Dawn Heaton has been working in the food industry for more than 40 years, not always by choice. In fact, she didn't want to own a business and never set out to be a caterer. She just looked for a job that put food on the table and health insurance on file.
She was a teen mom and married at 16. Her husband joined the military and the little family moved to Minot, North Dakota. The only job she could find was in a restaurant at the Holiday Inn, where a former caterer retreated after his business failed. As a curious youngster, Heaton asked him what happened.
“He said there’s a rule about that: never quit your day job. It doesn’t sink in to some kid. I just kept learning so much from him,” she said.
She already had some experience from working at a truck stop in high school. When shot got pregnant, they sent her out of sight to cook in the kitchen.
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Now, as the owner of Heaton’s Catering, she’s going into a different kitchen almost every weekend, sometimes sending out three vans strategically packed full of food and supplies.
On a Friday in August, she was getting ready for one of the last wedding receptions at Emma’s Event Center before it’s turned into a family fun zone, outfitted with trampolines, laser tag and other activities.
The bride called earlier in the week wanting to know how long it would take for 300 guests to move through two lines: 56 minutes depending on how many children and elderly need to go through. That wouldn’t do.
The bride had a long video montage and wanted friends and family to be quickly seated. Heaton agreed to double the serving lines – and the work. Doing the math, now, she needed six chafing dishes instead of four, two centerpieces and six melon baskets.
Heaton usually doesn’t do four lines for parties under 400, but she knew the bride. Heaton catered her mother’s wedding 27 years ago.
Her business was built on word-of-mouth and that’s largely how it remains. “My website is awful,” she said, adding that she likes to talk to people on the phone and meet up to get a sense of someone’s style. Sometimes clients text her first. She calls them back.
Heaton, 61, still lives in rural Jefferson, South Dakota, sandwiched between her childhood home and a cemetery. Her husband jokes, “She was born down there, now she lives here and I think that’s her next stop.”
In high school, some of her classmates couldn’t wait to leave the “Podunk town,” but she loved her house and her parents and never wanted to leave.
When she did move away, it wasn’t for long. Heaton and her husband returned to Siouxland in three years to help on the farm after her father was killed in a grain elevator explosion in Sioux City. She transferred to the Holiday Inn in Sioux City, where they had an opening for a hostess and a waitress, but soon, she earned a spot in the kitchen working with the chef.
She liked the work well enough, but it required early mornings for breakfasts and late nights for banquets, taking her away from her children. So she left the hotel to make school lunch.
With summers off, she had time to cater. Though, for a short time, she considered being a teacher but left the school system when a district merger meant job cuts. Her husband had good benefits through the United States Postal Service, where he continues to work as a rural mail carrier. She knew others didn’t have a spouse to fall back on for health insurance.
She quit and got more involved in catering.
“We started out where the church ladies left off,” she said. “They used to do the sandwiches and salads and stuff. We work now. It used to be a thrill for those women to get out, get away from home and go do that on a Saturday. Now, all of a sudden the thrill’s gone.”
It takes a lot of planning and preparation to feed hundreds of people at a time. First, there’s a delicate art to packing a cooler.
“You might have to grab an empty mayonnaise jar or something to put in there so it doesn’t tip over. Or you’ve got blocks behind the rolling cart so they don’t go flying,” she said. “Everything’s got to be in there so tight. You just don’t pile stuff up, and then you move fast.”
Heaton’s Catering has eight employees and she doesn’t let the new ones load the van. When multiple events are going on in one weekend, it can be easy to grab the wrong thing and send it down the road. Everything gets labeled and separated into big Styrofoam coolers.
Then, the rest is all about timing. The last thing she wants to do is serve cheesy potatoes with a crusted edge or vegetables that have turned to mush.
She has learned a lot about the food industry over the past 40 years. Some of the lessons were more intentional than others. She still remembers her first day as a cafeteria lady. She made chicken. And a mess.
She looked around at the dirty dishes and asked, “What time does the cleanup crew come in?” The other ladies looked at her and said, “We are the cleanup crew.”
To this day, she keeps one rule above all others: Don’t make a mess.
