CENTERVILLE · LOST
There's a decent chance you've eaten Olive Chase's food and never learned her name. That's how catering works. Nobody leaves a wedding talking about the company. They leave talking about the chowder, or the toast, or the aunt, and the people who made the day run are gone by the time the tent comes down.
The browser tab on her company's site still says Voted Cape Cod's Best Wedding Caterer. The page under it says The End Of An Era.
The note below that was written ahead of time. "I have made the decision to close The Casual Gourmet in October," she wrote, with catering scheduled through the month and her own retirement at the end of the year. Boston.com reported the announcement on Oct. 9, from her Facebook post. Neither identifies the final event. October is over now, and the note is still up.
Her goodbye also holds a sentence you might read twice: she'll "forever be amazed," she wrote, that a small gourmet food shop grew into "Cape Cod's largest catering company."
That's her word for it. How does a shop get there?
800 square feet, and no money for a restaurant
A shop wasn't the plan. Chase started as a waitress and worked her way into restaurant management, and what she wanted was a place of her own. "I really wanted to open my own restaurant but didn't have the money," she told WickedLocal's Stephanie Foster, in a piece her company later reposted, dated Jan. 9, 2007, on its site.
So in April 1986 she opened a gourmet store in a very small Centerville storefront, 800 square feet by her count, and spent the first five years as the chef. The shop was popular right away, the company's own history says. Her verdict was shorter. "I learned I wasn't going to make a living selling cheese."
The kitchen kept outgrowing its address
Then people asked her to cater parties, and the side job swallowed the shop. By her 2007 account, the story after that reads like a lease file. A restaurant went under and she took over the space, for 1,800 square feet. In 1991 the Heritage Museum wanted a little cafe on its grounds, her first food service contract. In the mid-'90s came cafeterias at high-tech companies and at Cape Cod Community College. In 1995 she moved to the Bell Tower Mall, for 3,300.
By the time of that piece, she estimated the company was doing 75 to 100 off-premise weddings a year. She recounted doing Paul Wylie's, and a brunch in Wareham for Geena Davis. "We sell experiences," she said.
Asked in a May 2025 profile what had changed since 1986, she had one word: "Everything." What hadn't? "Couples still love the romance that is Cape Cod. They want their toes in the sand."
The bakery with her old employer's name on it
In 2006 the company bought a building on Richardson Road in Centerville. It doubled the commissary and added special occasion cakes and pastries.
The building was the former Hearth 'n Kettle bakery. And the job Chase held right before that small storefront, by her own account in the 2007 piece? General manager at the Hearth and Kettle in Hyannis.
Twenty years after she couldn't find the money for a restaurant, the former waitress owned a building with her old employer's name in its past. "I always wanted to own it," she said.
Before 2012, "the Wild West"
Her other long project never touched a plate. Before 2012, Chase told the Cape Cod Times in a 2023 piece, "any kind of alcohol service was the Wild West." A one-day beer and wine license existed, she said, but you were supposed to buy from a wholesaler, and it was unclear if you had insurance. The Times's account credits her work on the state legislation for an annual license, after a two-year effort.
The law took effect Oct. 31, 2012, state regulators' advisory says, and it caps the period of alcohol service at a private catered event at five hours. It's still on the books as Chapter 138, Section 12C. So the woman one client remembers for chowder shots may have left her most durable mark in the General Laws.
The Massachusetts Restaurant Association put her in its Hall of Fame in 2023. Chase didn't describe it as a food award. "It was as much about being able to survive for 37 years, and support my community, as it was about the catering we do."
The building's next chapter isn't posted
We couldn't find any public word on what happens to Richardson Road. Many of her key people, she wrote, are also ready for their next chapter.
Her Facebook post had drawn nearly 150 comments when Boston.com looked on Oct. 9. "You catered our wedding and my mother's 80th birthday," one client wrote. "That was 20 years ago and people still rave about the food. Clam chowder shots, anyone?"
The last word was already on her own homepage.
"The business began with me, and it feels fitting that it will also end with me."
Before you dial the number on the homepage
Where it stands. Her note said she'd close in October, with catering scheduled through the month. Neither it nor Boston.com's Oct. 9 report names a last event, and as of Nov. 5 the note is still up.
Where people knew it. The 2007 piece on the company's site gives 31 Richardson Rd., Centerville. That's a historical address. The homepage lists no street.
The phone line. (508) 775-4946 is still on the homepage as of Nov. 5. We haven't tested it, and we can't say whether anyone is answering.
Other Mid Cape goodbyes that came down to paper
Three more places where the paper said something the sign or the memory didn't.
WEST DENNIS · RETIREMENT
In June it was a six-day place. Count what the last posted schedule had left.
CENTERVILLE · MAIN STREET
After 49 years in one family, the sale raised a question the building's own records don't settle.
OSTERVILLE · OLD MENU
The throwback prices for Wimpy's farewell changed because of what that one sheet said.
Sources: The Casual Gourmet homepage and About Us; Boston.com, Oct. 9, 2026; Cape Cod Times via AOL; CapeCod.com, Nov. 22, 2023; ABCC advisory; M.G.L. c. 138, s. 12C.