The short version: Chef Rasheem "Rah" Terry runs Bigalow Catering — farm-to-table weddings, corporate events, a food truck, and the Bigalow Cafe in Hartford, Connecticut. His website takes real orders through two storefronts, publishes a blog that brags credibly (one of Connecticut's top-3 burgers, says the press), and runs a member portal — with no developer and no delivery-app middleman taking a cut.
There's a moment in every food entrepreneur's growth where the kitchen outpaces the business infrastructure. The food is proven — the catering calendar is filling, the food truck has regulars, the cafe's burger just got named one of the best in the state — but ordering still happens wherever it happens: phone calls during prep, DMs answered at midnight, a clipboard somewhere.
Bigalow Catering is what it looks like when a chef closes that gap without hiring a tech team. Chef Rah Terry's site isn't a digital brochure with a phone number — it's where the business actually transacts.
Two storefronts, one kitchen
The structural choice that makes the site work: catering and cafe ordering are separate storefronts on the same site — /order/catering/ for events and /order/restaurant/ for the cafe — each with its own menu, cart, and checkout, both feeding the same kitchen and the same customer base.
That split mirrors how the business really works. A bride planning a 150-person reception and a regular grabbing lunch are different customers on different timelines — one browses wedding tiers (Intimate, Grand Celebration, Luxury Celebration, with add-ons like the "Late Night Snack Station"), the other wants the burger that made the papers, now. One site serves both without making either feel like they wandered into the wrong room.
Eight cuisines without a binder of PDFs
Catering menus are where most caterers' websites give up and post a PDF. Bigalow's buffet menu is browsable, structured, and wide: BBQ, Italian, West Indian, Peruvian, Mexican, Asian Fusion, Soul Food — plus "The Tailgator" for game-day spreads — alongside plated dinners, reception packages, grazing tables, and a dedicated dietary-accommodations page.
For event customers, that breadth on a real menu page does the selling a phone call used to do: the corporate planner can confirm the office's dietary spread is covered, the family planning a graduation can mix West Indian and soul food, and nobody is squinting at a scanned PDF from 2023. (It's the same lesson as our product-pages guide, applied to jerk chicken.)
[OWNER QUOTE PLACEHOLDER — Sunny: ask Chef Rah what changed when ordering moved onto the site — fewer midnight DMs? bigger average orders? — or why he insisted on listing all eight cuisines properly.]
The blog that brags credibly
Bigalow's blog does something most restaurant marketing never manages: it's specific. When the cafe's burger was named one of Connecticut's top three, the post — "Bigalow Cafe: Home of One of Connecticut's Top 3 Burgers" — linked the press coverage rather than asserting greatness into the void. National Wing Day got a post built on a real number: fifteen house-made sauces.
Specificity is what makes food content work — a number, a name, a date — and it compounds: every press mention becomes a page that ranks, every event becomes proof for the next one. The site's member portal closes the loop, giving regulars an account and the business an owned audience that no platform algorithm sits between.
What this replaces
Count what a food business traditionally stitches together to do what this one site does: a delivery-app listing that takes 15–30% of every order and owns the customer relationship, a separate catering-inquiry form tool, a social page standing in for a menu, and a POS-bound loyalty program. Each one is a tax — in fees, in data, or in the customer never actually being yours.
Both order flows run on Faster's restaurant plugin with carts and checkout the business controls end to end; the blog runs where the orders happen; and every customer — wedding client, lunch regular, member — lands in the same customer base the kitchen owns. No commission on the order, no middleman on the relationship.
[METRICS PLACEHOLDER — Sunny: with Chef Rah's approval, one or two real numbers here — monthly online orders, share of catering inquiries arriving via the site, or order volume vs the pre-site era. One true number beats three adjectives.]
If you feed people for a living
- Separate your storefronts, share your kitchen. Event ordering and daily ordering are different funnels — let each have its own front door on one site.
- Put the real menu on real pages. Breadth is a selling point only if people can browse it; a PDF hides your best argument.
- Blog the specifics. The press mention, the fifteen sauces, the named wedding tiers — specificity converts where adjectives bounce.
- Own the order and the customer. Every order through your own site is margin kept and a relationship you can win back, segment, and grow.
The Bigalow setup at a glance
- Farm-to-table catering, food truck, and cafe in Hartford, CT: chef-owned and chef-run.
- Two storefronts, one kitchen: catering and cafe ordering each get a front door, with carts and checkout behind both.
- Eight browsable cuisines plus plated, reception, and grazing-table menus: no PDF in sight.
- A blog built on specifics: top-3 burger press, fifteen house-made sauces.
- Own the customer: the member portal builds an audience no delivery app sits between.
- All on one Faster site: no developer on staff.
Bigalow Catering is live at bigalowcatering.com. If you run a food business and want orders, menus, and your customer list on a site you own — it's the same Faster restaurant tooling underneath, set up by describing what your kitchen does.