Cafe 'N Stuff sold to longtime employees

Maria Trigo, second from right, and her family inside Gatherings ‘N Stuff. (Courtesy photo)

DOWNEY — Those who knew Café n Stuff likely knew Maria Trigo and her family.

Café n Stuff was a café turned catering business owned by Ebie Ghaneian that served the community for over 30 years. It was Trigo and her family, however, who would become synonymous with the company.

“I laughingly told people that we were a family run business,” said former general manager Rita DeBenedictis. “We were just run by her family...All of them worked here.”

It began when Trigo joined the Café n Stuff team around 2004 as a waitress. Fifteen years into her time with the company, Maria would bring along one of her three sons, Angel, to wash the catering cars and focus some of his energy.

“The owner here saw me with a kind of sad face, and [asked] ‘What’s wrong,’” said Trigo. “’My son, I can’t keep him sitting down,’ and [he said] ‘Bring him, I have something for him to do.’”

Angel would go on to work more with the company, along with his brothers Dadzahe Mier and Gino Trigo, and a host of other family members.

“Everybody was wearing different hats,” said Mier.

However, things became more uncertain as the Covid-19 pandemic began to set in. Luckily for Café n’ Stuff, the business was able to pivot; transitioning from running the sometimes 2-3000 person events their clients would book, to government contracts serving individually packaged meals for testing site workers and those in need.

Still, as the pandemic began to settle, those at Café n Stuff knew it would still be a slow roll to a full reopening, as there wasn’t an immediate calling for the types of events that the company had become accustomed to accommodating.

“We survived [the pandemic] and survived it well, which was nice,” said DeBenedictis. “The sad thing was we realized towards the end, we realized once the pandemic was over, we weren’t sure what was going to happen because our biggest client was going away, LA County, and our new clients weren’t ready to come back.”

DeBenedictis said that Ghaneaian started making plans to liquidate and close the company, before a new idea struck.

“[Ghaneaian] had this idea that Maria, Dadzahe and their family had worked for us, Maria for almost 24, 25 years,” said DeBenedictis. “As he was deciding to liquidate, he had the idea that he wanted to see if Angel wanted to come back and own it.”

“He kept asking for my son Angel,” said Trigo. “[Ghaneian said] ’He always wanted a restaurant, his own business. This would be a good place for him.’”

Trigo’s son had different priorities at the time, having settled in Hawaii with a family of his own.

“I called my son, and he said ‘No mom, why didn’t he tell me when I was there?,” said Trigo.

Trigo, however, was very much interested.

“Maria came over here one day and said, ‘Ebi, Angel’s in Hawaii, but I’m here; I want it,’” said Debendictis.

Ghaneian was hesitant to sell to Trigo. Ultimately it took a little persuasion, and a guarantee that she would have her family behind her.

Now, the family owns the business under the new name of Gathering’s n Stuff, coming full-circle and making it truly “family-run.”

DeBenedictis says that the business – and the legacy of Café n’ Stuff – is in good hands.

“For me, I grew the catering part of it up from a baby, literally, and so it would’ve broken my heart to give it to anybody who didn’t take care of it and continue the way we had,” said DeBenedictis. “…The fact that [Trigo] worked with us all the way along, so she knew the way we did things, and she knew how we took care of customers. That was important to us. They all did, but Maria especially.”

“We just knew that she wanted it, and she loved it as much as we did.”

Though ownership may be different, Mier says it’s the same tradition and legacy.”

“People that know Café n Stuff, they’re going to love Gathering’s n Stuff because it feels like Café never shut down,” said Mier.