Magnificent Morsels Catering

crystal render, chef-owner of magnificent morsels catering

Magnificent Morsels Catering is a catering company that serves Southern and Midwestern classics with a twist, and they’ve seen tons of success in the Queen City over the lifetime of the business despite a series of ups and downs at the outset. Today, they cater for big names like the Cincinnati Reds and the Aronoff Center for Performing Arts, they have an exceedingly popular line of retail spice blends, and just this year they opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Clifton.

But Crystal Render hadn’t always planned on owning and operating an incredibly successful catering business. “It wasn’t my dream,” she said. “It was my mother’s. She was a good cook, but she wasn’t business savvy.” What her mother lacked in business savviness, Crystal made up for in spades.

Fifteen years ago, Crystal was working full-time as a hairdresser while Magnificent Morsels was a popular storefront in College Hill until it was forced to shutter due to a lease disagreement. “It was utterly devastating to build something and have to let it go because you can't resolve a contractual agreement,” Crystal says. 

After picking up the pieces, Crystal relaunched Magnificent Morsels a decade later as a catering company and joined Findlay Kitchen to produce her food in a commercially-licensed kitchen without having to sink her savings into another brick-and-mortar space or the equipment necessary to keep her business afloat. 

At first, Crystal was recruiting family and any available people she could to help her keep up with her catering clients. “[It] started with just me and any random helping hand I could get, which was usually my oldest sister, Valencia,” Crystal says. “Now we have the ability to flex up to 26 people when needed for our larger accounts.”

Growing her staff not only provided more jobs for people in her community, it allowed her to continue strategically growing her business into diverse markets. She and her team launched a line of Magnificent Morsels spice blends, a venture four years in the making. “I would work on it, table it, work on it, table it, because I couldn’t get my mind to wrap around how I’d actually make this happen,” Crystal says. “I just remember writing a memo to myself that I wanted it done by a certain date, and we got close to that date and I hadn’t done anything. I think it was a little bit of that God-given divine alignment, because I came across the cohort with Goldman Sachs.”

Crystal took part in Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses course to accelerate the launch of her spice blends, and two weeks after graduating, she received a $15,000 grant from Main Street Ventures, which allowed her purchase the necessary equipment and ingredients to usher her idea over the finish line. Later that year, her spice blends became available for purchase at ETC Produce & Provisions, Jungle Jim’s, and the Findlay Market Shopping App, among other retailers.

Beyond being head chef and main visionary behind Magnificent Morsels Catering, Crystal’s job is a melange of many things. She’s the head chef, quality control, and she’s a whiz with logistics. She has to be in order to juggle multiple big events weekly while also making time to strategically grow her business and invest in her community. Crystal makes time each summer to participate in SUN Meals, an Ohio program that provides free meals to kids ages 1-18. “In our first year we did a whopping 42,000! We’ve averaged anywhere from 18,000–24,000 meals over the last few years, all distributed in only 10 weeks,” Crystal says.

In between catering large events for high profile clients, cranking out a line of spice blends, or feeding hundreds of local children, Crystal has been working toward opening a brand new brick-and-mortar, Magnificent Morsels Kitchen, a resurrection of the original storefront, this time in Clifton. This year, Crystal and her team surpassed a huge milestone by purchasing, renovating and opening a restaurant on Ludlow Avenue where they will continue to serve the food their catering clients have come to know and love.