Chapter 2 - I Really Did Start as “The Catering Sister”
When I was twenty, I served chicken piccata at weddings for:
$14 an hour plus tips.
That part of the family story was:
true.
Our parents were middle class.
Comfortable.
Not rich.
Dad managed a regional auto-parts warehouse in New Jersey.
Mom worked in the administrative office of a private school.
Brielle was three years younger than:
me.
Growing up, she was:
beautiful,
social,
effortlessly polished.
I was:
organized.
Which is a wonderful trait nobody compliments at seventeen.
Brielle could walk into a room and people remembered:
her.
I remembered:
where everyone had put their coats.
In college, I studied hospitality management.
My mother asked:
“Are you sure?”
That tone.
I knew what it meant.
“You’re smart enough for something more professional.”
“What’s unprofessional about hospitality?”
“You know what I mean.”
I did.
Brielle went into:
luxury retail marketing.
Everyone understood that immediately.
Maya worked:
events.
Brielle worked:
fashion.
One sounded:
service.
The other sounded:
status.
I spent weekends at:
hotel banquets,
weddings,
corporate dinners,
bar mitzvahs,
fundraisers.
I learned:
food cost,
labor,
contracts,
linen logistics,
liquor regulations,
loading docks,
floor plans,
how to spot a bride about to faint from fifty feet away.
At twenty-seven, I started my own event-production company with:
$42,000 in savings
and:
a $60,000 small-business loan.
We called it Morrow Hospitality.
At first:
four employees.
Then:
twelve.
Then:
thirty.
We began taking full-service catering contracts.
Then venue-management contracts.
By thirty-three, Morrow Hospitality employed:
eighty-six full- and part-time staff
across operations, events and culinary services.
We managed:
three private venues
and provided outside catering to another:
six.
Arden House was our largest contract.
I owned:
61 percent
of Morrow.
Two early senior employees owned:
minority stakes.
No billionaire.
No secret heiress.
Just eleven years of:
work
my family had never learned to describe accurately.
At Thanksgiving, Mom still said:
“Maya does weddings.”
Technically:
yes.
I stopped correcting:
her.
May you like
That became part of the problem.
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