Fun Facts about Shining Stars Catering
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• Our founder, Deborah, has always had a passion for the culinary arts and entertaining since she was a young child. Here she is at age 4, cooking up a storm! As a teenager, she loved to experiment with exotic recipes, creating her own cookbook. In college, she was known for baking for parties and friends in the dorm kitchen. Although she is a completely self taught her lifelong dream has always been about creating in the kitchen and now she is “living the dream” and gets to spend her days helping wedding couples and clients plan their special days!
•Deborah is married to (R) Col Marvin Williams, spending 26 ½ years in the Army. Marvin is now a full time partner with Deborah at Shining Stars Catering
•Through our 20 military moves, Deborah took culinary classes, learned about and developed regional recipes from all parts of the country and overseas and as a elementary school teacher, developed learning plans around cooking. Through relationships with international wives, she loved to spend days in their kitchens learning to make specialties from other cultures and developing a true “global” approach through this hands on process. Through the military years, Deborah catered, planned and executed many military events, both large and small. This time helped Deborah develop flexibility and thinking outside of the box, as military quarters kitchens often resembled a box! Our military years were so important and our company is named Shining Stars to commemorate all of those wonderful soldiers and military families we have known through the years.
•Shining Stars was founded over twelve years ago after settling in Kansas City upon Marvin’s retirement from the military. We started with a professional kitchen installed in Deb’s home basement, then purchased a catering facility in the Northland, which quickly became too small to support our growth. We recently made an amazing change, partnering with KC Hopps and joining their great team of Kansas City restaurants and catering companies
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• We have a great team of dedicated Chefs, Sales, Operations and Logistics, Crew Captains and servers
who share our philosphy of excellent cuisine and creating an amazing guest experience for our clients and their guests. It is our sincere desire to make sure all of your events shine!
One of the most exciting developments in our history has been to have some of our team members identifying their dream of becoming business owners themselves and helping them get started. We are so proud of: Alicia Homman (Pastry Chef) who owns Laughing Place Bakery, Angela Smith (Sales and Marketing) who owns Better Ask Angela, a social media marketing firm and Scott Umsheid (General Manager, Shining Stars) who owns Scott’s Kitchen located at the previous Shining Stars Catering location in the Northland. It has been so gratifying to watch their individual journeys to becoming successful and seeing their American dreams come true!