A Talk with Debbie Sharpe, Catering Godess
As the old saying goes, an army marches on its stomach. Wise words that undeniably also apply to the concert touring industry. One of the people who have been in the concert touring trenches for a long time now is Debbie Sharpe. PLSN spoke with her about how she came to music touring, to food, and about what she’s cooking up these days.
Born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, Sharpe, began cooking at a young age for family and friends. She worked as a bookkeeper after leaving school before getting an internship with an Australian newspaper. There she became an entertainment writer covering music. Being adventurous, Sharpe moved to London in 1978 where her path led her to working with the band Adam and The Ants, eventually landing on the catering team feeding the band and crew. In 1984, Sharpe decided to strike out with her own catering venture and started Eat Your Hearts Out! The in-demand company worked with tours throughout Europe at first and then globally.
During a 1990 U.S. tour with Paul and Linda McCartney, Sharpe decided to move to Chicago and set up shop stateside. After three decades, Sharpe sold the successful Eat Your Hearts Out! and started The Goddess Rocks! Catering. Sharpe still sends her well-trained teams on tours, but she has a strong focus on tours coming through Chicago and more local festivals, most notably Lollapalooza. A small sampling of her recent clients includes Beyoncé, Pearl Jam, Billy Joel, Coldplay, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Heart, Grateful Dead, Guns N’ Roses and Phish.
Not one to stand still, Sharpe also owns the restaurant Feast in Chicago, which she opened 20 years ago. She has expanded her brand over time with the opening of seven Goddess and The Grocer restaurants around Chicago and at O’Hare International Airport. In fact, she recently christened her overall company The Goddess Empire. Speaking with Sharpe, you quickly understand the truth that good food is made from the heart. She is a funny, tell-it-like-it-is lady with an infectious, positive outlook. Whether it be the start of a long load-in or middle of a bear of a day in a tough venue, it is easy to see why going to catering and finding Sharpe would brighten the day.
PLSN: What were those early days of catering like when you started out? Did you have culinary training when you started?
Debbie Sharpe: No, I didn’t have any training. I started working for the catering company that was doing the Adam and The Ants tour. A year after that, I thought, “Oh, I can do this, I’ll set up my own catering company.” It was all trial and error then. All those poor people, I fed in those days!
What are some of the misconceptions about catering that you’d like to clear up?
Everybody thinks it’s really glamorous. It’s not. It’s just a really long day. We load in our equipment early in the morning, and set up kitchens and dining rooms. You start right in with breakfast. You have to get the coffee going quickly, and not everyone realizes that you just got off the bus also and coffee takes time to actually brew. There’s just lots to get done. If we’re in a place for one day, you’re setting up a kitchen, you’re cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner; you’re handling the dressing rooms; you’re catering for the buses; and then finally you’re getting onto the bus to sleep. You just don’t stop. People in rock ‘n’ roll can work up to 18-20 hours a day easily. Catering is among the first to start the day and the last to end the day.
A lot of people just think you go to the supermarket and it’s easy. I find that really annoying. Thinking it just appears magically. It doesn’t. There’s a lot of things to consider and to actually do. There’s a lot of training involved with your staff and your front of house staff, your runners, and your dressing room people. You are doing your best to take care of the tour, and you have an image to project because you want to get more work. You want to do everything as best as possible. Sometimes I would get, ‘Oh, well, if your travel expenses are too high, just get some locals.’ Everybody just thinks we can hire local people for the day and they can step into my well-trained staff’s shoes. It takes a long time to train somebody.
What’s the size of the catering staff like for a typical tour?
Oh, there’s no such thing as a typical tour! There really isn’t. The numbers vary so much. We’ve taken anywhere up to 25-30 people. A basic tour is a crew of five or six. When we cater for Lollapalooza, we hire over 60 people a day during that festival.
What are some of the things that you do to make a touring crew feel at home? What are some of the dishes you serve up for the crew?
You know, I do a lot of one-off and festival catering in Chicago, so I try and find out what they like. I know a lot of people at this point that come through town, which helps. If I can find out that it’s an English crew that’s coming through, I’ll lean towards English food because I know they’ll like a curry or a shepherd’s pie, or something like that.
As for dishes, you know, it’s a red meat, white meat, fish, and vegetarian or vegan. I just try to liven it up a little bit. I don’t get it too fancy because these are people on the road and they have a lot of physical work to do. They just want simple food and they like a lot to eat.
Some people don’t eat certain things; people have intolerances. You try to make sure that there are options so they have a good meal. You just try to make everyone happy. Especially on the road, they’ve got a long day ahead of them. So the last thing they want in the morning is somebody grumpy and not be able to get something that they can eat.
What are some of the foods that do or don’t work well on tour?
I think most things work if they’re cooked properly. I’m trying to think… It is hard to bake bread on tour. But you know, we make all our own desserts. I think we can do anything that a gourmet restaurant does. Of course, we can’t spend hours and hours and hours doing the prep work for it. We can’t make overnight reductions, you know, overnight stocks and things, but pretty much, we can do nearly everything.
What were some of your more memorable experiences when you were touring full-time?
I’ve just had amazing times. I went around the world with Paul McCartney; that was my first U.S. tour. I went to Japan, South America, and Australia with him. I did the Stones. One of the most amazing things was doing the Moscow Music Peace Festival in 1989. It was really hard. We had to take all our food over land from London to Moscow in three semis. That included ice and water. That experience made me appreciate food more; we’re just so extravagant in the West. It made me really sad. People were going through our trash. I came in one morning and all our workers were eating raw bacon because they didn’t know what it was. We had sit down meals with them and they were fantastic people. We had these older ladies working with us and we used to send them home with food every night. We would just sneak it out.
What did you like most about catering for touring?
I think it’s the camaraderie. It is always great to see everyone enjoying the food and relaxing for a time together, joking around. You make friends and there are people who look forward to you showing up. I’ve been feeding the local stagehands in Chicago for 26 years.
You feed more than the local stagehands, you feed the locals themselves. What made you start The Goddess and The Grocer?
I’d always wanted to have a deli. Basically, I realized very early on that I was pretty unemployable because I really couldn’t keep set times and I’d just prefer to go off, still in my own little world. One thing I noticed is you could never find a really good sandwich. I don’t mean like a big overstuffed New York deli sandwich but a good sandwich. A satisfying sandwich that you are like really happy after you’ve eaten it. I’ve always loved, in Australia, you get a salad sandwich. It’s got all salad ingredients in it and it’s delicious. It’s juicy and it’s fresh and you are happy eating it. So that was really my reason for starting The Goddess and The Grocer.
For more information, please visit www.goddessandgrocer.com.