Baton Rouge buzzes when LSU hosts a home football game. Hotels fill, restaurants staff up and tailgates take over campus as tens of thousands of fans prepare for kickoff. But behind the cast-iron pots, coolers of cold drinks and crowds donning purple and gold, there’s another gameday operation underway: private aviation.

Planes arrive and depart from Baton Rouge, carrying passengers and crews who need everything from meals to last-minute necessities. Someone has to stock them.

For Carmen Coon, owner of Carmen’s Catering, a major home game means blocking her calendar weeks in advance. Orders start rolling in Thursday and continue through post-game departures and Sunday morning flights home.

During the recent Texas A&M weekend, her team handled 26 aviation orders, including 14 treks to the airport.

“It’s a multi-day thing,” Coon says. “I don’t take other jobs, just in anticipation of what’s about to come.”

She knows orders are coming, but what they’ll entail is anyone’s guess. One memorable post-game order included two bottles of expensive Champagne and three bottles of Pedialyte.

“They were still drinking, but they were also getting their electrolytes back,” Coon says with a laugh.

Today, she knows this world well. But just a few years ago, she didn’t know aviation catering existed.

Her original dream was to open a café. Without the capital for a brick-and-mortar restaurant, she found another way into the business: working events, building relationships with established caterers and coordinating jobs of her own. She reinvested her profits in equipment and supplies, one purchase at a time: an ice chest, chafing dishes, serving utensils and eventually storage space. “I grew as I could afford it,” she says.

Then came an unexpected afternoon call in 2023. A request for breakfast burritos and orange juice for a private flight departing at 4 a.m. the next morning.

Coon had never catered a private flight. She took the order anyway.

That decision introduced her to an entirely new world of catering—unusual hours, short turnarounds and detailed requests. She learned how meals needed to be packaged, reheated and presented, adapting to the different capabilities of each specific aircraft.

“Nobody told me how to do it,” she says. “I had to figure it out.”

And she did.

Coon became familiar with new ingredients, culinary techniques and requests that extend well beyond food. She has sourced specialty caviar with its accompanying crème fraîche, blinis and mother-of-pearl spoon; Egyptian cotton bath towels; expensive bottles of liquor; and purple-and-gold accessories ranging from necklaces and purses to LSU banners and other gameday gear.

For a family flying to Disney World after Christmas, she gathered plush toys, coloring books, and milk and cookies, and arranged everything aboard the aircraft as a surprise before takeoff.

“It’s catering in a whole different way,” she says. “It’s catering to whatever they want.”

Sometimes, that also means improvising.

When a pilot accidentally dropped a tray of chocolate-covered strawberries she had just delivered, Coon stopped at a grocery store for supplies, went right back to the airport and dipped a replacement batch.

“I like the challenge,” she says. “When a big, complicated order comes in late, and they need it at 4 a.m., I’m like, ‘I’m going to make this happen.’”

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That’s exactly how Coon has approached her entire career.

“Pivot. Pivot,” she says. “The name of the game, evidently.”

Today, aviation represents roughly 85% of the day-to-day business for Carmen’s Catering. It has helped Coon move into a commercial kitchen, grow her team and expand the traditional catering work she loves, building relationships with brides, executive assistants organizing company events and other clients who trust her to support their gatherings.

Now she’s working toward what’s next, including a larger space, a bigger kitchen and hosting events of her own. It’s not quite the café she originally imagined, but she embraces all the opportunities—even a 4 a.m. breakfast order.

“I’m glad I took the call,” she says.