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Entrepreneurial: High-flying food fare

Posted: 11:15 am Mon, August 12, 2013 By Nancy Crotti Tags: Anoka County-Blaine Airport, Appetites Café, Atiki’s Flight Catering, Brian Barber, Cargill, Central Medical building, Cynthia Collett,Emerging Entrepreneurs, Flying Cloud Airport, General Mills, Glenn Ford, Holman Field, Kraus-Anderson, Kristen Wasyliszyn, Minneapolis-St. Paul

International Airport, Neil Brackin, Polaris Industries, Praxis Marketplace, U.S. Small Business Administration, University of Minnesota-Duluth

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Kristen Wasyliszyn (in sweater) with her staff of

cooks in the company’s Selby Avenue kitchen in

St. Paul. From left are Greg Shipe, CarolineBakke, Wasyliszyn and Frank Christensen. (Staff

photo: Bill Klotz)

Atiki’s Flight Catering brings quality cuisine to particular passengers’ palates

Kristen Wasyliszyn’s catering company cooks for about eight people at a time. That may sound easy to the average chef, but Wasyliszyn’s diners are

not average folks.

They include U.S. presidents, foreign dignitaries, corporate executives and celebrities who fly out of the Twin Cities on private or corporate jets.Wasyliszyn’s company, Atiki’s Flight Catering, aims to make sure they’re well-fed.

Corporate clients are Wasyliszyn’s bread and butter. Her company may serve 15 to 20 planes a day, departing from Minneapolis-St. Paul

International Airport, St. Paul’s Holman Field, Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie or Anoka County-Blaine Airport in Blaine. The food may be as

simple as box lunches or as complicated as gourmet meals, prepared in Atiki’s’ St. Paul kitchen.

For all of its glamorous clients, most of whom Wasyliszyn said she could not identify, Atiki’s keeps a low profile.

“There are a lot of times that I never talk to my customers,” she said. “They’ll ask the flight attendants, ‘I want Atiki’s.’ It’s very ‘Keep your eyesdown, do your job, and do it well.’”

Wasyliszyn doesn’t mind dishing about their orders, however. One former presidential candidate regularly asked for chicken soup with three jalapeño

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peppers. A rock star requested elephant garlic chips. Another VIP ordered specific cuts of meat for a dog.

Kristen Wasyliszyn, owner of Atiki’sFlight Catering, displays a fruit platter

that is typical fare on a corporate jet.

Food must be well prepared and not a distraction to VIPs or their flight crews, said Brian Barber, chief pilot for Plymouth-based Polaris Industries.He has noticed significant turnover among flight caterers, and has had crews dash to a supermarket or sandwich chain for less-than-impressive food

for their corporate passengers. He prefers working with a caterer and appreciates Atiki’s’ service.

“There’s a little premium for this, but it’s a nice balance,” Barber said.

Even with time pressure and industry fallout, Wasyliszyn found it difficult to break into aviation catering. She and her then-husband owned AppetitesCafé in the Central Medical Building in St. Paul before veering off into flight catering in 2000. She learned to cook from her mother, cooked her wayacross Europe and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

The couple landed General Mills’ flight catering business early on by plying the Golden Valley-based food giant with weekly muffin baskets. Othercorporate clients include Cargill and Kraus-Anderson.

“I’m amazed at the variety of food and products that her small business can offer,” said Neil Brackin, director of air transportation for General Mills.

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“It’s a big challenge, but she has done sea bass, she has done salmon, she has done local trout. To know it’s going to be chilled and be reheated, andbe as high quality as it is, it’s really impressive.”

Atiki’s rented a series of catering kitchens before buying a building on Selby Avenue in St. Paul in 2009, a few years after Wasyliszyn bought out herex-husband. She has been on-call for most of the last decade, sleeping with her cell phone in case a passenger wants a late-night snack.

That schedule, combined with doing more office work than cooking, led Wasyliszyn, 44, to decide that something had to change. She applied for the

U.S. Small Business Administration’s Emerging Entrepreneurs program, a seven-month course that helps participants discern and overcome thebiggest challenges to business growth.

Applicants to the free program must be the chief executive or chief operating officer of a company at least three years old with annual sales between$400,000 and $10 million, according to Cynthia Collett, program manager. Wasyliszyn and 16 others have been taking classes since April.

“It’s a strong commitment,” Collett said. “The end result is increased employment, increased sales, expanding their business and making it a stronger

business.”

Instructor Glenn Ford, CEO of Praxis Marketplace in Minnetonka, likened the program to a “mini-MBA” that covers business planning, financials,

marketing and human resources. He described Wasyliszyn as a vivacious person with an interesting business.

“She really goes in there, does a great job, and if you think about it, all of those folks are really demanding,” Ford said. “You have to executeperfectly.”

Wasyliszyn said the course has already improved her life and her business. She has hired someone to take the night shift as well as a “computergenius” to integrate her systems, and has sought the advice of top-notch business professionals.

“That’s taking a ton of stress off of me so I can start cultivating a little more of what I like to do,” including experimenting with new recipes, she said.

Wasyliszyn said she still struggles to find and keep creative employees who can work well under pressure in an often-unscheduled environment.

“Other business people are like, ‘You should have (regular) hours. You should have a menu,’” she said. “But that’s not aviation.”

For the record, Atiki’s website has several menus, but the staff makes food to order when requested. Wasyliszyn wants to make the business self-sustaining in three years. Meanwhile, she tries to go the extra mile for loyal clients such as General Mills.

Atiki’s includes the corporation’s products into the menus for its planes. It also maintains the corporation’s flight dishware so the crew need nottransfer prepared food onto it or wash it after meals. Although not required, Atiki’s keeps the corporation’s planes stocked with basics, such as milk,juice and yogurt.

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“At the beginning, I would just think, ‘Please, someone give me a chance,’” Wasyliszyn said. “I never, ever want to forget those people who gave methose chances.”

Atiki’s Flight Catering Inc.Ownership: Private

Based: St. PaulMission: Providing the tastiest, prettiest, most clever catering for private/corporate aviationWebsite: atikiscatering.comSize of facility: 5,000 square feetCEO/owner: Kristen WasyliszynLatest annual revenue: N/AEmployees: 12

Projected hiring: FiveWhat’s next: Marketing the company’s own salad dressings

This entry was posted on Monday, August 12th, 2013 at 11:15 am and is filed under Entrepreneurial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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