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We’re a New York-based chef and designer-led team reimagining what event catering can be. Our mission is to surprise and delight guests with every bite - and to craft the most exciting food experiences around.
Known for our playful, disruptive approach, we blur the lines between food and design, creating new ways for guests to interact with what’s on their plate (or the food hanging above their heads). We thrive on solving the food challenges that come with throwing large parties.
Our chefs push culinary boundaries, creating bites that are stunning, delicious, edgy and interactive. Think: miniature apple tarte tatins, poached lobster served in a sardine tin, or glowing spaghetti al pomodoro at a cocktail party station. Everything is made from scratch in our Chelsea kitchen - from fresh pastas and hanging pretzels and churros, to the lime juice we squeeze daily for our cocktails.
But we don’t stop at the bites. Our design team invents and builds one-of-a-kind food and beverage “furniture”, all prototyped and produced in our workshop. Sustainability is at the core of everything we do. Whether in food or design, we prioritize local, responsible sourcing. We compost, we donate, and we proudly partner with organizations like Zero Foodprint and Columbia’s Earth Institute to measure and offset our carbon footprint - supporting small-scale agriculture and building toward a future where sustainability is the standard.
At the heart of it all is the Pinch Bunch - a passionate collective of chefs, designers, and entrepreneurs who share a deep love for food, design, and the art of entertaining. Together, we’re redefining catering - one captivating experience at a time.
I’ve been a catering chef since 1983, classically trained by Jean-Claude Nedelec of Glorious Food - one of the pioneers of catering in New York City. He basically invented the playbook, and most of his teachings still apply today.
I founded Pinch in 2011 with one mission: to craft food that surprises and delights large groups of people - and gets them mingling. That’s what drives everything I do.
I left my job as an industrial designer in London and moved to NYC to join Pinch ten years ago - literally chasing my Food Design dreams. I’m a French native who grew up around food and always found time to cook, alongside passions for art, music, and design. In design school, I realized that I needed to work with food to be happy and stimulated.
Pinch uncovered a completely new and fascinating universe that I became obsessed with - hospitality, entertainment and the NYC scene. I’ve been diving deeper ever since, and I’ve never felt more passionate about anything. Chef Bob and I have zero limits - always looking for the next crazy challenge to take on.
I’ve always been obsessed with making people happy - yes, yes, it’s a conversation I need to pursue with a therapist, but it’s also what makes me really good at what I do here at Pinch. I started in custom service and hospitality when I was ten years old, working the desk at my family’s hardware store. There is where I learned that every customer (or client) has a unique set of needs, and if I can get the formula just right for how to solve their problem du jour, they’ll keep coming back.
I’ve been with Pinch for so long, (all my 20’s!!) I was an intern working in the Sales department and then recruited into the Booking department and never left (except for my one year stint) and I brought back with me a fresh perspective and evolved leadership skills. When you are with a company for so long, there is comfort in shaping the culture, and if you leave and have a chance to return there is spiritedness in elevating it. My education is having first hand experience with a young company that isn't so young anymore. Working through all of the iterations of Pinch throughout the years have only made the team bigger and better!
I’m a production guru, selling and producing gatherings of every kind for over ten years. Writing a proposal for a four-day event, on three separate floors, with multiple different groups of guests truly excites me! My brain works on a large scale, so I have the unique ability to help a client understand the exact needs of their event.
Having worked at Pinch, I like to say I’ve seen it all and nothing surprises me. I know how hard this biz can be, so with Pinch I get to “take on the stress and logistics”, so that you can have the most fun experience possible.
The event industry is very small: everyone knows everyone, who knows someone, who knows you! You’re always seeing a familiar face, and figuring out when your paths have crossed. Both my sister and my cousins are in the industry, so my favorite part is how it truly feels like a family.
The ideas are so innovative and rampant. This place is so multicultural and open to experimentation. Everyone here is open to a new experience, in fact they crave new experiences. We all have our “New York face”, which for some is not a smile, so the goal is to always make someone smile when they experience any aspect of Pinch Food Design.
One of the best parts of New York’s culinary and events scene is our incredible freelance team - 350+ talented individuals, many of whom come from the arts. From Broadway performers, writers, dancers, actors, and singers to chefs and entrepreneurs, everyone brings their own unique NY story to the table. There is definitely a theater and performance aspect in what Pinch does, which works so well with this creative community.
I love how the “we’re all in this together” (sung in the tune of High School Musical duh) mentality is the rule vs. the exception in the New York market. Yes, being surrounded by the best creates some healthy competition, but if anything, it pushes us to be better than we were yesterday, and that can only create upward momentum for us all. If you come to our city and are a jerk, “you can’t sit with us” period.
If you are working in NYC, people are moving quickly, speaking quickly, all things quickly... you know. However, it is an amazing experience to be amongst others who are the creme de la creme in their industry, and from all different backgrounds. It is also a humbling place because you need to have drive and resilience, it is a very “work hard, play hard” mentality in NY. I work with the most talented musicians, writers, performers, etc., so some days we go see them perform on stage and then they will come straight from their performance and get right to work at one of our events.
The creative process at Pinch is my favorite part - because every day is a new adventure. I never know what’s coming next, but I’m always so excited to uncover it! It starts with the energy: walking into a buzzing kitchen each morning is the kind of creative fuel I dream of. Add to that the magic of living in NYC (best city) and being constantly stimulated creatively. And let’s not forget traveling (The French need their vacation!) It's a great way to learn and get inspired by other cultures.
I’ve always loved objects, art, and architecture just as much as hosting and entertaining. For me, anything can lead to the start of a new piece: from a sample of recycled pressed paper, to finding a giant bar spoon, or even trying to solve an existing party dilemma. Take champagne towers, for example - we love its glam, New York vibes, but it’s messy and wasteful at events. That challenge led to the creation of our cocktail fountain. It’s all part of our agile process: sketch, prototype, and test. Every idea goes through multiple rounds - food trials, event runs, guest interaction, service flow - until it’s just right.
We’re also not afraid of things going off-script, we’re used to it! You have to enjoy the process, be ready to troubleshoot, and stay open to the unexpected. I think a lot of people would get a lot of anxiety from what we do - taking risks, like trying to figure out how to hang food over guests heads or rolling arancini down a wall, but we thrive in it!
One of my all-time favorite creations was finding a way to serve spaghetti and meatball hors d’oeuvre at a party. I’d been chasing the idea for over ten years - trying to capture the full spaghetti and meatball experience in a single bite.
I experimented with all kinds of formats: stuffing a large rigatoni with meatballs, wrapping spaghetti around a fork with a meatball on the end - you name it. But I finally cracked it by pressing angel hair into compact logs, dressing them in a simple marinara, and topping each one with a tiny olive oil–glazed, three-meat meatball.
Somehow, the way the angel hair is cut and compacted gives this amazing al dente bite - it really mimics the sensation of a perfect forkful of pasta. It’s nostalgic, it’s elegant, and it gets people talking - which is everything I love about food design.