Our Story
(The story continues to be written.)
Gill Grilling Company began in 2002 in the summer before the founder’s senior year at the University of Maryland. Having been awarded a new chapter house, Lambda Chi Alpha was tasked with coordinating the move and filling the rooms with enough people so that the chapter could pay its rent. This task proved frustrating, as most students already had housing arrangements. When one prospective tenant expressed reservations about living so far from the dining hall, an opportunity arose, and Gill Grilling Company was founded to fill a room in a Fraternity house and feed a grand total of 1 person.
Throughout that year, 1 person turned into 10 people, then into a whole chapter, then into 5 whole chapters. There are 2 of us at Gill Grilling who were around in those days, and we often joke about this time when ‘Operation Fill a Frat House’ became a real company. We came to realize that there was real value in professional kitchen management, and we were dedicated to an unrelenting level of quality and service.
The chaotic excitement of the new venture slowly gave way to a clear vision of how to serve the Fraternity and Sorority market. While many areas of food service enjoyed increased levels of attention and sophistication, many chapters struggled with the logistical problems associated with hiring a chef and managing a food service plan. Gill Grilling envisioned maintaining the personal chef aspect of meal service that chapters had always enjoyed, but backing the chef with the full resources of a company that could do the menu planning, hiring, and administrative tasks, as well as cooking the food and maintaining the kitchen.
As Gill Grilling approaches our next anniversary, we still have the same excitement that we’ve always had to be a part of the Fraternity and Sorority community that has so profoundly affected this company, as well as all of our lives.