Greenwood Village – While a number of local businesses in the Denver area are profiting from the 60th U.S. Women’s Open, one Greenwood Village catering company’s experience in golf tournaments helped it land a $1 million contract.
“Epicurean did the catering for the 1993 U.S. Senior Open and was called by the company running this year’s U.S. Women’s Open and asked to run it,” said Epicurean Catering chief executive Larry DiPasquale.
Epicurean has catered 14 golf tournaments, including 10 years of The International at Castle Pines.
DiPasquale learned that his company had been selected to cater the four-day Women’s Open at Cherry Hills Country Club six months ago. Since then, extensive planning has gone on with his staff of 280 on site with four remote kitchens at Cherry Hills, minutes from the Epicurean offices.
DiPasquale started training his employees three weeks ago. At 4 a.m. Thursday, his kitchen staff began preparing for the 3,800 people a day his company would be serving through Sunday.
With the large volume of people, DiPasquale expects the event to be one of the most profitable in Epicurean’s 24-year history.
“We are expecting well over $1 million in revenue from this weekend,” DiPasquale said.
The caterer is serving 10 corporate villas at Cherry Hills, each of which is air-conditioned and supplied with televisions and a private bar along with an endless supply of food.
Along with catering the villas, Epicurean handles 38 corporate skyboxes throughout the golf course.
This is not the only event for the catering company, which is handling 15 other golf- and nongolf-related events this week, DiPasquale said.
Staff writer Marcus W. Vanderberg can be reached at 303-820-1209 or mvanderberg@denverpost.com.
