The business of catering in Springfield is highly competitive, with businesses vying to cater events large and small in a city known for people who love to eat.
Many caterers – in Springfield and beyond – are seeking ways to diversify and find other revenue streams beyond the traditional catering.
That is why Jesse Taielua and his wife Tesla pursued and won a contract to run a café-style kiosk inside the SIU School of Medicine’s 801 Rutledge St. building. Students, faculty or anyone else walking through the building can order all kinds of coffee and other beverages, along with breakfast and lunch items made to order or grab and go.
Jesse Taielua, who opened Taielua’s Table in 2019, said business inside SIU has been brisk since they started operating the café in May. “We were lucky to be chosen to put in a new café here,” Taielua said. “We’re more than just a catering company. Now we’re doing this café, but we still do events of all sizes.”
Taielua said he’s had to expand staffing to keep up with demand at the café. “I was almost expecting the same flow of traffic (as previous food and beverage merchants), but it’s just been so much greater than I anticipated,” he said.
Brian Reilly, owner of Cured Catering in Dawson, has also focused on diversification. In September 2024, Brian and his wife, Melissa, bought Arlington’s Catering & Historic Venue, 210 Broadway, from Ebben Moore. Arlington’s has a strong clientele of state workers during legislature season, which has helped Reilly during the slower winter months that caterers typically endure and provided more of a year-round revenue stream.
“Having a venue where we could do kind of what we did mobile-wise, but in one location, worked out really well,” Reilly said. “Catering is a very seasonal business, but the legislators really help us. That location really helps us from January to May, but in May, we kind of go into our wedding season. So, the Arlington’s building flexes very well to be used as a wedding space. It’s a very historic building that has been kept that way with all the décor and things like that. We’ve also been able to do some pop-ups there, with lunches and cocktail dinners and some concerts coming up on the horizon.”
Caterers such as Taielua’s Table and Cured Catering face tough competition from long-established companies such as Nelson’s Catering of Springfield, and Nelson’s too, has diversified recently. Nelson’s won a two-year contract to run the giant beer tents at the next two Illinois State Fairs, replacing American Business Club, a nonprofit which had operated concessions at the fair since 1954.
For smaller operations such as Taielua’s and Cured, finding other revenue streams can mean the difference between success and failure. “Catering is kind of a flexible market, so we have to be able to flex with that,” Reilly said. Recently, Reilly has been providing catering for a building on Second Street that used to be a firehouse and is now mostly used by state lobbyists.
Taielua said it’s important to take things one day at a time and not expand business too fast. However, he is hoping to get a foot in the door at the new transportation hub soon to come online in Springfield.
“You can’t spread yourself too thin, and that’s easy to want to do, especially with a guy like me who has an entrepreneur mindset,” Taielua said. “There are other companies out there that have the manpower to go in and overpower everyone with a $1 million budget. But I’m really happy with what we’ve got right now, and you always have to focus most on the tasks at hand in this business. Otherwise, you can get off track.”
This article appears in June SBJ 2026.