Jake Mazar and Will Van Heuvelen weren’t trying to start a catering business.
“It makes me chuckle, because this was sort of an accident,” Van Heuvelen said. “Jake and I, we met farming as apprentices at Brookfield Farm in South Amherst. Our plan was to start a farm together after we left, which we halfway did.”
Their next move was actually to open a food truck, connected to a small farming operation. They grew a lot of their own produce and even raised their own chickens. They got rave reviews about their food, but questioned whether a food truck was the right way to share it. Over time, they realized catering might be a better fit for their passion and skills.
“People kept asking if we’d cater their graduation party, birthday or wedding,” Van Heuvelen said. “We recognized that catering was how we could cook and bring people together the way we wanted to.”
Ten years later, Wheelhouse Catering has found its stride, offering full service, farm-to-table catering for events big and small from their base in Amherst. They specialize in customizing seasonal menus that capture the rich bounty of this region, and creating dining experiences that, in Mazar’s words, “feel generous, joyful and deeply rooted in time and place.”
It looks different than a food truck. It certainly looks different than farming. But the essence of what Wheelhouse does never wavered from their initial goal: connecting people to high quality, delicious and local food grown here.
With more than 60 full- and part-time staff working during the busy season from May through November, Wheelhouse is equipped to serve a handful of guests or a few hundred, putting together multi-course plated meals or buffet or family-style service. Mazar estimates about half of their business is catering weddings, but that is not their only focus. They also have an event space in Amherst that clients can rent for gatherings of up to 40 people (seated) or more (mingling).
Their catering design process is very collaborative and customizable. “It starts with getting to know you and what’s important to you,” Mazar explained. “Then we’ll sit down and think ahead to what’s in season, what resources we’ll have — like, whether we’ll be in a fully stocked kitchen, or in the middle of a field with limited electricity. From there, we’ll come up with an initial plan and some options for a menu.”
Finding the overlap between clients’ dreams, dietary needs, and what’s logistically possible, “is a fun dance,” Van Heuvelen said.
“We want to create something that will excite you and your friends but not scare away your grandparents, and execute that to our own high standard,” he said. “Over the last 10 years, we’ve gotten very good at threading that needle.”
The key to doing this work well, both of them say, is investing in relationships. Mazar, who manages front-of-house interactions with clients, takes pride in receiving feedback that Wheelhouse is easy to work with.
“We try to be really organized, take care of the unglamorous details, and remove as much stress as we can, and I’m glad that shows,” he said. “That’s a huge credit to our staff, for sure.”
Meanwhile, Van Heuvelen explains how their roots as farmers are an advantage toward finding the best local ingredients.
“So many local farmers are our friends, and so we’re in touch about how their season is going, what’s good this year, what we should try to use more of,” he said. “It keeps things exciting for us, and leads to better food for our clients.”
In the beginning, Mazar or Van Heuvelen might have spent ten hours a week driving between farms to pick up ingredients. These days, with the volume of food they buy, that strategy would be difficult. Luckily, in the last decade, more local distribution companies have emerged, gathering food from many local producers and delivering to other businesses in one simple order. Marty’s Local and Myers Produce are two such companies that Wheelhouse now buys through. This is much more efficient, and gives their chefs a wider palate of local ingredients to work with.
As more effort has gone into growing the local food economy, so has the availability of certain things, especially local meat.
“We have chicken on 90% of our menus and now all of that comes from Reed Farm in Sunderland,” Van Heuvelen explained. “They’ve expanded a lot recently, and now we don’t have to piece together buying chicken from farms that raise a few dozen at a time. That’s just one way things have gotten easier as the infrastructure around us has developed.”
Having worked at both ends of the local food economy, Van Heuvelen and Mazar list plenty of reasons why that development is good, from investing in local communities to maintaining a connection to place and more. From a catering perspective, though, the ultimate benefit is top quality food.
“To us, it’s obvious that you can’t substitute broccolini from Kitchen Garden Farm in Sunderland for broccolini shipped from who knows where,” Van Heuvelen said. “One is a unique expression of flavor that comes from Hadley loam. The other … we’ll use it if we have to, but it’s a completely different product.”
Another way Wheelhouse Catering showcases the unique flavors of the Valley is through ticketed farm dinners co-hosted on local farms.
“We’ve done wine-pairing dinners at Black Birch Vineyard in Hatfield for a while, and next summer we’ll do two,” Mazar said. “We’re also doing a Mother’s Day brunch at Rooted Flowers in Agawam again in 2026, and a handful more will come together as we get closer to the season.”
More information about planned farm dinners, plus catering information and sample menus, can be found at wheelhousefarm.com.
Jacob Nelson is a writer and educator with deep connections to local food and farms in western Massachusetts. This article was written in partnership with (CISA Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). To learn more about all kinds of businesses growing and using the region’s bounty, visit buylocalfood.org.
