Kangaroo Valley couple rise from the ashes to build creative and cost-saving catering business

A Kangaroo Valley catering company which needed to completely rebuild after the Black Summer bushfires decimated the business has found new ways to save money and protect the environment while serving the community creative and fresh dishes.

Caterina co-owner and chef Katrina Endean fell in love with growing her own food from a very early age.

Her mother was a home economics teacher and her older brothers had a strong interest in permaculture, so Katrina grew up exploring and tending to their own backyard garden and always craved a natural lifestyle.

“I just wanted to move to the country, build my own home and live as sustainably and self-sufficiently as possible,” Katrina said. “That’s what my dream was from 12 years old.”

She enjoyed a long career doing various jobs across the food industry but when Katrina turned 40 she decided to take a leap of faith and start her own business, originally alongside a friend and mentor and then later creating Caterina with her partner Andy Gordon.

They started slow with some conferences and weddings, but as word got out, demand grew.

“For the first six years of the business it grew exponentially every year,” Andy said.

“That business grew and grew and grew and it got to a point where we were doing 70 to 80 weddings a year and we had a staff of 12 with some more casuals.”

But then devastation reigned on their successful endeavour.

“It was a really busy time,” Andy said. “Then the season of 2019 played out and the Currowan fire made its way up on the coast and on the fourth of January it burnt that western part of Kangaroo Valley and completely decimated that property and we lost our business.”

They had to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of wedding deposits and although business insurance gave them a financial buffer, all their hard work was lost and they were back to square one.

“Paying out copious amounts of money it’s a shocking experience and you have no measure of any success anymore,” Andy said.

“It really did affect me, the fires. I didn’t think it did at the time but looking back I was very traumatised by what had happened,” Katrina said.

“We had a really lovely team and it was a pretty amazing business, we were making good money, which I never ever thought I would find myself in that position and just to have that ripped away from you is pretty dramatic.”

COVID shutdowns gave the couple a chance to figure out what the business would look like in the future.

They decided to start over in a new venue of their own which they gutted and renovated into a commercial kitchen and shopfront.

And their new space came with a renewed focus on what sort of food they were passionate about.

“My ethos is trying to use fresh, local produce as much as possible,” Katrina said. “I have a large kitchen garden, a large orchard, so I use everything from my own garden in the business and we make all our own jams and preserves out of everything that we have excess of.

“We also support other local growers.”

Their business has proved to be resilient throughout recent flooding which isolated Kangaroo Valley and customers have loved the point of difference with what’s on offer.

“When you go to a wedding often things come from the freezer to the fryer and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of love in the food – so I just try to put as much love into what we do as possible,” Katrina said.

“I’m really passionate about clean, healthy, home-cooked style food that hasn’t been handled too much.

“You can, I think, really taste the difference in the style of food that we do.”

Their passion for sustainability is also now reflected in their energy use after they received a grant from the Federal Government to replace some of their equipment.

Their new freezer is not only helping reduce their energy usage, but also giving them peace of mind that the second-hand equipment wasn’t going to fail on them when they needed it most.

“I think I spent a lot of time thinking about the freezer and packing it and losing all the stock,” Andy said.

“It’s not even the monetary loss of the stock, although that’s bad, it’s the inconvenience and situation that in a regional town you can’t just replace everything that it is in overnight with a new delivery, it just doesn’t work that way.”

And by cutting back their power usage, they are also cutting back costs.

“I can already see that we’re using $2.50 a day less power and around 27 to 30 per cent less power,” Andy said.

“Over the course of the year that could translate to $1500 to $2000 in savings just by the installation by more energy efficient equipment.”

That extra cash can make all the difference for small businesses to help them continue operations into the future and manage in tough times.

And for Caterina, the future is looking bright with Katrina excited to explore new ways to convey the possibilities of quality, fresh food.

“Some people are artists, some people are musicians, some people are sculptors but food is also a very creative thing and you put your heart and soul into it,” Katrina said.

“Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m going to cook until the day – I’ll see what comes in from the garden and go ‘I think I’ll make this today’ and I think that’s what I’d really like to do into the future, just be more creative.”

To find out more about Caterina visit its website.