The "Maintenance Dude" Who Keeps Our Sustainable Catering Business Running

By Christy Johnson

Facilities Engineer Vincent Spica in his hallway office at Chowgirls headquarters.

Hours of preparation go into every detail of an event catered by Chowgirls, from planning the perfectly balanced menus to designing the stunning seasonal tablescapes to training the incredibly hospitable service teams.

When you attend one of these gatherings, you get to experience the results of that hard work first hand. What you won't get to see, however, is the man who cared for the equipment that allowed our talented staff to cook, bake, and deliver that delicious food — not to mention the building inside which all of these tasks were completed.

Who is this mysterious jack-of-all-trades, you ask? He's Vincent Spica, and our sustainable catering business is lucky enough to call him our facilities manager.

For just shy of three years, Spica has kept our Northeast Minneapolis headquarters humming along by fixing what breaks, tracking what gets thrown away, and cleverly finding ways to discard less of it overall. 

Spica is prepared for anything. (Can you find the label that perfectly displays his personality?)

"The lengthy definition of my job," he explains, "is that I make sure very talented people have everything they need to do their jobs well, and safely, in a clean environment."

And the short answer? "I am the maintenance dude," he says with a humble shrug.

He is, of course, massively underselling it. Some of what Spica does, you'd likely expect: overseeing landscaping, pest control, snow removal, and office cleaning, and repairing kitchen equipment, dish machines, warehouse inventory, and anything else that breaks or conks out. 

But beyond tackling those everyday tasks, he's also able to help with the design side of our business. Spica puts his woodworking background to use by building frames and displays for our clients' weddings, corporate parties, and social gatherings, plus the marketing events Chowgirls participates in. He also 3D-prints custom stencils that our event designers use to adorn clients' menu items with everything from company logos to themed graphics. 

Spica's food-safe, 3D-printed stencils help our event designers make edible place cards like these crafted from house-made ramp butter and green spirulina powder. (Photo: Lucas Botz)

But most important of all for a company that takes sustainability seriously, Spica monitors more than a dozen different waste streams at Chowgirls HQ every single day, including recycling, compost, multi-layer plastic, and much more.

THE MAKING OF A HANDYMAN

Spica grew up in Caledonia, Michigan. His family ran a bakery called The Bun Basket, where he and his sisters worked on weekends. He moved to Minneapolis in 2006. 

"I worked in mostly restaurants from age 13 to 32, then I started doing more mechanical and repair work," he shares. Before Chowgirls, he was a bakery technician responsible for reviving mixers, ovens, automated pastry lines, and more.

Spica credits most of his hands-on know-how to two people: his father, Rob Spica, and his close friend Juan Xinastle, both of whom he describes as "absolute mechanical geniuses."

He landed at Chowgirls through a different friend, his predecessor Greg, who he knew through Indeed Brewing. "I had heard great things about Chowgirls from the Indeed folks, and I liked the idea of focusing on a facility, not just the equipment," he remembers. 

Unlike Greg, who held several roles in the nearly 10 years he was with Chowgirls, Spica has never worked a single event. His entire job deals with our headquarters and everything in it, which in a way is his contribution to all of the gatherings we cater.

Spica coated this canvas to make it food-safe, and 3D-printed the stencil used to adorn our Green Goddess Dip with spirulina-dusted client logos. A wood frame he built also sits at the back of the table. (Photo: Lucas Botz)

A SUSTAINABILITY CHAMPION

Being a sustainable business doesn't happen in a vacuum. It takes someone paying close attention to where things go, what gets reused, and what tasks, actions, or systems could be done differently. That's a big part of Spica's job, and he takes it seriously.

"I've always been frustrated by waste, but Chowgirls has given me an outlet to affect that," he says, "as well as a major education in sustainability." 

And he's blunt about how much effort all of it requires. "There is no actual law requiring a business in the Twin Cities to do anything other than regular trash," he explains. "It takes a real commitment, in both time and money, to have nearly 70% of your waste not go into an incinerator or landfill."

He's not just pulling this percentage out of thin air. Spica uses our in-house Waste Tracker to diligently monitor and log what happens to every one of Chowgirls' refuse streams, from compost to cardboard to specialty recycling. These consistent, detailed observations are how we maintain an average diversion rate of around 64% each year, which translates to hundreds of pounds of material being kept out of landfills annually.

Beyond diverting waste, Spica is a big believer in reusability. When a piece of our kitchen equipment finally reaches the end of its life, he doesn't just toss it in the trash. Instead, he strips it down for parts. 

Spica's tidy workspace is organized like a mini hardware store.

"Any way we can find to have quality things be used over and over again, instead of being single-use, is a win," he says.

Those salvaged screws, wires, and other random components get a second life in other equipment down the road, which means fewer trips to the hardware store and, as he puts it, "less diesel tanker ships traversing the globe."

"IN THE RIGHT ROLE, IN THE RIGHT PLACE"

The work he does for Chowgirls is not glamorous, but Spica finds it truly satisfying. And he isn't done. This year, he's been focused on what he calls "gold flakes" — small, easy-to-overlook changes that add up over time. In 2025, he re-insulated the AC lines on our roof, which cut electricity usage by slightly more than 1%. "It doesn't seem like much," he says, "but it certainly adds up over the years."

Spica does his best to balance his efforts between the goals that Chowgirls can reach now and the ones that can be met down the road.

"I've got lots of starry-eyed plans for the future," he says. "Hopefully we can continue to increase our output while finding ways to keep our energy bills down and have less waste overall."

When he pauses from goal-setting and checking tasks off of a lengthy to-do list, Spica is able to reflect on what he feels are the best parts of his job. First, he says, "there is something different on my workbench every single day, so I’m constantly learning."

The tools of the trade.

Next, Spica notes that he genuinely enjoys solving problems alongside other people, and appreciates the trust that comes with his role — both the trust placed in him as well as the trust he places in others.

Last but not least is his love for the delicious and creative lunch spread that our sustainability chef and Culinary team whip up for staff each day using only leftovers, preserved foods, and kitchen staples. 

"Family Meal means so much to me," Spica says. "I know I'm not the only person who loathes having to figure out what to eat, and if I'm in the middle of something important or interesting, I'll end up skipping lunch altogether."

Of course, there are day-to-day challenges to be faced, like in any job. Spica admits that he's had to find ways to slow down his natural "plate spinning" instinct so nothing important gets left behind.

Then there are the unexpected situations that make those challenges seem downright trivial. He says one of his most personally moving moments at Chowgirls to date was watching how the team pulled together under pressure during the peak of Operation Metro Surge last winter.

"[That] was a lifetime low for me," he shares. "But seeing how people here reacted, and what they did for each other, is one of the most impactful things in my life."

Spica's name plate hangs on his office wall alongside a maintenance-request QR code embellished with Groundskeeper Willie, a character from The Simpsons.

The problems he gets to solve, the team he gets to do it alongside, the satisfaction of diverting tons of waste from landfills…. It all combines to make this job an incredibly rewarding one. 

"I love it here. No joke," he says. "It's very easy to get up in the morning when you feel like you're in the right role, in the right place."

So the next time you're at an event with a Chowgirls presence, think about the man sitting in his slip of an "office" who literally helps our business run. Then take a moment to give our beloved behind-the-scenes handyman some well-earned appreciation.