Good Neighbor Podcast: Rochester
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Rochester
Good Neighbor Podcast: Rochester
EP#112: The Flavor Lab with Lisa Bidinger
Ever wonder what it takes to turn a layoff into a launchpad for culinary creativity? That's precisely what Lisa Bidinger, the mastermind behind the Flavor Lab, did when she and her husband Mark took a leap of faith into the catering world. Our delightful conversation with Lisa peels back the curtain on the Flavor Lab's journey from the purchase of an existing catering business to its rebirth as a brand that tantalizes taste buds across a spectrum of events. From beachside nuptials to grand graduation bashes, Lisa's team brings the feast to you, sans the constraints of a traditional eatery.
Get ready to be whisked away on a savory adventure as Lisa reveals how their boutique approach to catering ensures a personalized experience, one that's garnished with specialty sliders, deviled eggs par excellence, and the warmth of homestyle cooking. Beyond the kitchen, the Flavor Lab also spices up the community by offering a rental kitchen space for up-and-coming foodpreneurs and hosting everything from sourdough workshops to team-building cook-offs. If you're hungering for a story of resilience, a pinch of business savvy, and a generous helping of passion for food, this episode serves up just that with Lisa Bidinger at the Flavor Lab.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Lisa Swiftney.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone and welcome to episode number 113 of the Good Neighbor Podcast. Today we have good neighbor Lisa Bittinger with the Flavor Lab. How are you doing today, lisa I, the Flavor Lab. How are you doing today, lisa? I'm good. Lisa, how are you doing? I'm really good, thank you. Thank you for being a guest today. Yes, thank you for having me. Let's first start off by telling our listeners about your business. What do you do?
Speaker 3:So the Flavor Lab C catering company. We cater any kind of occasion, from weddings, showers, birthday parties, memorial services, graduations, you name it. We cater anywhere. We do not have a restaurant that people can come to. We're pretty much 100% offsite catering. So we've catered at the beach, we've catered in greenhouses, barns, venues a lot of different places, and we specialize in a lot of variety of foods. We actually have a huge array of sliders that we do. We have a huge array of deviled eggs, which are my specialty. We do a barbecue as one of our specialties. We do really good homestyle type wedding food.
Speaker 3:We kind of do a lot of different food products and we also have a commercial kitchen rental space where we offer space for people who want to get licensed and make their food product that they sell. We also have classes there. I am taking a little pause on classes until busy season slows down a little bit, but we have people coming in and doing classes, different businesses teaching their classes out of my kitchen. We also do fun things like team buildings, so maybe a private class or a cookie exchange or you just want to get together with your family and make grandma's recipe. So it's a very versatile space. I've done some charity things there as well. That space opened in July of last year, so it's coming up on its one year anniversary.
Speaker 2:How exciting, and I saw that one of my Facebook friends had a sourdough class there.
Speaker 3:Oh yes, sprout Bake comes in and does sourdough classes at the kitchen. I actually took that class the first time she did it there and it's a really fun class, so recommend that one.
Speaker 2:Tell our listeners about your journey. How or why did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:Okay, my husband, mark, in 2015, lost his corporate job. He got laid off and we were trying to make a decision about what our next steps were going to be with that, and he's always been a really good cook. I married him for that grilled chicken. If you haven't tried it yet, it's the best. We talked about starting a food truck at that time, in 2015. And you know we're doing some research, getting to learn a little bit more about it we discovered we would need a commissary kitchen or a rental kitchen space. At that point, we were kind of looking, because they're very hard to find, and as we were looking, we actually found a business for sale, a catering business. So we said let's, you know, dip our feet in that and then the food truck can come down the road.
Speaker 3:We bought the business in 2016. It was called Catering by Catherine, and at the beginning of 2022 was when we decided to go ahead and rebrand. We just felt like Catering by Catherine, with us not really having a Catherine there. People would call me Catherine, people would call Mark Catherine. We had no Catherine, and so we wanted to focus more on the younger crowd, and so we came up with a fun name, and the Flavor Lab is what we came up with. I got laid off at the end of 2022. And so at that point, I became full-time into the business, and that's when we really started gearing up with the commissary kitchen, because we wanted to be able to help those small businesses that were, like us, looking for a place to call their home, that they could make their food products. So that's our new venture.
Speaker 2:That is great. Can you tell us about any challenges that you hear about in your industry? Sure.
Speaker 3:I guess a misconception would be people thinking that we can cater next Tuesday or tomorrow. You know it's a boutique catering business so we generally need about preferably a week. You know the longer the butter. A challenge would be people booking last minute. You know we have to buy the groceries, we have to staff the event. We have to do a lot of preparation for an event and we usually start that preparation almost a week ahead of time with building our shopping lists. I know that there's restaurants that can probably turn around a catering order a lot sooner, but for us it's a little more difficult. We were small business.
Speaker 2:Right when you're not working on your business. What do you like to do for fun?
Speaker 3:I am a puzzle fanatic jigsaw puzzles and I will be like thinking about doing jigsaw puzzles when I'm not doing jigsaw puzzles. I'm addicted. I know you won't show the video or have video, but behind me that whole top shelf is all puzzles, oh wow. And then the other thing I do quilts. If you follow me at my personal Facebook, you'll probably see some quilts that I've done. I just went on a quilt retreat last week with my mom, two of my aunts, a couple of my good friends, and we spent some time up in Gladwin working on our quilts together.
Speaker 2:Oh, how fun, Can you?
Speaker 3:describe one hardship or life challenge that you rose above and can now say because of that challenge that you're better for it and or stronger? Yeah, absolutely. I actually was a single mom, a young single mom early on in life and I was on welfare. I went to school, I ended up going to a vocational school and I got hired in my corporate job where I spent about 24 years and I rose above that. I feel like it's definitely made me a stronger person. It makes me appreciate people who are also in those shoes and trying. Here I am today, you know, with a nice house, an amazing husband, a business, and it's just, you know, a part of me that I'm very proud of getting through.
Speaker 2:Great, and I love even going and seeing your place, so what you've accomplished has been tremendous, I can tell. Thank you. What is one thing you wish our listeners knew about your business?
Speaker 3:We're a family and even my employees that aren't related by blood, they're my family. My salesperson I don't know if he's going to be mad for me saying this he's about to have a little daughter and I've already nominated myself as the honorary grandma. So we are a family and we, you know, do really hard to make you know our customers have a successful event.
Speaker 2:That is awesome. I can't wait to hear about the little baby when she comes. She's coming in September. Oh, that is so much fun. Our listeners are intrigued. They want to learn more. How can they find out more about the Flavor Lab? Book you for an event. Tell us how to get in touch with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so our website is the best way to book us for an event. You can call and you will get likely Kyle answering the phone. We do pride ourselves on trying to answer that phone all the time. You do sometimes get voicemail. The website actually has a contact form which puts you right into our systems. We do have two websites, one for the catering side and one for the kitchen rental side. You can fill out a contact form on either side. So if you're interested in catering, fill out that contact form. If you're interested in learning about the Culinary Collective, which is the cooking classes, kitchen rental, things like that, you can go to the other website and fill out the form. So the websites are flavorlabmicom is the catering side and then theflavorlabkitchen is the Culinary Collective side. But if you just Google the Flavor Lab, you're going to find us pretty easily. Check out our reviews. We have some really good reviews if you're interested in hearing feedback about our catering business.
Speaker 2:Perfect Lisa. Thank you so much for being a guest today on our Good Neighbor podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast, rochester, to nominate your favorite local businesses. Thank you so much for having me. 8, 8, 9, 6, 40.