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Cookies, Goats, and Pudding: Inside the Bizarre World of Catering for WWE
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Cookies, Goats, and Pudding: Inside the Bizarre World of Catering for
WWE In the build-up to SummerSlam 2014, we talk to Jen Hagopian,
catering crew chief for the WWE Tour.
Written by Reyan Ali | August 15, 2014 at 8:59 am
Pro wrestling has long had a strangely symbiotic relationship with
food. During the late 1990s, The Rock frequently asked if you could
smell what he was cooking, and referenced pie and strudel for sexual
innuendos. Meanwhile, `Stone Cold' Steve Austin's trademark post-win
celebration involved chugging `Steveweiser' beers. He's even brought
an entire beer truck out to the ring multiple times, spraying his
opponents with brew.
More recently, Daniel Bryan made his once-accurate-to-real-life trait
of being a vegan part of a smarmy, villainous character. During
sponsorship-related spots on WWE Raw, CM Punk lovingly gazed at KFC's
grilled chicken and started beef with Jared from Subway. (Lately, WWE
has advertised Sonic and Twisted Tea.) Punk, who has a tattoo of the
Pepsi logo on his shoulder, also complained about John Cena spilling
his Diet Pepsi during one segment. Speaking of Cena, The Rock gave him
the nickname `Fruity Pebbles,' mocking Cena for his brightly colored
merchandise. Cena and Fruity Pebbles managed to both turn that diss
into a positive, as the wrestler now reps the cereal in an official
capacity.
Wrestling-related food commercials have been a thing for years, with
Mankind peddling Chef Boyardee and `Macho Man' Randy Savage urging us
to snap into a Slim Jim. WWE has put out its own food products, too,
like ice cream bars and an officially licensed cookbook. Several
restaurants have been started (and usually shuttered) by wrestlers and
promotions: Hulk Hogan's Pastamania!, WWF New York, WCW Nitro Grill,
Abdullah the Butcher's House of Ribs & Chinese Food. Even Raw, WWE's
marquee weekly program, used to advertise itself as a piece of meat
with the slogan `Uncut. Uncensored. Uncooked.'
But more fascinating than the on-screen links is the backstage lore
involving wrestlers and food. Traditions and trivia are scattered
everywhere. In the 1980s, WWF wrestler Ken Patera launched a rock
through the window of a McDonald's in Wisconsin when its staff denied
him service after hours, starting a chain reaction that would lead to
Patera doing two years behind bars. In one '90s clip captured on a
camcorder, wrestling manager Jim Cornette let out a profanity-laden
tirade at Dairy Queen drive-thru workers for assuming that a huge
order Cornette and some wrestlers placed was a joke. The Big Show used
to eat toothpaste sandwiches, and legendary tough guy the Undertaker
is apparently creeped out by cucumbers. Harley Race's barbecues were
once popular social events for wrestlers, with Owen Hart pulling a
prank during one that involved dumping hot sauce into a container of
chili and ruining the whole thing. Nationally, Kowloon Restaurant in
Saugus, MA is a hot spot for WWE wrestlers after they've performed in
nearby Boston. And overseas, the Ribera Steakhouse in Japan is a
must-visit spot for wrestlers of all stripes. Scoring an official
Ribera Steakhouse jacket and having your picture taken in it is an
industry tradition.
The Great Khali tends to eat alone, and The Rock is particular
enough about his portioning that he uses food scales.
Nowadays, the social nexus of the world's biggest wrestling
organization is WWE's backstage dining area, where on- and off-screen
staff wander in and out of all day. That's where you'll find Jen
Hagopian. Working on behalf of Dega Catering from Knoxville, TN, she
has been working with WWE for eight years as Catering Crew Chief for
the WWE Tour. Before this assignment, she hit the road with Mötley
Crüe (which she likens to WWE in that both tours have a circus-act
vibe), Tim Graw, and Faith Hill.
Every week, Hagopian leaves her place in Parsonsfield, ME and ends up
wherever WWE is doing a live televised event, whether it's Raw
(broadcast live on Mondays on USA Network) or SmackDown (taped on
Tuesdays, broadcast on Fridays on Syfy). (WWE runs non-televised
events, too, but they don't involve hundreds of people, so that scale
of catering isn't needed.) She spends about 150 days a year on the
road but also does some preparation and communicating for work from
home. One Sunday a month, WWE holds a special event that was formerly
available on pay-per-view and is now on the WWE Network. One of the
company's biggest shows is WWE SummerSlam, which takes place this
Sunday, August 17, at L.A.'s Staples Center.
Being backstage, she's frequently around not only WWE wrestlers - The
Great Khali, she says, tends to eat alone, and The Rock is particular
enough about his portioning that he uses food scales - but also the
executives behind the organization. In the past, Hagopian has helped
Stephanie McMahon sing `Happy Birthday' to Vince McMahon, her father
and WWE's highest power. (The boss also receives a customary whoopee
cushion.) Meanwhile, Stephanie and her husband/executive/wrestler
Triple H once paused a daily production meeting to make everyone stand
up and sing `Happy Birthday' to Hagopian. She's also friends with
wrestlers (she declines naming names so as to not offend people who
get left out), and has appeared in the background of enough taped
segments that she's lost count. For our second look at the
intersection between pro wrestling and food (here's the first), we
spoke to her about her odd - and messy - line of work. TALKING WWE
CATERING WITH JEN HAGOPIAN
What was your level of familiarity of WWE - or even the idea of pro
wrestling - before you started working with WWE eight years ago?
Well, when they first told me I was going out on tour with WWE, I had
no idea what they were talking about and had to Google it. I figured
out, `Oh yeah, it sounds like WWF, and it is the same thing. It's just
that we had to change the lettering.'
It's something that I never really thought about. The most I ever
touched base with it as a kid was I would be flipping through the TV
channels, look at it, see how silly it was, and keep on going. [Plus],
just standard pop culture [associations]. You can't not see something
with Hulk Hogan on it or `Snap into a Slim Jim' commercials with
`Macho Man' Randy Savage, so there's always that background wrestling
culture interjected into your life throughout most of the '80s when I
was growing up. I definitely saw some of it, but I never liked it at
all. Now, I say, I'm not a wrestling fan, I'm a wrestler fan. They're
my friends now, and I know them. I'm still not really into the whole
wrestling thing.
What's your earliest memory of a specific experience working with WWE?
Before I even went on this tour, I was a stagehand here in Portland,
Maine at the local Civic Center. I was doing a load-out, breaking down
the staging and all the things that were incorporated into the show. I
was on stage, and it was dark in the back part of the stage. It was
very dark and I remember I tripped over something. Then, I opened the
curtain and I looked behind me and saw that I must have tripped over
the Undertaker's foot. It was huge. It was wearing a boot. I felt
really stupid and apologized and rapidly got out of there before I got
put in a chokehold or something. I didn't see the show that night, but
I did feel like I took part of it.
Take us through your daily routine.
Every city we go to, my head chef Jack goes shopping locally at 6:30
in the morning whatever time zone we're in with a local runner in a
cargo van. They go power shopping. They'll go to fish purveyors,
wholesale clubs, regular grocery stores, and just pack the van to the
top within a two- to three-hour time period. He knows all the stores
in every city we go to now. It's always the same cities over and over,
so we're quite familiar with where they're located, how far away, what
quality of produce they have, etcetera.
While he's shopping, we'll be back at the arena loading in our gear,
which is all on wheels, off of our 18-wheeler truck. We'll be building
the locations, which are the kitchen and the dining room, and
sometimes also a separate dish room, and creating the feng shui for
the dining room. We'll be prepping stuff in the kitchen, starting out
breakfast-style foods for the continental breakfast that we have for
our regular crew. The wrestlers aren't there at this point, so we
don't have a lot to start out with from our pre-shop, which is done
the day before when you have a smaller $2,000 shop for beverages and
things to get us going first thing in the morning.
It's kind of like an episode of Iron Chef for 10 hours straight -
just balls to the wall for the entire day.
We're waiting for our Jack to get back. Usually [at] about 8:30am,
he'll roll up with the runner. Then, it's a mad house. We unload the
van, and there's prepping everywhere. We have five local helpers that
are prepping and helping us slice and dice food and prepare everything
for the big meal, which is at 11:30 in the morning. That is [the
wrestlers'] dinner. They want to eat lighter for the second meal
because they're going to be performing soon afterwards. The big, big
meal starts at 11:30am and goes to 4:30pm. At 4:30, we switch over to
the lighter second meal which ends at the show time, which is usually
around 7:30 at night. The way everything happens, it's kind of like an
episode of Iron Chef for 10 hours straight - just balls to the wall
for the entire day.
I'll also be preparing beverages for all the dressing rooms where the
talent are located, [plus] Vince McMahon's room. He gets fed every
two-and-a-half hours in his room with proteins and vegetables. Then,
for me, it's putting out fires throughout the day, figuratively and
literally, which has happened in some cases where our ovens have blown
up. Then, the show starts and we break everything down. It all goes
back into all the road cases, and they roll back into our 18-wheelers,
and then we move on to the next city.
What are the quantities of the key items you're working with?
Well, I have been doing interviews over the years, and when I tell
people the quantities, it's just gradually gotten bigger and bigger
every year. At this point, since we have started the [WWE] Network,
and there have been more divisions and departments and facets to WWE,
it's exploded and turned into a bigger animal than previous years. I'm
going to go with our standard, slightly bigger answer than the last
two years, which has been about 200 pounds each of chicken and beef a
day. In the past, it's been 150 to 200, and now it's 200 to even more
on some days. I go through about a hundred to 150 cases of water a
day. There's a lot of people practicing and going to gyms and doing
workouts at the venue and climbing stairs and jogging, and they just
constantly are needing to rehydrate. That's just the water aspect of
it. Our dining room carries a full beverage section. There's an
espresso machine. We probably go through about 150 espresso pots a day
for our machine, maybe more at this point. We go through about 150
pounds of seafood a day for the one dish for the first meal. We
probably go through about 10 pounds of rice a day.
This really does sound like Iron Chef with you in the Kitchen Arena,
going around and having to manage huge quantities of food.
Yeah, chopping and grating and grinding. My four chefs that work for
Dega [are] multi-tasking all day long. Plus, again, we have the four
catering assistants, and one runner that's jumping in wherever they
can. I have two dining room people that are maintaining everything out
on the line in the dining room, and keeping the coffee going, and
refreshing all the cakes and pies. We probably go through about 30
cakes and pies a day, and tray after tray after tray of cookies. They
love the cookies. It's not just the wrestlers; we're usually feeding
anywhere from 50 to a hundred wrestlers, plus we feed another 150 of
our tour crew and about 100 to 150 local stagehands. Those are between
300 to 500 people per meal a day, plus the breakfast just [for] our
traveling crew. It's fun and it's quite an armload of work, but we're
probably the most popular people backstage because we're feeding
them. Without having this catering aspect, it would be a lot of work
for people to come in to do work and have to go find their food
somewhere else or take a buy-out, which means they just get the money
so that they can find their own devices to eat.
We probably go through about 30 cakes and pies a day.
Our catering world is the center of social life. People come and
refresh there. They get to just not think about work so much when they
come in. It's more like a big social gathering. Some people are just
standing there grazing and focusing on food and not worrying about
up-and-coming stuff or the course of their night. It's almost like
having a restaurant in the middle of the day. Again, the food is
awesome. My chefs try to use as many organic ingredients as
possible. They're not just going and throwing up slop like frozen
Sysco products or anything. They're buying fresh produce every day and
making a nice presentation and tasty food, which is very difficult to
do in that capacity.
Is your catering different for a big WWE show like WrestleMania or
SummerSlam?
It's a lot busier, [with] bigger proportions. We have to rent a lot of
gear for the additional mouths to feed for both of those. I even go
out to the location months before to be on-site to prepare for
WrestleMania. It's the Super Bowl of all wrestling things, [with]
thousands of people to feed and a lot of elements involved that we
wouldn't normally have to make it happen, like extra refrigerators and
extra local purveyors that can handle the quantity of shopping we
do. Same thing with SummerSlam: That's an event where everybody wants
to show up, and everybody's a star, and everybody's bringing their
families. Special events are happening, extra vignettes - just more
mouths to feed in general. We usually do extra gear and try to hire
extra local people to help us out.
What are the most popular things to eat amongst wrestlers overall?
Well, they tend to gravitate towards the plain grilled chicken dishes
- things without sauces and gravies, so a lot of `em are obviously
watching their health and watching calories. We do a lot of the
grilled chicken as a plain chicken. We'll have another [option] so
people who aren't necessarily counting calories can just have a
wonderfully flavored dish. [For] some of the bells and whistles that
people request a lot, Cholula Hot Sauce seems to be one of the
items. The cookies are a staple with us. We need to have cookies out
every day or there's probably 40, 50 requests for `em if we don't have
the cookies out. There's always an oatmeal dish: There's either a big
container of oatmeal that's fresh in the morning that we leave up
until around lunchtime, and then we try to refresh that, or at least
we'll have the oatmeal packets so that they can put `em in their
pockets and take `em to their buses or hotels. Rice is also a
staple. We always have the salad bar out. Every day, we put out a
special salad, which is usually what I go for for my meal. One of my
favorite ones, which is also a very popular dish, is the watermelon,
feta, mint, and balsamic vinaigrette salad, so it's really a good
refreshing summer salad. Another popular one is arugula with shaved
Parmesan and grilled figs.
Some eating-related trends and niches - vegetarian options, vegan
options, gluten-free options, organic food, local food, grass-fed beef
- are here to stay and some go. Which of these are a priority?
Well, we have quite a variety. Having that many people involved,
there's many food allergies. There's many different diets we're trying
to help out. We try to cater to everybody if we can. On a daily basis,
we always have vegetarian options. We try to do a vegan option. If
somebody comes and says, `Hey, what do you have if I have a nut
allergy?,' we will radio our chef and make sure certain things are
safe for them. We've got gluten-free people - myself included. I'm
actually a gluten-free pescatarian with multiple food intolerances. I
know how it is. There is a lot of special requests. Some of the bigger
names might have preference with the way they like their steak cooked
or they want something without a sauce or they want to modify what we
have out on the line, so they'll come to the kitchen. They know my
chefs now. My chefs are very accommodating. Basically, everybody has
something they can eat.
Are there any foods banned from catering either in that you never want
them there or no one likes them? Anything taboo explicitly or
implicitly?
There is no taboo. There are certain things I have to watch for. We
have a sponsor usually for beverages or candies every
year. Occasionally, it changes. Right now, Coke is one of our
sponsors, but in the past, it was Pepsi, so I have to keep the Pepsi
logo out of shots, so I couldn't buy it at all. I also have to be on
the lookout constantly for food recalls. Right now, there's a stone
fruit recall for Listeria, so I have to call local places in advance
and say, `Please don't buy us any stone fruit. It's not safe right
now.' There was a peanut butter recall a few years ago. You have to
constantly try to think of the endless possibilities of all the bad
things that could happen and how to prevent us from having to get
anywhere near that situation. If a wrestler pointed at catering for
being sick and not being able to be in the show, that would definitely
put a damper on my work day.
Over your eight years, have you witnessed any fad diets come in and go
out?
Oh yeah, they happen every year. We get the burden of accommodating
whatever style it is. Some people will come in and say, `Oh, we're
only going to be doing peanut butter and cheese this week.' They'll
tell three of their friends, and then all of a sudden, we've got a
whole slew of people doing this crazy, weird diet. That seriously
happens multiple times a year in different groups. John Cena actually
has his own diet plan right now and he's got a bunch of our crew guys
and some of the other wrestlers doing it, and it seems to be working
pretty well. I know that they have one day that they'll do sweets and
be able to not be on the diet, so they'll all pick one of the days at
work where they can come in the dining room and just binge on these
cookies and take some stuff.
WWE will occasionally have segments in which someone will get hit with
or thrown into food. Would they ever come to you with requests like
that?
Oh, they come right to me. I actually was just talking a couple of
weeks ago about how it's been a while since we've done a food
fight. I'm knocking on wood right now because it's always a mess and
it's not a fun thing for me to do to get them. Sometimes, they do
slop. They just want leftover stuff in a bucket so they can throw it
and they can mess up all my stuff in the dining room. Other times,
they want something like a turkey dinner around Thanksgiving, so my
chefs have to do a side project of cooking a specific turkey and
making it look this pretty.
They did this crazy food fight at the end of the night where I
think Triple H came in and possibly threw a giant bucket of chili
on top of Daniel Bryan.
Recently, we were in Fayetteville, North Carolina, also lovingly known
as Fayette-nam. It's not the best building to work in because [the
dining workspace is] in a closet area. It's almost unworkable because
it's so small. It's difficult to set up in a crazy storage space for
the amount of people we're seating, but somehow, we miraculously pull
it off. Not this time, but the previous time we were there, they did
this crazy food fight at the end of the night where I think Triple H
came in and possibly threw a giant bucket of chili on top of Daniel
Bryan. I think it was Bryan; I lose track of all the elements because
I don't watch it. I'm just there seeing bits and pieces of it when
they're filming. I have to make sure that my people are not in the
shot, or sometimes they want `em in the shot. I might be paying a lot
of attention if they need my guys or me in the shot. Other times if
I'm not involved with it, I'll be trying to tiptoe around the edge and
mind my business and keep doing my work, so that was one of the times
where they wanted me to be in it, just for a second. Meanwhile, I'm
trying to do my regular work and get things done, peeking around and
making sure that it's not my time to get in the shot yet.
[The chili] was a mess. We did have to make it cool enough so it
didn't burn anybody, so it's more of a prop item rather than
straight-off-the-line hot food. That happens randomly once every six
months. It gets crazier around the holidays, typically. I might have
to set up a table for a big display with all the bells and whistles,
and bowls of food here and there, and candles and flowers. That's
always fun, to try to incorporate all these extra things into my
regular daily craziness.
Does it ever feel heartbreaking or strange that you're going to make
this nice meal that's just going to be used to be thrown at someone or
pushed onto a floor?
Yeah. I have to do what they want me to do. It's for the betterment
for the show, and it makes it interesting, and then I have this crazy
story. `Oh yeah, I did this today. This is what my life's about.' I
have guys in the dining room not wearing pants. [Laughs] I've got guys
walking around in the hallway wearing cheeseburger sheets and bunny
rabbit costumes. That's what we do to make this show work.
What's it been like being a reoccurring character there in the
background?
Recently, somebody sent me an article of the six most interesting
people seen at the Daniel Bryan `Yes! Movement,' and I was number six,
or number one, or something like that as Lita's doppelgänger. I was on
TV quite a bit, and they did a vignette afterward and I was in that as
well.
wwe Cookies, Goats, and Pudding: Inside the Bizarre World of Catering
for WWE Conjecture has it that I might be a WWE employee. It's not
hard to figure it out. [Laughs] I've been in some [vignettes] with
William Regal. He was my trashman picking up trash in the dining room
and I was bossing him around. Another time, I was in a restaurant
scene with Tony Atlas talking about going on dates. It's been
interesting. It's up and down and across the board.
Out of all that you have seen in WWE, what stands out in your head as
the strangest situation you have ever been in?
There's probably a lot, but on the spot, I tend to think of having to
help set up the pudding pools that they do those pudding matches
in. We've had a few of those. It just seems so crazy to see hundreds
of pounds of pudding getting put in swimming pools. Very
interesting. [Watch a video of a WWE pudding match below.]
Several years ago, the Great Khali had a gimmick where his `family'
would come into the ring with him and have all their goats and sheep
and chickens [in the ring]. We had a lot of livestock backstage. Just
having to pen up things when they escape and trying to rally everybody
to help out doing certain strange skits, it's a wild and crazy world
backstage sometimes. We have crazy stunts that also happen with our
stuntman Ellis Edwards, who's awesome and a good friend of mine. We've
had 18-wheelers drive backstage where they had me pretend like I was
putting on hairspray in the hallway, and all of a sudden, the
18-wheeler comes screaming up through the hallway and I have to jump
and roll out of the way. It's fun, and it's constantly keeping you on
your toes 'cause you never know what's really going on. Occasionally,
you'll be walking through the hallway or pushing a cart and people
will yell out, `Get out of the way' or `Be careful, there's a shot
coming up.' I used to just roll my eyes in the back of my head
thinking, `You're kidding me! Are you serious?' Now, nothing bothers
me, and nothing's really strange anymore.
http://firstwefeast.com/eat/inside-the-bizarre-world-of-catering-for-wwe/
From: Baghdasarian
FirstWeFeast.com
Cookies, Goats, and Pudding: Inside the Bizarre World of Catering for
WWE In the build-up to SummerSlam 2014, we talk to Jen Hagopian,
catering crew chief for the WWE Tour.
Written by Reyan Ali | August 15, 2014 at 8:59 am
Pro wrestling has long had a strangely symbiotic relationship with
food. During the late 1990s, The Rock frequently asked if you could
smell what he was cooking, and referenced pie and strudel for sexual
innuendos. Meanwhile, `Stone Cold' Steve Austin's trademark post-win
celebration involved chugging `Steveweiser' beers. He's even brought
an entire beer truck out to the ring multiple times, spraying his
opponents with brew.
More recently, Daniel Bryan made his once-accurate-to-real-life trait
of being a vegan part of a smarmy, villainous character. During
sponsorship-related spots on WWE Raw, CM Punk lovingly gazed at KFC's
grilled chicken and started beef with Jared from Subway. (Lately, WWE
has advertised Sonic and Twisted Tea.) Punk, who has a tattoo of the
Pepsi logo on his shoulder, also complained about John Cena spilling
his Diet Pepsi during one segment. Speaking of Cena, The Rock gave him
the nickname `Fruity Pebbles,' mocking Cena for his brightly colored
merchandise. Cena and Fruity Pebbles managed to both turn that diss
into a positive, as the wrestler now reps the cereal in an official
capacity.
Wrestling-related food commercials have been a thing for years, with
Mankind peddling Chef Boyardee and `Macho Man' Randy Savage urging us
to snap into a Slim Jim. WWE has put out its own food products, too,
like ice cream bars and an officially licensed cookbook. Several
restaurants have been started (and usually shuttered) by wrestlers and
promotions: Hulk Hogan's Pastamania!, WWF New York, WCW Nitro Grill,
Abdullah the Butcher's House of Ribs & Chinese Food. Even Raw, WWE's
marquee weekly program, used to advertise itself as a piece of meat
with the slogan `Uncut. Uncensored. Uncooked.'
But more fascinating than the on-screen links is the backstage lore
involving wrestlers and food. Traditions and trivia are scattered
everywhere. In the 1980s, WWF wrestler Ken Patera launched a rock
through the window of a McDonald's in Wisconsin when its staff denied
him service after hours, starting a chain reaction that would lead to
Patera doing two years behind bars. In one '90s clip captured on a
camcorder, wrestling manager Jim Cornette let out a profanity-laden
tirade at Dairy Queen drive-thru workers for assuming that a huge
order Cornette and some wrestlers placed was a joke. The Big Show used
to eat toothpaste sandwiches, and legendary tough guy the Undertaker
is apparently creeped out by cucumbers. Harley Race's barbecues were
once popular social events for wrestlers, with Owen Hart pulling a
prank during one that involved dumping hot sauce into a container of
chili and ruining the whole thing. Nationally, Kowloon Restaurant in
Saugus, MA is a hot spot for WWE wrestlers after they've performed in
nearby Boston. And overseas, the Ribera Steakhouse in Japan is a
must-visit spot for wrestlers of all stripes. Scoring an official
Ribera Steakhouse jacket and having your picture taken in it is an
industry tradition.
The Great Khali tends to eat alone, and The Rock is particular
enough about his portioning that he uses food scales.
Nowadays, the social nexus of the world's biggest wrestling
organization is WWE's backstage dining area, where on- and off-screen
staff wander in and out of all day. That's where you'll find Jen
Hagopian. Working on behalf of Dega Catering from Knoxville, TN, she
has been working with WWE for eight years as Catering Crew Chief for
the WWE Tour. Before this assignment, she hit the road with Mötley
Crüe (which she likens to WWE in that both tours have a circus-act
vibe), Tim Graw, and Faith Hill.
Every week, Hagopian leaves her place in Parsonsfield, ME and ends up
wherever WWE is doing a live televised event, whether it's Raw
(broadcast live on Mondays on USA Network) or SmackDown (taped on
Tuesdays, broadcast on Fridays on Syfy). (WWE runs non-televised
events, too, but they don't involve hundreds of people, so that scale
of catering isn't needed.) She spends about 150 days a year on the
road but also does some preparation and communicating for work from
home. One Sunday a month, WWE holds a special event that was formerly
available on pay-per-view and is now on the WWE Network. One of the
company's biggest shows is WWE SummerSlam, which takes place this
Sunday, August 17, at L.A.'s Staples Center.
Being backstage, she's frequently around not only WWE wrestlers - The
Great Khali, she says, tends to eat alone, and The Rock is particular
enough about his portioning that he uses food scales - but also the
executives behind the organization. In the past, Hagopian has helped
Stephanie McMahon sing `Happy Birthday' to Vince McMahon, her father
and WWE's highest power. (The boss also receives a customary whoopee
cushion.) Meanwhile, Stephanie and her husband/executive/wrestler
Triple H once paused a daily production meeting to make everyone stand
up and sing `Happy Birthday' to Hagopian. She's also friends with
wrestlers (she declines naming names so as to not offend people who
get left out), and has appeared in the background of enough taped
segments that she's lost count. For our second look at the
intersection between pro wrestling and food (here's the first), we
spoke to her about her odd - and messy - line of work. TALKING WWE
CATERING WITH JEN HAGOPIAN
What was your level of familiarity of WWE - or even the idea of pro
wrestling - before you started working with WWE eight years ago?
Well, when they first told me I was going out on tour with WWE, I had
no idea what they were talking about and had to Google it. I figured
out, `Oh yeah, it sounds like WWF, and it is the same thing. It's just
that we had to change the lettering.'
It's something that I never really thought about. The most I ever
touched base with it as a kid was I would be flipping through the TV
channels, look at it, see how silly it was, and keep on going. [Plus],
just standard pop culture [associations]. You can't not see something
with Hulk Hogan on it or `Snap into a Slim Jim' commercials with
`Macho Man' Randy Savage, so there's always that background wrestling
culture interjected into your life throughout most of the '80s when I
was growing up. I definitely saw some of it, but I never liked it at
all. Now, I say, I'm not a wrestling fan, I'm a wrestler fan. They're
my friends now, and I know them. I'm still not really into the whole
wrestling thing.
What's your earliest memory of a specific experience working with WWE?
Before I even went on this tour, I was a stagehand here in Portland,
Maine at the local Civic Center. I was doing a load-out, breaking down
the staging and all the things that were incorporated into the show. I
was on stage, and it was dark in the back part of the stage. It was
very dark and I remember I tripped over something. Then, I opened the
curtain and I looked behind me and saw that I must have tripped over
the Undertaker's foot. It was huge. It was wearing a boot. I felt
really stupid and apologized and rapidly got out of there before I got
put in a chokehold or something. I didn't see the show that night, but
I did feel like I took part of it.
Take us through your daily routine.
Every city we go to, my head chef Jack goes shopping locally at 6:30
in the morning whatever time zone we're in with a local runner in a
cargo van. They go power shopping. They'll go to fish purveyors,
wholesale clubs, regular grocery stores, and just pack the van to the
top within a two- to three-hour time period. He knows all the stores
in every city we go to now. It's always the same cities over and over,
so we're quite familiar with where they're located, how far away, what
quality of produce they have, etcetera.
While he's shopping, we'll be back at the arena loading in our gear,
which is all on wheels, off of our 18-wheeler truck. We'll be building
the locations, which are the kitchen and the dining room, and
sometimes also a separate dish room, and creating the feng shui for
the dining room. We'll be prepping stuff in the kitchen, starting out
breakfast-style foods for the continental breakfast that we have for
our regular crew. The wrestlers aren't there at this point, so we
don't have a lot to start out with from our pre-shop, which is done
the day before when you have a smaller $2,000 shop for beverages and
things to get us going first thing in the morning.
It's kind of like an episode of Iron Chef for 10 hours straight -
just balls to the wall for the entire day.
We're waiting for our Jack to get back. Usually [at] about 8:30am,
he'll roll up with the runner. Then, it's a mad house. We unload the
van, and there's prepping everywhere. We have five local helpers that
are prepping and helping us slice and dice food and prepare everything
for the big meal, which is at 11:30 in the morning. That is [the
wrestlers'] dinner. They want to eat lighter for the second meal
because they're going to be performing soon afterwards. The big, big
meal starts at 11:30am and goes to 4:30pm. At 4:30, we switch over to
the lighter second meal which ends at the show time, which is usually
around 7:30 at night. The way everything happens, it's kind of like an
episode of Iron Chef for 10 hours straight - just balls to the wall
for the entire day.
I'll also be preparing beverages for all the dressing rooms where the
talent are located, [plus] Vince McMahon's room. He gets fed every
two-and-a-half hours in his room with proteins and vegetables. Then,
for me, it's putting out fires throughout the day, figuratively and
literally, which has happened in some cases where our ovens have blown
up. Then, the show starts and we break everything down. It all goes
back into all the road cases, and they roll back into our 18-wheelers,
and then we move on to the next city.
What are the quantities of the key items you're working with?
Well, I have been doing interviews over the years, and when I tell
people the quantities, it's just gradually gotten bigger and bigger
every year. At this point, since we have started the [WWE] Network,
and there have been more divisions and departments and facets to WWE,
it's exploded and turned into a bigger animal than previous years. I'm
going to go with our standard, slightly bigger answer than the last
two years, which has been about 200 pounds each of chicken and beef a
day. In the past, it's been 150 to 200, and now it's 200 to even more
on some days. I go through about a hundred to 150 cases of water a
day. There's a lot of people practicing and going to gyms and doing
workouts at the venue and climbing stairs and jogging, and they just
constantly are needing to rehydrate. That's just the water aspect of
it. Our dining room carries a full beverage section. There's an
espresso machine. We probably go through about 150 espresso pots a day
for our machine, maybe more at this point. We go through about 150
pounds of seafood a day for the one dish for the first meal. We
probably go through about 10 pounds of rice a day.
This really does sound like Iron Chef with you in the Kitchen Arena,
going around and having to manage huge quantities of food.
Yeah, chopping and grating and grinding. My four chefs that work for
Dega [are] multi-tasking all day long. Plus, again, we have the four
catering assistants, and one runner that's jumping in wherever they
can. I have two dining room people that are maintaining everything out
on the line in the dining room, and keeping the coffee going, and
refreshing all the cakes and pies. We probably go through about 30
cakes and pies a day, and tray after tray after tray of cookies. They
love the cookies. It's not just the wrestlers; we're usually feeding
anywhere from 50 to a hundred wrestlers, plus we feed another 150 of
our tour crew and about 100 to 150 local stagehands. Those are between
300 to 500 people per meal a day, plus the breakfast just [for] our
traveling crew. It's fun and it's quite an armload of work, but we're
probably the most popular people backstage because we're feeding
them. Without having this catering aspect, it would be a lot of work
for people to come in to do work and have to go find their food
somewhere else or take a buy-out, which means they just get the money
so that they can find their own devices to eat.
We probably go through about 30 cakes and pies a day.
Our catering world is the center of social life. People come and
refresh there. They get to just not think about work so much when they
come in. It's more like a big social gathering. Some people are just
standing there grazing and focusing on food and not worrying about
up-and-coming stuff or the course of their night. It's almost like
having a restaurant in the middle of the day. Again, the food is
awesome. My chefs try to use as many organic ingredients as
possible. They're not just going and throwing up slop like frozen
Sysco products or anything. They're buying fresh produce every day and
making a nice presentation and tasty food, which is very difficult to
do in that capacity.
Is your catering different for a big WWE show like WrestleMania or
SummerSlam?
It's a lot busier, [with] bigger proportions. We have to rent a lot of
gear for the additional mouths to feed for both of those. I even go
out to the location months before to be on-site to prepare for
WrestleMania. It's the Super Bowl of all wrestling things, [with]
thousands of people to feed and a lot of elements involved that we
wouldn't normally have to make it happen, like extra refrigerators and
extra local purveyors that can handle the quantity of shopping we
do. Same thing with SummerSlam: That's an event where everybody wants
to show up, and everybody's a star, and everybody's bringing their
families. Special events are happening, extra vignettes - just more
mouths to feed in general. We usually do extra gear and try to hire
extra local people to help us out.
What are the most popular things to eat amongst wrestlers overall?
Well, they tend to gravitate towards the plain grilled chicken dishes
- things without sauces and gravies, so a lot of `em are obviously
watching their health and watching calories. We do a lot of the
grilled chicken as a plain chicken. We'll have another [option] so
people who aren't necessarily counting calories can just have a
wonderfully flavored dish. [For] some of the bells and whistles that
people request a lot, Cholula Hot Sauce seems to be one of the
items. The cookies are a staple with us. We need to have cookies out
every day or there's probably 40, 50 requests for `em if we don't have
the cookies out. There's always an oatmeal dish: There's either a big
container of oatmeal that's fresh in the morning that we leave up
until around lunchtime, and then we try to refresh that, or at least
we'll have the oatmeal packets so that they can put `em in their
pockets and take `em to their buses or hotels. Rice is also a
staple. We always have the salad bar out. Every day, we put out a
special salad, which is usually what I go for for my meal. One of my
favorite ones, which is also a very popular dish, is the watermelon,
feta, mint, and balsamic vinaigrette salad, so it's really a good
refreshing summer salad. Another popular one is arugula with shaved
Parmesan and grilled figs.
Some eating-related trends and niches - vegetarian options, vegan
options, gluten-free options, organic food, local food, grass-fed beef
- are here to stay and some go. Which of these are a priority?
Well, we have quite a variety. Having that many people involved,
there's many food allergies. There's many different diets we're trying
to help out. We try to cater to everybody if we can. On a daily basis,
we always have vegetarian options. We try to do a vegan option. If
somebody comes and says, `Hey, what do you have if I have a nut
allergy?,' we will radio our chef and make sure certain things are
safe for them. We've got gluten-free people - myself included. I'm
actually a gluten-free pescatarian with multiple food intolerances. I
know how it is. There is a lot of special requests. Some of the bigger
names might have preference with the way they like their steak cooked
or they want something without a sauce or they want to modify what we
have out on the line, so they'll come to the kitchen. They know my
chefs now. My chefs are very accommodating. Basically, everybody has
something they can eat.
Are there any foods banned from catering either in that you never want
them there or no one likes them? Anything taboo explicitly or
implicitly?
There is no taboo. There are certain things I have to watch for. We
have a sponsor usually for beverages or candies every
year. Occasionally, it changes. Right now, Coke is one of our
sponsors, but in the past, it was Pepsi, so I have to keep the Pepsi
logo out of shots, so I couldn't buy it at all. I also have to be on
the lookout constantly for food recalls. Right now, there's a stone
fruit recall for Listeria, so I have to call local places in advance
and say, `Please don't buy us any stone fruit. It's not safe right
now.' There was a peanut butter recall a few years ago. You have to
constantly try to think of the endless possibilities of all the bad
things that could happen and how to prevent us from having to get
anywhere near that situation. If a wrestler pointed at catering for
being sick and not being able to be in the show, that would definitely
put a damper on my work day.
Over your eight years, have you witnessed any fad diets come in and go
out?
Oh yeah, they happen every year. We get the burden of accommodating
whatever style it is. Some people will come in and say, `Oh, we're
only going to be doing peanut butter and cheese this week.' They'll
tell three of their friends, and then all of a sudden, we've got a
whole slew of people doing this crazy, weird diet. That seriously
happens multiple times a year in different groups. John Cena actually
has his own diet plan right now and he's got a bunch of our crew guys
and some of the other wrestlers doing it, and it seems to be working
pretty well. I know that they have one day that they'll do sweets and
be able to not be on the diet, so they'll all pick one of the days at
work where they can come in the dining room and just binge on these
cookies and take some stuff.
WWE will occasionally have segments in which someone will get hit with
or thrown into food. Would they ever come to you with requests like
that?
Oh, they come right to me. I actually was just talking a couple of
weeks ago about how it's been a while since we've done a food
fight. I'm knocking on wood right now because it's always a mess and
it's not a fun thing for me to do to get them. Sometimes, they do
slop. They just want leftover stuff in a bucket so they can throw it
and they can mess up all my stuff in the dining room. Other times,
they want something like a turkey dinner around Thanksgiving, so my
chefs have to do a side project of cooking a specific turkey and
making it look this pretty.
They did this crazy food fight at the end of the night where I
think Triple H came in and possibly threw a giant bucket of chili
on top of Daniel Bryan.
Recently, we were in Fayetteville, North Carolina, also lovingly known
as Fayette-nam. It's not the best building to work in because [the
dining workspace is] in a closet area. It's almost unworkable because
it's so small. It's difficult to set up in a crazy storage space for
the amount of people we're seating, but somehow, we miraculously pull
it off. Not this time, but the previous time we were there, they did
this crazy food fight at the end of the night where I think Triple H
came in and possibly threw a giant bucket of chili on top of Daniel
Bryan. I think it was Bryan; I lose track of all the elements because
I don't watch it. I'm just there seeing bits and pieces of it when
they're filming. I have to make sure that my people are not in the
shot, or sometimes they want `em in the shot. I might be paying a lot
of attention if they need my guys or me in the shot. Other times if
I'm not involved with it, I'll be trying to tiptoe around the edge and
mind my business and keep doing my work, so that was one of the times
where they wanted me to be in it, just for a second. Meanwhile, I'm
trying to do my regular work and get things done, peeking around and
making sure that it's not my time to get in the shot yet.
[The chili] was a mess. We did have to make it cool enough so it
didn't burn anybody, so it's more of a prop item rather than
straight-off-the-line hot food. That happens randomly once every six
months. It gets crazier around the holidays, typically. I might have
to set up a table for a big display with all the bells and whistles,
and bowls of food here and there, and candles and flowers. That's
always fun, to try to incorporate all these extra things into my
regular daily craziness.
Does it ever feel heartbreaking or strange that you're going to make
this nice meal that's just going to be used to be thrown at someone or
pushed onto a floor?
Yeah. I have to do what they want me to do. It's for the betterment
for the show, and it makes it interesting, and then I have this crazy
story. `Oh yeah, I did this today. This is what my life's about.' I
have guys in the dining room not wearing pants. [Laughs] I've got guys
walking around in the hallway wearing cheeseburger sheets and bunny
rabbit costumes. That's what we do to make this show work.
What's it been like being a reoccurring character there in the
background?
Recently, somebody sent me an article of the six most interesting
people seen at the Daniel Bryan `Yes! Movement,' and I was number six,
or number one, or something like that as Lita's doppelgänger. I was on
TV quite a bit, and they did a vignette afterward and I was in that as
well.
wwe Cookies, Goats, and Pudding: Inside the Bizarre World of Catering
for WWE Conjecture has it that I might be a WWE employee. It's not
hard to figure it out. [Laughs] I've been in some [vignettes] with
William Regal. He was my trashman picking up trash in the dining room
and I was bossing him around. Another time, I was in a restaurant
scene with Tony Atlas talking about going on dates. It's been
interesting. It's up and down and across the board.
Out of all that you have seen in WWE, what stands out in your head as
the strangest situation you have ever been in?
There's probably a lot, but on the spot, I tend to think of having to
help set up the pudding pools that they do those pudding matches
in. We've had a few of those. It just seems so crazy to see hundreds
of pounds of pudding getting put in swimming pools. Very
interesting. [Watch a video of a WWE pudding match below.]
Several years ago, the Great Khali had a gimmick where his `family'
would come into the ring with him and have all their goats and sheep
and chickens [in the ring]. We had a lot of livestock backstage. Just
having to pen up things when they escape and trying to rally everybody
to help out doing certain strange skits, it's a wild and crazy world
backstage sometimes. We have crazy stunts that also happen with our
stuntman Ellis Edwards, who's awesome and a good friend of mine. We've
had 18-wheelers drive backstage where they had me pretend like I was
putting on hairspray in the hallway, and all of a sudden, the
18-wheeler comes screaming up through the hallway and I have to jump
and roll out of the way. It's fun, and it's constantly keeping you on
your toes 'cause you never know what's really going on. Occasionally,
you'll be walking through the hallway or pushing a cart and people
will yell out, `Get out of the way' or `Be careful, there's a shot
coming up.' I used to just roll my eyes in the back of my head
thinking, `You're kidding me! Are you serious?' Now, nothing bothers
me, and nothing's really strange anymore.
http://firstwefeast.com/eat/inside-the-bizarre-world-of-catering-for-wwe/
From: Baghdasarian