Cirque du Soleil caterers have been known to jump through a few hoops of their own.
The Dralion tour requires 18 semi-rigs to transport all their gear. One of them is a portable kitchen. The cast and crew of more than 100 people has to set up shop for about eight days in each tour location, so they can't leave nutrition and food fuel to chance. A significant number of them are elite athletes as well as theatre performers, so what they eat is vitally important whether they are in a Latin American country, Europe, southeast Asia, or the great white north.
There are extenuating food factors that have to be addressed. There are 19 countries represented on the cast and crew, with religious subcultures and biological necessities within all those nationalities. Some of these performers cannot eat certain things.
It makes meal planning Brian Strom's full-time occupation. He has been on the road with Cirque du Soleil for years, on more than just the Dralion show, and it is still a daily challenge to meet the needs of this travelling village.
"It is a game of 'plan-Bs'," said Strom, who works for event catering company Spectrum, the contracted firm Cirque du Soleil uses for many of its shows. "We were driving through a cold snap one time and about 60 No. 10 cans [105 ounces] of veggies all went boom because they froze en route. When we were in Pennsylvania, raccoons got into the flour. So we had to have a backup plan, and we did."
It helps, but adds to the amount of organizational work, that the catering is focused heavily on variety. This is not a travelling work camp, this is the peak of the world's touring performances. The people involved are treated well by the Cirque du Soleil company because it isn't easy to find someone else who can routinely leap feet-first through a 24-inch circle at full sprint, or hang by the base of the neck on a spinning hoop. Food is important.
"I've never had the same meal twice in four years," said Julie Desmarais, one of the front office staff on the Dralion tour.
Strom blushed. "Well, I don't know if we've never had a repeat, but we like to make meals and make these people happy."
A large part of a semi-rig trailer is devoted to pantry space. Tonnes of ingredients travel with the tour, and some local shopping is done at each stop. Spectrum has a contractual relationship with the widespread food distribution company Cisco (which has a Prince George division) so ingredients are at the ready just ahead of the Dralion crew's arrival. The kitchen team arrives a day ahead of the stage crew and performers so they can also check out the local food options.
"There is little consistency. Things are so different from town to town, even in the same state or province," Strom said. "A lot depends on the weather and the time of year, the holidays for the different cultures on the tour, and things you just can't predict - and I've been doing this for years. One week these people will eat 75 pounds of bananas; another week they'll only eat 15. So you do have to keep feeling it out as you go because you don't want any waste. And I do like to rely on some local foods to give a natural mix-up to the menu. Tomorrow night we're having a meal of fresh steelhead caught 15 minutes from here [downtown Regina]. Sourcing some local food helps keep our production prices down, too."
It isn't cheap to provide all this nutrition on the move. Strom says he needs to program 30 to 35 pounds of protein into each meal, and he serves two of those per day (breakfasts are gotten on their own) plus a constant supply of snacks and beverages.
Each week the Dralion tour goes through about 75 dozen eggs, 6 to 10 gallons of apple juice, and 200 oranges.
Each week, the cast and crew consumes 110 pounds of carrots and 20 pounds of beets, plus other denominations of blueberries, pineapple, mint, kale, and so on, just at the make-it-yourself juice station.
It's not just the food that has to be co-ordinated smoothly, it's also the equipment. Some is delicate, so the transport trailer was built with a spring-loaded floor to mitigate bumps in the road. The same company that makes the heavy duty equipment boxes for instruments, lights, and other music gear for concert touring was contracted to custom-build the catering boxes for Spectrum.
For example, the coffee/tea station rolls off the truck like a wardrobe on wheels. It opens up to form a set of shelves and cabinets that hold all the makings for the drinks and house all the coffee makers and kettles, with plumbing slots that suck water from standard jugs stacked up behind it. It sets up and breaks down in moments.
Likewise the juice station, the snack station and so on.
Meals are presented cafeteria style, with some items spooned onto plates and bowls by the hungry passersby and some served by the catering staff. There are always multiple choices, at least one of which is a vegetarian dish, and also a dessert.
Most of the dishes served are homemade in the kitchen area by the Spectrum staff in conjunction with the local venue's staff.
Strom said the greatest variable he faces is the venue itself. Sometimes, as was the case in Regina, the entire tractor-trailer was wheeled into a heated full-service warehouse attached to Brandt Centre Arena, only a short trolley-trip from the space set aside for the cafeteria. But in some places, including large North American cities, they had to provide their own tents in which to prepare the food outside the performance building.
They have to be ready for any configuration, so the walk-in cooler, commercial double-oven, stoves, industrial mixers, chopping and food-prep tables and all of the other equipment is all portable and self-reliant if need be.
SERVING CIRQUE, P.G. STYLE
"I'll tell you something about Prince George, because it has never happened before in my experience, and I'm really impressed," said Strom. "Two people, managers, from CN Centre booked onto the Kamloops food service crew so they could familiarize themselves with our operation prior to our arrival. So they stepped in to help out, and do research at the same time so they could make our Prince George experience go more smoothly. That's pretty cool. It makes me look forward to Prince George."
The two on catering reconnaissance were Donovan Willick, the dining services manager for Eurest, the CN Centre contracted food company, and Eurest kitchen manager Chris Banks. They each spent Christmas at Interior Savings Centre working with Strom and the Cirque food crew.
"It was to get an idea of what to expect. P.G. has never seen a show of this magnitude," said Willick, who has been at CN Centre for more than eight years. "I learned about the setup Cirque uses, the demographics of who is going to the show, and ways of preparing in advance so it's not just a better experience for me, it is better for them."
He doesn't have the indoor facilities for storing the Spectrum tractor-trailer, but all their kitchen gear and serving area will be conveniently combined into a self-locking storage area on the CN Centre lower concourse, which is ground level for loading in the equipment and for the staff and performers during their off hours.
"Food services is an important part of what they do, so we want to show them that we will help with that as much as we possibly can," said Willick. "What we want is for Cirque to want to come back again one day. The way ticket sales are going, and if we can provide that level of service that they always get from the CN Centre staff and from ourselves, I'm hoping it will just be a matter of when another Cirque show gets booked here."
The first Cirque food in Prince George will be served this morning, before rehearsals start. The eight CN Centre performances run from Wednesday night to Sunday.
