get 10. I don't even get five in a day. So out of those five, most of the time zero are qualified. You know, so it is challenging and you just gotta take the people for what they are. Get them in. You can only tell so much from an interview. Work them a couple days and say...do you want to do this or this isn't working out. And it's awkward and it sucks, but we have to do what we gotta to do. You know, I want to create, I want my employees and everybody to work cohesively. I want everybody to get along. I want... it's really hard. It's really hard.

Chef David Hill (24:59):

Yeah. Because I think... I've talked to some of the other chefs, and they feel like sometimes it's better to hire someone in that's raw and train them, rather than someone who's worked a million parties and they got this down.

Chef Matt Geiger (25:13):

Absolutely.

Chef David Hill (25:14):

And, "Hey, I don't need to be told what to do." It's just, sometimes that's a whole headache in its own.

Chef Matt Geiger (25:18):

That's in an interview question for me. How many places have you worked at? And are you still trainable?

Chef David Hill (25:27):

Well, they'll all say yeah, sure, sure. Yeah.

Chef Matt Geiger (25:30):

And because if a successful chef knows that once he steps into another chef's realm, he respects that other chef's realm. You know, if I was helping you on a party, I'd do things your way. That's what a humble, confident chef would do because they want the same respect in return. Whether you agree or not, you know, it is what it is, but these are not my clients. They're your clients or vice versa. When I have a new chef start, he could be the best chef in the world. But if there's friction there, you know, he's gotta be a team player.

Chef David Hill (26:04):

Now, I'm looking for a good story. How about, tell me a good story about where you were in the weeds and you were so close to maybe ruining a party, not being ready for a party. You got a good story for me?

Chef Matt Geiger (26:19):

Um, not so much for catering, because I'm very careful about how much work I take on. And I'm very careful about knowing what my limit is right now as I'm growing. So I don't ever take any more than two events in a day. And at the beginning was one. And I never take more than four or five events for a whole week. So I do everything in my power to not, and if I have to say no, I say no. But a good coming of age in the weeds story would be, a market at this space called bottle bay. In Sandpoint, Idaho. The ski hill closes in the summertime obviously, but they took over this property on the lake, in town that's been around for, you know, 30 years.

 And I went out there just as a cook and the chef there was kind of just, what we call now a "clipboard chef." You know, he walks around, he checks everything. He takes three hours to do the order. He goes, takes a nap in the middle of the day, you know? Not much. He ends up getting, let go. And at 19 I take over this... it's not anything nice by any means. It's "on the water food," you know, but everything's fresh. So one night, it's me a prep cook and a dishwasher. And it's just right after 4th of July and up north it's slamming on the lake and I'm still new to the business. Right. I'm not used to getting left by myself. I'm used to having a team around me, support everything like that.

 So as the tickets are rolling in, I'm just going. And it's like one of those small kitchens that maybe only two or three people fit in it anyways, and we're slamming food out, we're slamming food out and the tickets are going and I mean, there's like three tickets. Okay. Five tickets. Okay. And I'm, I'm still putting themm out now it's getting like six tickets. And then the rail only holds about 12 tickets. And then I'm putting them in the back and I start losing it. I'm not used to that pressure. I'm not used to pressure. It's hard. So the term I've come up with now is your kitchen metabolism. How fast you can read tickets, digest what's on there, the order of putting things in and then getting it out.

 And in that moment I was breaking down. I had tears rolling down my eyes. I'm like throwing salmons on and battering, like we're battering, fish and chips to order. And I'm like, "Why the f*** are we battering fish and chips to order?We have... there's 300 people out there!" And so I call the food and beverage director, because even though it wasn't his place, he's the, of all ... Sweitzer mountain resort is the ski resort.... He covers everything. So he's like, "Well I'm 40 minutes away." And I'm like, come here now please. Rather I didn't, I had the manager on site say, come here now please. I'm in the weeds. I'm dying. Like we're going down. And, you know, by the time he gets there,...you know, the prep lady was like a hundred years old. She's slinging out like one or two salads, you know?

 She can't do anything on the hot side. The dishwasher's just sitting there freaking out because the stuff's coming in. A he has baskets and all this stuff. So it's like, I just felt defeated. And you know, by the time he got there, I was like down to my last two or three tickets, everything was on. So he comes in, he's like, "What do you need me to do?" I'm like, "Just look at the tickets." He's like, he starts basically expoing for me, you know, you need three burgers down. I'm like, I got it. He's like, you need these fish and chips down. You got it. Three salmons down. You got it.

 Did that help you out a lot?

 It did. But this is the funny thing is that by the time he read all that stuff out, I had already had everything down.

 So he turned around to me and he said, the feeling that... this is why he, I say he's like one of my biggest mentors and taught me how to act and everything. He's like, "That feeling you have right now that that's panicking and that's, that's just defeating you right now will never go away. But what the fuck am I doing here? You're covered. You're fine. Everything's there. Don't call me again." You know, and at that moment I was like kind of like put it in a perspective, like the end of the night's coming, the event's gonna be over or whatever it is, you're gonna wake up tomorrow and, and it's gonna be behind you. Yeah. So it's, you know, that, that pressure, it was, let me tell you something.

 I had tears... the managers and everything were like, "How do we help?" I'm like, get away from me. I don't know. I'm 19. I'm a punk, you know.

 With the, with the catering that you're doing now, you never really had these high stress moments.

 So the high stress moments come, you know, there's so many moving parts when you're catering. It's not just food and staff, you know, you're scheduling kitchen time and you're ordering food and you're ordering rentals and you know, everything has to go in something - a bowl, a platter, you need napkins. There's so many moving parts. And if one of those things is missing. And you're on site, you're not at a kitchen with a huge walk-in, you're not next to a rental company you know, you're on site, you're in someone's home.

 Or you're out on a beach somewhere. And, um, that has happened a few times, but no events gone missing things. And um, if we were missing things, we've made it happen. And 99% of the time, the customer would never even know that it has happened. It was an internal kind of freak out. And you know, we handle it to the best of our ability. Catering and I'm sure private chef too, you're not in your comfort zone. You're not in your house with your stuff. If you take it on site, you're responsible for it. So, and s*** happens, you know? So hopefully you're working for somebody that is realistic, you know, and humble. But we've all had them that are not. And, but we're not perfect, but we get everything done, you know. Doing somebody's wedding's very stressful.

 Absolutely. Because you're building a big time memory and this is it. You don't want to fall short.

 Absolutely not. And you know, I've been super lucky so far. Um, I've been super lucky so far. I can't really say anything else,

Chef David Hill (32:47):

You know. Well, let me ask you this, if you weren't doing what you're doing now, is there a different profession or a different career you would rather be doing or you're absolutley sure this is it.

Chef Matt Geiger (32:58):

I mean, there was like a, in that time before I started with a catering company, I had told you, I was like looking for a job. And in that time, you know, I was questioning a lot because I just wasn't expecting it. And you know, it's not that I was fired or anything like that. It just didn't work out with the owner that, you know, we went into something together. His expectations were not... you know, we're talking about an accountant, who's trying to open a restaurant, he's hiring me for my professional expertise and he's not following it. And I decided that I needed to either go or be compensated, and so I decided to go, You know, and in that time I thought maybe like of even being like a car salesman. I'm not joking, man. I filled out a couple applications. I went to a couple interviews. They're like, yeah, you have 12 years of restaurant experience. What are you doing here? Yeah. And I'm like, right, I gotta go. You know, the idea of it sounded good and I feel like I'm good enough at talking to people, but I need to be where the action is. You know, sometimes not necessarily in the weeds or stressed out, but I like a little bit of pressure, you know.

Chef David Hill (34:17):

Me too. I mean, I think we're all kind of driven by that, anxiety is kind of a rush,

Chef Matt Geiger (34:23):

Right. Or else we wouldn't do it. There's no better - even if you go back to your line cooking days - there's no better feeling than like a rush that goes out flawlessly. And they're like, oh, we did 400 covers. And you're like, what? It didn't feel like that. And you're like, man, like that rush never goes away.

Chef David Hill (34:45):

Well man, I'm going to get you out of here. I just wanted to ask you, do you want plug anything and tell the people what you're up to and where to find you?

Chef Matt Geiger (34:51):

Um, well right now, I'll plug, my, my catering company is called Savour First Choice Catering. We serve all of Southwest Florida. We do corporate events, weddings, anywhere you need food, service rentals, that kind of thing. And you know, I have a couple things there in the works right now, but I don't really want to disclose it maybe in another couple months...

Chef David Hill (35:15):

Maybe we'll have you back on season two.

Chef Matt Geiger (35:17):

Yeah, something. But uh, yeah, I need to, to the end of summer to really, uh, let people know.

Chef David Hill (35:24):

All right, cool. Well, thanks for coming on. And I think you were a great guest and uh,

Chef Matt Geiger (35:28):

Awesome. Cheers. Look

Chef David Hill (35:28):

Look forward to seeing more of your stuff.

Chef Matt Geiger (35:30):

Definitely appreciate it. Have a great day. .