In the spirit of Southern hospitality, Meta Adler founded Hostess Provisions to ease at-home entertaining for hosts of all skill levels. After all, a successful catering career gave her a first-hand glimpse of how easily hosts can get overwhelmed by the minutiae of party planning. If she could offer anything to encourage people to enjoy the experience of cooking for others, it was a trio of her own trusty seasonings, which offer a simple, yet versatile, solution.
Like many people in the food space, Adler came into it through a circuitous route: While studying for the MCAT in college, she started her own private chef and catering services as a side hustle. High demand paired with her love for the fast-paced work cemented Adler’s love of the business, and she soon made Two Moons Catering her full-time pursuit.
Steady catering jobs, a brick-and-mortar restaurant, plus gigs as a freelance food stylist kept Adler busy, but she couldn’t ignore her clients’ consistent requests for her three trademark items: pickled shrimp for an event, a pint of pimento cheese to keep on hand for snacking, and her tomato sandwich recipe. To help her clients recreate their favorite items at home, she launched a trio of seasoning blends to jumpstart the cooking process.
She designed the seasoning blends to save people time from “worrying about chopping a bunch of herbs and doing a lot of measuring”—the seasoning packets just need to be added to a few pantry staples to bring the dishes to life. “I’ve always believed that cooking should be fun and simple,” Adler says.
The Pimento Cheese Seasoning, Tomato Sandwich Seasoning, and Pickled Shrimp Seasoning lean on quintessential Southern flavors, and Adler likens sharing them with her clientele to sharing a common love and passion for Southern cooking traditions. She initially offered the seasoning blends through Two Moons Catering, which gave her a new creative outlet where she could use them to brainstorm new concepts and develop the flavors. The pandemic shutdowns, however, forced her to reimagine her business model.
“With more people being on lock-down and getting back in their kitchens, it was the perfect time to take the seasoning blends to the next level,” she says. She was joined by her business partner at the time, Nicole Elliot (who has since moved on to other exciting and new ventures), and the pair launched Hostess Provisions with the hope that the products would inspire people to “get in the kitchen and entertain with confidence.”
And they were onto something. Demand for Hostess Provisions soared. Not only did people use them as the products’ names suggested, but they also got creative, turning them into popcorn seasoning, elevating twice-baked potatoes with the Pimento Cheese Seasoning, mixing the Tomato Sandwich spices with deviled eggs, or tossing oyster crackers in the Pickled Shrimp seasoning for an herby, salty snack. “We love seeing and hearing stories from our customers and all of the creative ways they’re using the seasonings in the kitchen,” Adler says.
Looking ahead, Adler is excited to release new additions to Hostess Provisions’ seasoning blends in 2023, which she’s currently developing and testing. She hopes customers will experiment with their ingredients and share their final products with her on social media @hostessprovisions.
