Project Taste Test - Video 5 - Jet Tila & Jett Mora

I'm Jet Tila, and this is Project Taste Test. How's it going everyone? Today we're pulling the curtain back on the $9 billion catering industry, and we're doing it with the best. We're here with Wolfgang Puck Catering. Now Wolfgang Puck is probably one of the most famous chefs in the world. He has restaurants all over the world, and he's the executive chef of the Academy Awards. I'm gonna be hanging out with my buddy Jet Mora, and he's gonna show us what it takes to be part of this amazing catering industry. Yo Jet, thanks again for having us in this kitchen. What was your path to getting here, working for one of the most amazing catering companies on earth? In our business, it's cook, and then you go from junior sous chef in training, then junior sous chef, then full-on sous chef, and then I was fortunate just last year to have my own account, and I was executive chef there. Wolfgang Puck's all over the country. Absolutely, L.A. is the hub, but we have operations in Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Boston, so we're all living in major cities. How cool is that? A kid comes out of school, works for a great company like Wolfgang Puck, and all of a sudden, he could be working in L.A. days and nights, but he'd get called to Dallas, called to Atlanta. I mean, this is, I think, one of the coolest jobs, really, in the industry. Absolutely. What's your biggest catering? What's your smallest? We go from five to 5,000. There it is. You have to be 5,000 people. Don't talk to me about your most elaborate catering. You don't have to name names, but you can say TV, film, or whatever. It's gotta be the Academy Awards, the Oscars. We all ramp up just for that day, and it takes three to 400 chefs, and cooks, and personnel to execute that. I think cooking is math, especially catering. Wouldn't you agree? It's math, it's science, it's P.E. Cooking is a physical contact sport, football. I mean, you have a captain, you have the leaders, you have different stations. That's your wide receiver, your lineman. That, I think, molded myself into becoming a good team player. That's a great piece of advice, I think. Absolutely, and organized sports. Right, because we are basically a team, and when everybody in the team is performing optimally, that's when you have an amazing product. That's when you win. It takes a lot of different departments to make a catering company very successful, right? Yes. If I am someone who wants to have a catering then, who's the first person I'm really gonna talk to? One of our sales support teams. Those details get passed on to operations. Those operations people divide that amongst the chefs, the engineers who set up the kitchens. There's also finance, accounting. Human resources. If there was a high school student wanting to get into culinary, and just totally love what you do, what are some pieces of advice you would give them? Your homework, and also read cookbooks. Find a mentor and latch on. I still keep in contact with the chefs I've worked with before. I even find mentorship within my peers. What gets you out of bed every day? I mean, you obviously love what you do. I'm drop dead in love with what I do. Whether it's the food, whether it's the prep, whether it's my other chefs, fellow chefs, I'm thinking about, it's always on my mind, so that's what keeps me coming back.