Lawyers, Bankers, Stockbrokers : Food Service Caters to Corporate Appetite
Lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, investment bankers at Morgan Stanley and stockbrokers at Bear, Stearns in Los Angeles have more in common than pinstripes. They all eat food prepared by Manask & Carl, a Toluca Lake firm that is one of the biggest independent food-service companies in Southern California.
In its five years of operation, Manask & Carl has built a clientele that ranges from company cafeterias to big-city board rooms, along the way racking up sales that are expected to reach $7 million in 1986.
Most of the firm’s revenue comes from cafeterias at such places as Universal Studios, Great Western Savings’ Northridge facilities and Redken Laboratories in Canoga Park. But its specialty is fancier corporate dining, from attorney lunches to executive dining rooms, and most of its 20 customers fall into that category.
Besides Gibson, Morgan Stanley and Bear, Stearns, the firm’s customers include Merrill Lynch Capital Markets and the law firms of O’Melveny & Myers and Lillick McHose & Charles.
Economical Arrangement
At Morgan Stanley, for example, office manager Marie Earl said the food-service company was hired after some staffers ate Manask & Carl food at O’Melveny and decided that a similar arrangement would be economical for their firm.
“With overhead and food, we’re paying about $32 a head for corporate entertainment,” she said of the Manask & Carl-run dining room. “If we take somebody out there’s a time loss, and usually you’re going to spend that much anyway.”
Besides, she said, “It’s very good quality.”
Manask & Charles also runs the Garden Tea Room at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, and, during the Olympics, provided food for international journalists and ran the executive dining room for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee.
The main Olympics food contract was won by Philadelphia-based ARA Services, one of the giants dominating the $9.4-billion contract-feeding business nationwide. Manask & Carl is not in that league but is among a number of small independents in the field, and in Los Angeles, it has carved out its own little market.
Few other independent local companies specialize in elite corporate dining, and those that do tend to be tiny, industry experts said. More often, companies run their own dining operations, although, when the operation gets big enough, the companies sometimes turn to professionals.
“They’ve got a niche all to themselves,” said Gerald Breitbart, director of chapter services for the California Restaurant Assn.
21-Year Association
Manask & Carl was founded by Arthur Manask and Manfred Carl, who still own the business. The two came together 21 years ago when Manask’s late father, Irving, who owned a company called Management Food Service, hired Carl as chef to run the cafeteria at the then-new Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
At the time, Manask recalled, Carl assured him that, despite his elite European training, he had lots of experience with cafeterias.
“Many years later he confessed he’d never even seen a cafeteria before,” Manask said. “But he did a terrific job.”
About 11 years ago the elder Manask sold his business, but his son and chief chef stayed on. Five years ago, they left to form Manask & Carl.
Manask is a native Angeleno who, as president, runs the business end of things, and Carl, an East German emigrant, concentrates on food and service. He is executive vice president and chief chef.
The company has 235 employees, Manask said. It also has a catering business, Manfred Specialty Catering, that concentrates on catering special events such as the Long Beach Grand Prix, but does parties and picnics as well.
Food service is not an easy line of work, Manask said, especially when you have to please the kind of affluent, educated and captive audience you’re likely to face at top law firms and corporate dining rooms.
“Every customer considers themselves an expert because they eat in restaurants,” Manask said. Not only that, but you can’t just eject or ignore a surly customer, hoping he won’t return.
“It’s like a private club,” Manask said. “If there are 100 attorneys in the firm, there are 100 bosses.”
Healthy Foods
Keeping everybody happy is important. So is spotting trends and recognizing customer tastes. These days that means more emphasis on healthly foods. Portions are smaller, calories are fewer and foods are less fatty.
“Not necessarily more salads,” Manask said, “but more chicken and fish, less beef, less red meat.”
Manask & Carl’s customers seem to like their food. Timothy Buginas, administrative manager for the Los Angeles office of Bear, Stearns, said it is “terrific.” A couple of lawyers at Gibson said they considered it pretty good, although one complained of gaining weight because he no longer skips lunch.
And at Redken, where employees meet with management in regularly scheduled gripe sessions, workers actually praise the cafeteria, said James W. Griffith, the company’s vice president for human relations.
Manask said most cafeteria food is bad because the audience is captive, so the cafeteria management is insulated from the customer dissatisfaction that drives bad restaurants out of business.
“Because it’s a captive situation, they don’t have to identify with customer needs,” he said.
