Food Caterer to 4 Airlines Flying High : And Service for Jet Set Adds Icing to the Cake

Eve Biava was worried when she and her husband, Bruno, decided to give up 17 years of catering private parties and fancy social events to prepare nothing but in-flight meals for commercial airlines.

The money was steadier, but it certainly wasn’t as creative a calling as society catering.

Then she gazed out the window of her company kitchen near a John Wayne Airport runway, saw the more than 1,000 private planes and corporate jets parked nearby and smiled.

“The market was staring me right in the face,” Biava said.

Gourmet Meals

So at the same time Caterers Unlimited, the Biavas’ original company, became the leading in-flight meal supplier for commercial airlines serving John Wayne Airport, the couple began a new company, Skyways Unlimited, dedicated to preparing gourmet meals for the discerning and well-heeled executives who fly in and out of the county in their own planes.

Now, 18 months later, the two companies turn out an average of 3,050 meals a day--3,000 for paying passengers on four of the major airlines--American, Continental, Northwest Orient and Western--that fly out of the county airport and 50 for the corporate jet-set elite.

Biava said that gourmet meals prepared by Skyways Unlimited’s chef have ended up on the in-flight dinner trays of Nordstrom’s department store executives, Los Angeles Rams players and coaches and Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

Menu items for the sideline business include seafood breakfast omelets for a base price of $7.75 and a beef baron dinner plate for a little more than $16.

“These people are the cream of the crop of Orange County, and they want the best. Not only with food, but (with) the presentation of it,” said Biava, whose entrees are delicately packaged with ribbons and floral sprigs.

‘This Is First-Class’

“We give them the best we can afford. It’s expensive for us, but people look at (the food) and say, ‘This is first-class.’ ”

Usually, Skyway Unlimited’s orders come from the fixed-base operators hired by individuals and businesses to care for their planes and prepare them for flights, Biava said.

Lori O’Brien, a dispatcher for fixed-base operator Martin Aviation, which has served private jets owned or chartered by Mobil Oil, IBM and Nordstrom, said Skyways Unlimited is Martin’s exclusive caterer.

“We call them at the very last minute, and they always come through for us. Our clients are very, very satisfied. If they weren’t, I’m sure we would hear about it,” she said.

At first, Biava advertised the specialty plates with a typed menu and price list, but since coming out with a laminated menu five months ago, she said, sales have doubled.

With an average of 50 gourmet meals prepared daily, the dishes gross the company almost $140,000 a year, while gross sales from the meals provided for the commercial airlines exceed $2 million a year, Bruno Biava said.

The San Juan Capistrano couple plan to open a second kitchen to handle the airline business at John Wayne Airport, but they do not intend to expand the company to other airports. For now, Eve Biava said, she is quite satisfied to feed “the business people on the Wall Street of Newport Beach.”