WWE Catering Crew Chief Jen Hagopian Opens Up About Catering for WWE

FirstWeFeast.com has published a lengthy, in-depth interview with Jen Hagopian, who has served as WWE Catering Crew Chief for eight years. The same website also recently interviewed Ryback, who opened up about his catering experiences in WWE. Hagopian talked all things catering throughout her tenure in WWE, including specific wrestlers’ eating habits and much more.

Hagopian talked about one of her earliest experiences in WWE, before she went on tour with the company:

“Before I even went on this tour, I was a stagehand here in Portland, Maine at the local Civic Center. I was doing a load-out, breaking down the staging and all the things that were incorporated into the show. I was on stage, and it was dark in the back part of the stage. It was very dark and I remember I tripped over something. Then, I opened the curtain and I looked behind me and saw that I must have tripped over the Undertaker’s foot. It was huge. It was wearing a boot. I felt really stupid and apologized and rapidly got out of there before I got put in a chokehold or something. I didn’t see the show that night, but I did feel like I took part of it.”

Hagopian, who appeared on “Monday Night Raw” as a Lita doppelganger for Daniel Bryan’s “takeover” of the show in March, took readers through her hectic daily experiences in WWE catering:

“Every city we go to, my head chef Jack goes shopping locally at 6:30 in the morning whatever time zone we’re in with a local runner in a cargo van. They go power shopping. They’ll go to fish purveyors, wholesale clubs, regular grocery stores, and just pack the van to the top within a two- to three-hour time period. He knows all the stores in every city we go to now. It’s always the same cities over and over, so we’re quite familiar with where they’re located, how far away, what quality of produce they have, etcetera.

While he’s shopping, we’ll be back at the arena loading in our gear, which is all on wheels, off of our 18-wheeler truck. We’ll be building the locations, which are the kitchen and the dining room, and sometimes also a separate dish room, and creating the feng shui for the dining room. We’ll be prepping stuff in the kitchen, starting out breakfast-style foods for the continental breakfast that we have for our regular crew. The wrestlers aren’t there at this point, so we don’t have a lot to start out with from our pre-shop, which is done the day before when you have a smaller $2,000 shop for beverages and things to get us going first thing in the morning.

We’re waiting for our Jack to get back. Usually [at] about 8:30am, he’ll roll up with the runner. Then, it’s a mad house. We unload the van, and there’s prepping everywhere. We have five local helpers that are prepping and helping us slice and dice food and prepare everything for the big meal, which is at 11:30 in the morning. That is [the wrestlers’] dinner. They want to eat lighter for the second meal because they’re going to be performing soon afterwards. The big, big meal starts at 11:30am and goes to 4:30pm. At 4:30, we switch over to the lighter second meal which ends at the show time, which is usually around 7:30 at night. The way everything happens, it’s kind of like an episode of Iron Chef for 10 hours straight—just balls to the wall for the entire day.

I’ll also be preparing beverages for all the dressing rooms where the talent are located, [plus] Vince McMahon’s room. He gets fed every two-and-a-half hours in his room with proteins and vegetables. Then, for me, it’s putting out fires throughout the day, figuratively and literally, which has happened in some cases where our ovens have blown up. Then, the show starts and we break everything down. It all goes back into all the road cases, and they roll back into our 18-wheelers, and then we move on to the next city.”

Be sure to read the entire interview, here. Hagopian also talks about the diets of John Cena and The Rock, what happens when backstage “food fights” are called for in a script, and many more topics.

Editor’s Note

This is a very cool look at catering in WWE. In total, it’s a lengthy read, but definitely worth it.