'Extreme catering' comes to RBC Heritage

For each day Southern Way Catering will cook this week at the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing, its crew spent nearly twice that much time just setting up.

It's not just cooking at that point, it's "extreme catering," said Greg Patterson, who is managing the Columbia company's events at the tournament.

"There's so much logistics in getting these things set up," he said. "Crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's, it's just a massive puzzle."

This is Southern Way's eighth year at the RBC Heritage, and one of its biggest.

Tucked behind a blue fence at the 15th hole, Patterson is coordinating a team of nearly 30 people from a tiny Southern Way trailer in a compound of nearly a dozen trucks, trailers, kitchen space and coolers.

The company runs the exclusive Doc's BBQ Club on the 15th hole behind the compound and the Calibogue Club at the 18th tee. Patterson's team also will cater five private house parties each day and several of the skyboxes along the back nine, he said.

In all, Southern Way is likely to serve more than 4,000 meals throughout the weekend. It brought 800 pounds of barbecue and 800 chickens, hot dogs and hamburgers to do the trick, Patterson said.

But Patterson hardly breaks a sweat at those numbers. Southern Way caters Gamecocks home football games and will cook nearly that much in a single day there, and will serve thousands more on special game days, such as USC Parent's Day, he said.

"Oh, it's really nothing too crazy," he said while he combed over the invoices Wednesday morning. "You should see the spreads at the USC games. Now those can be crazy."

It's the challenge of disassembling and reassembling the whole operation to get it to the Heritage that makes this week a challenge -- especially during the "year of the flats," Patterson quipped.

"Last Friday, our truck popped a tire on the way down here, and it took us seven hours to get from Columbia to here," he said.

Worse yet, a tire on one of the food trailers went flat, too, he said. They patched that tire, only to have it deflate a second time before they made it to Sea Pines Resort.

But that doesn't compare to the trouble Patterson found himself in four years ago, doubled over in pain on the last day of the tournament.

He ended up in Hilton Head Hospital with diverticulitis, a painful inflammation and infection in the large intestine.

The few days he spent in the hospital made it his most memorable Heritage, but it wasn't all bad, he joked.

"To be honest with you, it was kind of like I had a vacation. I had a good-lookin' nurse, pain medication, and I didn't have to help clean up."

Follow reporter Zach Murdock on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Zach and on Facebook at facebook.com/IPBGZach.

Related Content:

• Pete Dye, famous architect of Harbour Town Golf Links, can't sit still, even at 89 years old , April 15, 2015
• Jordan Spieth in Hilton Head: 'Positives and negatives' to spotlight , April 15, 2015
• RBC Heritage notebook: FURYK'S FANATICS , April 15, 2015

This story was originally published April 15, 2015 at 5:37 PM with the headline "'Extreme catering' comes to RBC Heritage."