Your Dream Job Might Not Be Your Dream Life
The rise (and fall) of my boutique catering company - PART ONE
I closed the doors to my platter company at the end of 2024. Not because the business wasn’t doing well, but because I wasn’t. It wasn’t an obvious crash and burnout, major medical event, or minor one for that matter. More of a constant grating that would not go away. Like a rat who lives rent-free in your brain and then starts making a snack out of your soul. I felt off, frustrated, and ultimately, my thinking always came back around to: is this really it?
At the end of the day, catering can be boiled down very simply. Moving shit from A to B, then from B to C, then back to B, and ultimately back to A, all with a zillion problems to solve and adapt to along the way. It takes a special kind of human to enter into this work willingly, or for a long period of time. (Raises hand) I was that human. I was also really good at it. And somehow, that became the problem.
I started Maven Oak Creative because I thought creating my own business would be easier than writing a resume. I cannot tell you how insanely funny I find the me of seven years ago. Cute. She was so cute.
The full story is that I had just returned home from a two-month South American adventure. I was deep in the crevice of some much-needed couch time when my mom rolled in from work and said, “Aren’t you going to get a job?” The exact words are debatable. The sentiment was understood. And I got my ass off the couch and started scheming, sans resume.
The wheels were turning. I remembered an Instagram post that had crossed my desk months earlier, a platter company in Australia making cheese boards that looked like art installations. I thought: Holy f-ing shit, I could do that! I am an artist. I am a chef. I am organized. I have been working in the food industry for years. These are all of my talents wrapped up in one ball of burrata!
Did I just figure out my dream job?!
To the bat cave!
I started making platters. On my mom’s birthday, I whipped up what I thought was a Rembrandt-esque level platter, complete with aquafaba ranch, which I was very excited about, and nobody else was.
After that, I dared to ask friends and family if they wanted to buy platters for their Super Bowl parties. Bam, I sold three. It was the first time I got the tickle (maybe from the rat?) that this actually could be something real.
My community became my biggest asset in getting Maven Oak off the ground. I teamed up with another local business and now dear friend, Andrea, who owns and operates a local bitters company called Bitters Lab. She was teaching cocktail classes at her lab and wanted to pass off the task of ‘snacks’ so she could focus on other things. Bitters Lab was my first consistent client! This partnership would blossom into many amazing opportunities, and Maven Oak found a home to create in inside the Lab itself.
The business quickly snowballed from making small platters for friends and family to creating large platter installations (grazing tables) for weddings, corporate events, baby showers, pitch meetings, graduations, memorials, concert venues, Tuesday night parties, and every event in between that warranted an artistic AF charcuterie platter.
My clients were mostly gracious and let me have full creative rein. They would stand back, clutch their pearls, and gasp, “Why, this is almost too beautiful to eat." To which I would cheekily retort: “Well, someone's got to eat the Cézanne.”
Let me tell you about the goth wedding.
It was fall 2023, and Maven Oak was in its prime. She was booked and busy and liking it (or so I thought). It had been a busy summer that rolled right into a fully booked fall, the dream of any business owner. This wedding was the capstone to a back-to-back week of events and wholesale orders. I always knew it was going to be a challenge, but working long days was my norm, and as the years had gone on, I had gotten incredibly efficient at my art and could knock things out in record time.
Spirits were high, and this wedding was special. The platter installation for a modest 100 people was to be set up on the top floor of an old historic mansion on Capitol Hill, which was giving haunted vibes. There were corridors and rooms and staircases and heavy curtains. The direction I was given from the wedding planner was: goth couple, very into heavy metal, bring earplugs, no white, or the bride might cut your head off!
Understood. I was about to have the time of my life, not because every other event was boring, but because a goth wedding was THE time to get out of the normie wedding box and have some fun.
Matte black lanterns and battery candles lined every surface — fire hazard, unfortunately, or I would have gone real. Gauzy black fabric pooled across the crates and spilled between the props like something from a séance. Tiered fruit towers dripped with black and red grapes, cracked pomegranates split open to show their ruby pearls. Blood red beet hummus pooled into the board in dark, dramatic waves alongside rivers of soft butter and mountains of aged cheddar. Brie sat buried under jewel-toned fruit. Platters rose sky high with cured meats. Vegetables cascaded in abundance, fruit spilled over every edge, and pumpkin towers anchored the corners while deep red flowers erupted between everything like something was growing wild out of the table itself. But my favorite — the skull, patient, waiting, tucked just out of sight. You wouldn't find him until you reached in for a sliver of manchego, and by then, he had already found you.
It was dark, elegant, and dead on theme.
The compliments were raining down on me, and I kept smiling and meaning it. I had built something beautiful, and I knew it. But there is a particular kind of exhaustion that lives underneath pride, and it was louder than the heavy metal.
Once the event really got underway, I retreated to the Chef hideout. The adrenaline of setting up this grand table was subsiding, and the bone-chilling fatigue was starting to settle in (or maybe that was a ghost). I sent my employee out into the head-banging chaos and lay back on my cooler to give my feet a break, and my back, and my brain.
The weight of weeks and weeks of events was starting to pile up, and I could feel my body was at the brink. This was the first time that I acknowledged the recurring thought Is this really it? It was that moment that I felt the rat take its first nibble.
I had built my dream job. I just hadn't thought to ask if it was building my dream life.
Cheers,
Nicole | Butter Cult🧈
Thirsty for more?
🥕Grab my free guide: The Butter Cult Guide to Life-Changing Cooking Hacks, 21 Kitchen Secrets That’ll Change Your Cooking Game Forever, Even If You’re Just Here for the Wine
🔪Invest in your culinary future with the Butter Cult online workshops!
Need help, guidance, or just a friend to bounce ideas off of? Book a Butter Service—the cool, casual, get shit done 1:1 mentoring sessions.
Have you read this one? It’s tender and juicy, just like a medium-rare ribeye steak.
Between Plans (and Making Pasta)
Thanks for your support💛 I am here to help whip your confidence into shape, inside and outside the kitchen! We are going to tackle all things culinary together, you will be filleting a fish and hosting that dinner party of 10 in no time😏, or maybe you just learn how to cut an onion the right way. For more adventures in and out of the kitchen, follow @buttercultcooking on Instagram and Threads.
