White Stripe Catering | 361-643-0702
White Stripe Catering
361-643-0702
whitestripecatering.com
Take one look at the handsome staff of White Stripe Catering, and you won’t have to ask again where the company name comes from. Co-owners Scott and Suzanne Stover named their business after their pants.
That’s right, their pants.
“Scott’s been wearing the black-and-white striped pants for 25 years now,” said Suzanne about her husband, both sitting in the token apparel at a table in their catering kitchen. “It’s always been his favorite pattern.”
Twenty years ago when the company Chefwear was founded, Scott had tried out all sorts of their wild and crazy patterned pants. Nothing suited him quite like the ‘ole stripes, though. Especially when it came to business.
White Stripe Catering | 361-643-0702
“The striped pants are a bit more conservative, and they’re just classier,” said Scott. “People put it together as, ‘Wow, what a great marketing scheme,’ and it does have an impact as far as name recognition and retention are concerned.”
But the important thing for Scott and Suzanne is that the pants seem to attract more feedback from their customers. And when you’re in the business of pleasing people, and a quality product is the meat and potatoes of what you do, feedback is crucial. It’s how the Stover’s have built their business to what it is today.
“The perk for us is to have people come up and say, ‘This was terrific – the food was great.’ That’s our job. It’s how we know we did our job,” said Scott.
“We’re fair and honest, and we have a terrific sense of quality and product,” he added. That instinctual sense didn’t just come over night, either.
“The school of hard knocks, that’s how I learned,” Scott said about his earlier days in the business. “You don’t learn it until you actually go do it.”
White Stripe Catering | 361-643-0702
At age thirteen, Scott’s first job was busing tables and washing dishes at bar. He used his quarter tips for a game or two at the pool table. Then at fourteen, Scott took a job working at a slaughter house, where work was tough, but “I was 14 and wanted to work,” Scott said. “That segued into the burger joints in high school, and on I went down the culinary path.”
It’s taken Scott all those years to develop his niche. When asked what his specialty was, he held nothing back: “We cook for money, that’s our motto” he said, laughing. “Two weeks in Hawaii and a stack of hundreds would be nice, too.”
Clearly, the Stover’s keep humor close at hand. “Humor makes the world go round. We like a laugh around here,” said Scott. Even when he’s putting in 18 hour days, he still likes to crack the jokes.
“We have another motto here,” he said, “and that is: ‘We won’t serve anything we won’t eat ourselves.’”
“And that’s to say: you’ll never see liver and onions on any of my menus.”
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | Copyright 2010 Gulfscapes Magazine | Craig and Victoria Rogers | PO Box 863 | Port Aransas, TX 78373 | 361-548-6804 | www.gulfscapes.com
