May 15, 2017

Meet Wayne Magnusen of Sunset Catering

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Wayne Magnusen.

Wayne, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
After working for 8 years at various restaurants and the latter 3 at a 5-star resort in Newport Beach, I wanted to create food that I was passionate about. My goal has always been to serve visually appealing and great tasting food at fair prices. In 2014, I met my now fiancé Mercedez, our event coordinator at the beginning of this new journey and together we started Sunset Catering. Our first venture was Surf & Turf Kabobs which we sold at the Miracle Mile Farmers Market that included a menu of Chinese 5 Spice teriyaki marinated Fillet, Salmon w/ my house made Zesty Chimichurri, Chicken with my special Yogurt Lemon Curry with sides all grilled to perfection on site. We had a great following but selling for only 4 hours at a time was not profitable per the amount of time and work we put in. So, I started looking into Food Themed Festivals to maximize our exposure and profits with longer events and crowds coming specifically to try new food.

There were times around this first year or two when you first start up a company in the food industry like this that people don’t think you will make it and tell you to give up and there is no money to be made. But that is when we really pushed and started cooking and thinking out of the box. I started making new menus for every different event and just kept reinventing ourselves all under the “by Sunset Catering” logo.

That first year, we attended 8 Food Festivals including our biggest one at that time the Long Beach Lobster Festival which we served Lobster Sriracha Mac & Cheese (made from scratch in small batches), Lobster Quesadillas with fresh Corn Pico and Grilled Lobster Tail Plates. These events are very labor intensive from 12-16 hour days plus 2 days of prep beforehand at our commercial kitchen,

After the second year of festivals we started being recognized and asked by event coordinators for us to join them. Since then, we have worked at the LA Wine Fest, LA Pride (VIP), San Pedro Lobster and 626 Night Markets. We currently have 45-50 events each year including weddings, private parties, banquets, sporting events and our good ole Lobster Festivals.

At this time we are actively searching in the LA and OC for the perfect spot to open up our quick serve Seafood Shack.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has been very costly buying all of the equipment from the beginning. We had nothing to start with and a small loan to get us going. The 3-compartment sink was a b$%#&. It is huge and required by the health dept. along with a water heater that had to be run on a generator. Once we rented a generator that sounded like it was going to explode.

We bought a used van for all of our gear and put a nice wrap on it for free (kind of) advertising as well. Mercedez did all the logos, banners and website herself to also save money and are still looking good to this day.

We also had 2 kids along the way, now 2.5 yrs. and 9mos. In the picture, we had a baby the next day!!

Please tell us about Sunset Catering.
We are a small hard working fair priced company that pays attention to every detail. I am a well-versed chef, classical trained at Le Cordon Bleu. I make simple food great. Even if you had it a dozen times. Our sauces which we plan on selling our top notch! We are most known for our Lobster 5ways. We are unique in the fact that we can serve 2,000 people at a festival and then the following weekend serve a 6-course meal for 20.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Started with more equity or got right into a restaurant space. But we have learned so much and really appreciate the business that we built that allows us to spend so much time with our crazy kids.

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