Since founding Great Performances in 1980, Liz Neumark has embraced the concept of participating in, serving, and enhancing the communities they serve.
With the iconic caterer’s recent move to the Bronx that “giving back” DNA continues to be a priority. As with so many leaders in the restaurant and foodservice industry, Neumark put her own personal agenda aside to serve her community once again. Within days of the mid-March 2020 shuttering of the city in the face of the pandemic, Neumark retooled Great Performances kitchen to produce and deliver 40,000 meals a week. Under the auspices of the city Department for the Aging, the meals went to housebound elderly unable to go to their local senior centers for meals. Subsequently, Great Performances began working with the Mayor Office for Food Policy and Office of Emergency Management to help meet the unprecedented demand for packaged meals by hospitals, day care centers, food panties and community centers.
So, it came as no surprise that Neumark and her team were recently recognized for Empire Whole Health Heroes Award as one of the New Yorkers who went to exceptional lengths during the Covid-19 pandemic to help The City of New York and its citizens. Presented by Empire BlueCross BlueShield, the awards honored 50 people hailing from the healthcare, business and the nonprofit sectors who have displayed extraordinary leadership, dedication, empathy, and remarkable compassion to help ensure the safety and wellness of all New Yorkers during this unprecedented crisis.
Total Food Service had the opportunity to visit Great Performances’ new 51,000 sq. ft. headquarters in The Bronx. It occupies three-and-a-half floors of the Bruckner Building, a former factory, at 2417 Third Avenue. With sun splashed space for her team to be creative and easy access to Manhattan, Neumark and Great Performances are ready to write their next chapter.
Liz Neumark, President & CEO
Great Performances, Bronx, NY
Christopher Harkness, Director, Food and Beverage
Great Performances, Bronx, NY
Mark Mansfield, Project Manager
Singer/M. Tucker, Paterson, NJ
Liz Neumark and Christopher Harkness’ Approach (From Great Performaces):
As you can imagine this is both scary and incredibly exciting. We are absolutely thrilled by the many possibilities that our new space affords us. Whether it be catering or increasing our involvement with the community through workforce development and community engagement. When we were planning our move and deciding what we wanted out of our new facility, we wanted a community that we could grow with and become involved in, in addition to a large space that allows us to scale our business for continued growth.
Our new campus has more than twice the size of our previous Hudson Square headquarters. It features a 19,000 sq. ft. kitchen that is one of the city’s larger and arguably most advanced. It is loaded with cutting-edge top line equipment and has twice the refrigeration and production capacity of our previous space. The kitchen is particularly distinguished by an extremely efficient temperature-controlled flow of goods, assuring the integrity and safety of all food production.
As for our kitchen, when we were assembling our line and picking out our pieces of equipment, we went for the best available so that we can provide the best service to our customer. With this new top of the line and state of the art kitchen we can temperature control our food, maximize our efficiency and flow. All done in an environment that best suits our employees. In our new headquarters we can receive our shipments and transfer them immediately into coolers that allow for the preserved integrity of the food. From there our kitchen is completely climate controlled and we can separate our food into hot and cold areas to keep it fresh. As for the cook line, the food flows naturally from the prep space to a blast chiller and then into one of our walk-in coolers all while keeping the food fresh and tasty.
As a company, one of our sayings is our passion starts from seed, whether it be making good food from fresh local ingredients or planting seeds in the community, this new facility allows us to grow our passion as a company. The facility also includes: a separate pastry kitchen, warehouse; purchasing department; design studio; training space; support offices; and The Sylvia Center, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching youth the connection between food and health. Our new digs represent a bright beacon shedding a confident light on the future of the city’s hospitality industry.
Mark Mansfield’s Approach (From Singer/M. Tucker)
We’ve worked with Great Performances for over twenty years. We understand what Liz and Chris and their team were trying to accomplish. As with so many cases in Manhattan, it was incredible to see the output that they were able to generate from a relatively small production kitchen on Hudson Street. This new kitchen facility gives them the opportunity to double their production. To turn their concept into a reality, Great Performances assembled a wish list for the project and Singer M. Tucker delivered.
The first on that list was having the ability to access the newest technology in foodservice equipment. Logistically, it made sense to put the cooking line and ventilation against the back wall. You could easily see the direction of the flow. It began with receiving and then moving into cooking, staging storing and out the door. We were able to work with Victory and American Panel who gave us the flexibility to take product right off the expanded cooking line and move it through a blast chiller and then to a walk-in for holding. This line of kettles and combi ovens is very unique. Because New York City code requires a precipitator system for the hoods that is based on the weight of your cooking volume of meats over the course of a week, we only needed to use the special ventilation for a portion of the kitchen. We worked with Scott Adams who has a great understanding of the NYC code. The key in our selection of the equipment package was to understand the importance of investing in quality that can support this high volume of cooking product. Jade Range’s thermal oven bases prevent heat loss upon opening the cabinets, making them a perfect fit.
One of the other keys to the project was getting the Great Performance culinary team comfortable with the operation and flexibility of the RATIONAL combi-oven technology. They spent time at Tri-State Marketing’s test kitchen working with their menus to understand the capabilities, programs, and options RATIONAL has to offer. One of the most interesting pieces of this project was the approach to ice. As you can imagine, an operation like Great Performances has a very diverse need for ice. We realized that much of that need is for ice going out the door to several of their facilities. We took a convenience store approach with Follett ice bins, baggers, and a separate cooler to create a unique solution.
The approach to dishwashing was to build a flow that would enable product to move simply on a walkway with carts around the building to easily wash and set up for continual and contingent use. They added an Ecolab conveyor system that can handle both the washing of the pots and pans as well as the carts themselves. The new facility has given them a pastry suite that is five times larger than what they previously had on Hudson Street. This will give them the opportunity to greatly expand their baked good offerings to their customer base. This project was a classic example of was one of our team’s greatest strengths; the ability to understand our customer’s mission and to execute it with constant communication throughout the process so that everybody’s goals are met. With that approach, you have the flexibility to fine tune every detail of your vision.
