“What’s the date of your event?”
When a potential customer calls The Date catering, that’s the first question Carol Hampton will ask.
Hampton has run The Date, a full-service catering company, for nearly 20 years. She offers everything from brunch to Southern comfort food, Thanksgiving meals to tea party finger sandwiches. She says if you can find a cookbook with a recipe, she can figure out the dish.
And she’s already booking events as far ahead as 2024.
Born and raised in Oak Cliff, Hampton learned to cook by spending time with her grandmother in the kitchen.
“She owned a restaurant at one time before I was born and would always cook, and I’d be in the kitchen. That’s how I learned how to do seasonings, how to measure, those types of things,” Hampton says.
Her early love for cooking was always more of a hobby. Hampton worked for UNT Dallas College of Law, and would cook for family and friends, her daughter’s birthday parties and school events.
But Hampton began thinking about starting a business after reading a magazine article encouraging women to pursue a second stream of income.
“It said even if it’s selling your grandmother’s sweet potato pies, at least that would give you money to fill up your gas tank,” Hampton says. “And then I thought about it and said, ‘OK, everyone always wants your food. Let’s see if you put a price tag on it, will they still want your food?’ And I went and started putting a price tag on the food. And I’ve been selling it ever since.”
Twenty years later, The Date is a full-time business, and Hampton seldom finds herself outside of a kitchen.
The most difficult part of the business has been navigating her relationship with her friends and family, Hampton says. Some friends and family who received Hampton’s cooking free of charge before The Date now often expect a discount for her services.
“That’s really the most difficult part, just helping people to understand your worth,” Hampton says. “They often don’t understand the time and effort that I’m putting into it. That’s really what you’re paying for. You’re not really paying for just the food because you can find a bargain on food anywhere. But it’s the time and effort you’re paying for.”
Hampton says she has an “old school” way of doing things; she attributes her skill for presentation to church garden club lunches she attended growing up, for instance.
But she has also adapted to the times.
While the social media landscape was virtually nonexistent when The Date was founded, Hampton now uses Instagram and Facebook to find new customers and show off her tables. Social media has also helped her find clientele that are looking to support a business such as hers.
“I thought that I really needed to hone in on being a Black woman in this field,” Hampton says. “I started making my hashtags be those things, #blackowned, #womanowned.”
And while she has adjusted her pricing to account for rising food prices over the years, Hampton says her first priority when developing a menu with the customer is making sure they are getting “the most bang for their buck.”
Once a menu is agreed on and an invoice has been sent, it is “off to the races” for Hampton.
While she makes the majority of the food she serves on the day of the event to ensure freshness, Hampton has spent the last 20 years perfecting the art of juggling a full kitchen and a deadline that is closing in.
At the end of the day, she says all the hard work pays off once she gets to see the reception her work receives.
“When everything is executed the way I have envisioned, but even more so, the way the client has envisioned. When he or she comes in, they say, ‘Oh, my God, Carol, the food was amazing.’ ‘Oh, Carol, the presentation was amazing.’ That is the best part of it,” Hampton says.
