Member Spotlight: Old Skool Bus Events

There’s not many sights quite like an original yellow American old school bus pulling up to the perimeter. Especially when said bus is bringing with it a barrage of delicious food and drink to nourish the hungry and the parched.

Immediately, an impression is made with such an individual and striking presence – this is unique catering, in the vision of Old Skool Bus Events business owner Kate Packham. As she states herself, it is “really eye-catching and the uniqueness definitely attracts customers at big events and couples book us for their weddings, I think it’s a combination of the individuality of the food truck, and our delicious food menus.”

Hospitality has a way of weaving to the heart of those who get into the industry and coaxing them back for more – this is certainly the case for Kate: From somewhat typical, humble beginnings working waitressing jobs at restaurants while in school and university where a love for engaging with customers was nurtured. Her passion was truly ignited during a spell on a gap year working as a chalet manager at a ski resort Courchevel where she was thrust into the food management side of things.

She recalls: “I was only 21 at the time so managing a whole chalet for 10 guests was a big commitment, cooking breakfast, afternoon tea and a three-course meal every night, plus doing the ordering, budgeting and hosting myself, but I love skiing and socialising, so it was a rewarding first management role in the industry!”

Gap year completed, the ‘real world’ spurred Kate into a business and marketing degree which she built on to work with the RSPCA, focusing on the farm animal welfare scheme. This put the self-admitted “city girl” in an environment where she was able to immerse herself in the nitty gritty of food production chains from top to bottom and formulate a solid understanding of the journey from farm to plate.

It was during this tenure that involved putting on and attending trade shows that Kate realised she loved events: Kate moved from food production management to event management, however keeping the two very closely linked in her following career moves. Kate went on to run hundreds of team-building events and corporate workshops before securing a ‘Head of Corporate Events’ role managing an events agency in Brighton. “We specialised in corporate parties hosting gala dinners and fabulous Christmas themed parties in London. It was vibrant, busy and our team loved it!”

The next 4 years saw Kate turn her hospitality and event management skills to big field event management and festivals, working for the Eavis’ site office at Glastonbury Festival in the summer, and then managing the traders at London’s top food market and tourist attraction ‘Borough Market’ in winter, right up until the pandemic – when both hospitality and events industries took some of the biggest hits.

Not being one to sit still and take time off, COVID spurred Kate to seek charity work, support food projects, and then “a friend of mine had seen a big old American school bus for sale and asked ‘why don’t we get together and start something? We could use the food truck for some charity projects feeding vulnerable groups in our area!” And hence a unique, Old Skool Bus & Kitchen business was formed.

“Obviously it was a bit of a gamble to launch an event catering food truck in the middle of a pandemic, but with our decades of experience in hospitality, cooking and event management experience we were raring to give it a go. Alongside our charity food projects we started trading at Hove Park with several other coffee and Sussex food trucks, selling our toasties to dog walkers and families out on their COVID permitted walks!”

By winter 2021, and a couple of small local festivals under the belt, the Old Skool Bus & Kitchen completed a five-week stint at Leonardslee Illuminated (Christmas lights event), which gave them the volume food truck sales experience to really push the business further. Soon enough, the bus found its way to Silverstone F1, Brighton Pride, Shindig, the Brighton Marathon, and by summer 2022 they reached the promise land of Glastonbury Festival – where they went on to trade at three years in a row. No mean feat at all, but back down on Worthy Farm where Kate felt at home.

Ever keen to diversify, Kate saw the potential to widen the scope to cater at weddings, the TV & Film location catering circuit, and for festival crew catering. “With the growth in both the street food industry and for weddings to choose the less formal style food truck catering, the event catering business was building up momentum!”

Fast forward to autumn 2023 when the original business partners decided to separate. Kate decided to thicken the fleet with the addition of another Old Skool Bus: “Now I have two buses, the food truck I then christened ‘Bella’, that’s a 9 metre long ‘International Bluebird’ from 2001. It’s a fully fitted commercial kitchen inside. The new one is an ‘International Wolfington’ pre-school American bus I’ve named ‘Wolfie’ which is almost finished being converted into am 8 metre long Bar & BBQ truck.”

For all their unique quirk and charm, driving two large buses around the Sussex countryside takes some skill and forward planning of course! Advance site visits, route planning, and a thorough set up plan for power and water is crucial when delivering a quality event catering food truck service at venues and events.

Despite boasting quite an extensive history working in events & hospitality, Kate recognises there is always room to improve and for self-growth, and sees her journey with the Old Skool Bus Events company as evocative of that: “It’s actually been really motivational branching out on my own as it’s allowed me to improve all of the areas of the business to the standard I always strive for, rebrand and build a new website, and it’s been an empowering year to transform menus, event plans, and manage it all myself.”

Key to this, has been assembling the new “really strong team around me consisting of some new great chefs, experienced event managers , friendly front of house servers and solid back of house staff”. Working with a reputable team and keeping all on board happy is important to Kate, who recognises that it’s “crucial for us for to be responsible both for the food we provide and in terms of the team welfare.

We always have a friendly team in operation, I think it’s really good fun for people to work with us – we make effort to build a bond with everyone, so we have nice social events to involve everyone. When you’re catering on a festival site they are inherently social places so we’ll all go and watch some bands together.”

Unintentionally, the Old Skool Bus Events team is made up of about 80% of women – something Kate is inherently proud of and is a topical point considering she has just become a mentor in The Network of Women in Events programme for 2025. In Kate’s own words, “due to the development of my own business over the past few years, I feel I have a lot of experience and passion that I could potentially help some of the up-and-coming younger women in the industry. It’s a real honour to have been selected for this programme!”

There are a raft of inspirational and high level women in the hospitality industry, and Kate is well placed to inspire many more young women to go on and achieve things, to become entrepreneurs themselves in this sector and show how possible it is.

Ever wanting to push herself and learn more, this mentorship comes in line with Kate finishing a ‘Nutrition and Health Coaching’ level 4 diploma this January, which has resulted in a qualification in nutritional coaching. Kate wanted to understand more about what we eat, how it makes us feel and how we could be healthier – naturally this will well inform the business practice, with influence already spilling into the conception of menu development. She mentions how it is “great to be able to draw on some of my newfound nutritional knowledge and coaching skills and put what I’ve learned to good use.”

Festival catering has proven a sweet gig for Kate’s newly named Old Skool Bus Events, but not just as a trader this year. 2025 sees a fantastic new opportunity arise for the school bus team, having been chosen to deliver the crew catering for the build and break crew of Glastonbury Festival! This volume style catering takes meticulous planning, and with the strongest catering management and most experienced chef team they’ve ever had, they will be producing three meals a day on site to hundreds of hungry crew workers for several weeks before and after the event itself.

“It’s a totally different way of catering. On a TV location site we would usually cater from our food truck or a gazebo small kitchen, but for a large festival or sporting event crew we need to have a large, hired field kitchen in a huge marquee where we serve from a canteen. We operate with a much bigger team ourselves to facilitate this demand because at three meals a day for between 100 to 500 people, that’s a huge number of meals served in week!”

Management is essential to making an operation like this tick: “You need to be totally on it with your event management planning, procurement, minimising food wastage, tight budgeting, and with your staff rotas.”

To express the scale of managing such an operation, Kate uses the example of comparing planning a wedding for 100 people to crew catering for 300. With a private event you know your dietary requirements and allergies of the guests’ weeks in advance, what time they are sitting down for their wedding breakfast, and how many feasting bowls we are serving to their barn banquet tables. But with large crew canteens the catering numbers can change almost daily, with additional agency crew appearing with new dietary requirements they need to try and accommodate at very short notice.

Finding your niche is paramount when it comes to pushing forward and carving a path in catering. With such a strong brand and theme provided by the American buses, Kate leans into this by providing fare that fits the aesthetic. Most of their street food menu’s are American style of course. The most popular food truck menus are their gourmet burger & loaded fries, Mexican style street food & tacos, and the first street food they started serving in 2021 – their delicious, grilled American sourdough cheese toasties. Phew!

However, for the private occasions guests at weddings can be treated to big bite canapes, sharing feasts and BBQ’s, buffets, dessert stations and late-night snacks from the truck. The most popular sharing feasts are the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern style menus, alongside the traditional BBQ’s of course.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given her experience in food management, knowledge of the reality of working in hospitality and her recent step into the world of mentoring, when prompted for advice she’d give to budding young caterers, Kate stresses that “the most important thing is having a well thought out business plan and your unique USP. It’s a tough time for businesses and catering, so you need a solid, but flexible and realistic plan.”

Thinking about the next steps, Kate is really excited to see what the newly converted Bar & BBQ bus provides. With ‘Wolfie’ being converted into a bar lounge inside she thinks that “guests will love being served their cocktail or craft beer at the bar outside and then come to enjoy and sip their drinks in the retro, stylish interior of an original American school bus”

Another angle for an already incredibly individual hospitality business in a sector full of unique nuance, and possibly why the business was crowned as ‘Most Unique Catering’ in the UK Quirky Wedding Awards in November 2024.

You can find out more about Old Skool Bus Events here and follow their journey here.