Liz Neumark
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Liz Neumark is the CEO of Great Performances.

In almost three decades of being at the top of the food chain in New York City, Liz Neumark has learned that it is all about satisfying needs. Liz believes there is no more critical time in the relationship between people and the foods they eat or have access to than today. Liz is a visionary in putting future culinary ideas on the plates of New Yorkers and a trendsetter in bringing food politics to the table, all with great taste and memorable flavors.

Liz conceived of Great Performances in 1979 as a waitress service for women in the arts, offering an alternative way to supplement meager artist incomes with work in the fledgling catering industry. When the industry boomed overnight, Great Performances grew along with it. The company, headquartered in Hudson Square, NYC, is one of the largest off-premise catering companies in the city, serving a wide range of corporate, social, and non-profit clients. The company also holds exclusive contracts at leading cultural institutions, including Jazz at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Apollo Theater, Sotheby’s, Caramoor, and Wave Hill. In 2007, Liz joint-ventured with Delaware North Companies to manage and operate one of New York City’s most sought-after banquet and event spaces - The Plaza Hotel.

Since 2006, Great Performances also owns a 60-acre organic farm in Columbia County, NY. An industry first, Katchkie Farm represents commitment to celebrating local flavors while supporting sustainable agriculture and good earth practices. The Farm supplies Great Performances with fresh produce for special events, as well as farmers markets throughout New York and the company’s cafes. It is also the source for a line of artisanal products, including the acclaimed Katchkie Ketchup, Thunder Pickles, and Bob-A-Que Sauce, and the inspiration for the company’s precedent-setting 100 Mile Menu for which all principal ingredients are sourced from within a 100-mile radius of New York City. Katchkie Farm is also home to The Sylvia Center, an educational non-profit dedicated to inspiring children to eat well through farm visits and garden-to-table cooking workshops.

The company’s philanthropic role further includes a commitment to food rescue and the fight against hunger. Katchkie Farm commits 5% of its annual harvest to anti-hunger organizations, notably Yorkville Common Pantry and City Harvest.

Liz currently serves as Chairman of the Board for The Sylvia Center; on the Boards of GrowNYC, Just Food and Women’s Forum New York; on the Governor’s Food Policy Council and on the Advisory Boards for the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, Food and Finance High School, Barnard’s Athena Center for Leadership Studies and Hudson Square Business Improvement District. Liz has received many honors including the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award, Crain’s 100 Most Influential Women, BizBash’s Hall of Fame and Event Innovators 2011 and Ernst & Young New York Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Liz has also found a new forum to discuss food politics and the ever-changing event business with her own online blog featured on The Huffington Post.

Liz is a third generation New Yorker, a Barnard graduate who majored in Urban Studies and Political Science. She, her husband and children live in Manhattan.

Blog Entries by Liz Neumark

Fare Is Fair

(0) Comments | Posted May 7, 2012 | 9:22 AM

On the list of things to get done this weekend, visiting the Frieze Art Fair on Randall's Island was a must-do. I headed up Lexington Avenue from the East 80's at a brisk pace to get to 126th Street for the yellow school bus to the Island. To...

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Return to Bountiful

(0) Comments | Posted May 2, 2012 | 11:37 AM

In rapid-fire succession over the past eight days, the bounty of the spring has been unleashed. Ramps, asparagus, fiddlehead ferns, strawberries, rhubarb, lilies of the valley, lilac -- the precursors of the season -- are back despite a hot winter and cold spring and every conceivable temperature fluctuation including near-drought...

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Farewell To A Jewel Of A City (PHOTOS)

(2) Comments | Posted April 24, 2012 | 7:00 AM

Farewell to a jewel of a city. My five days in Prague with the purpose of visiting my daughter, Nell, on her junior semester abroad have been delightful. It is a destination celebrated as the new Paris, an edgy and exciting destination with much to do and see.

We had...

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Our Town: Sloan Public Service Awards 2012

(1) Comments | Posted March 19, 2012 | 4:55 PM

With the precision that comes with years of experience, the bus tour to the work sites of the 2012 Sloan Public Service Award winners, left Hudson Square promptly on March 14, headed to Brooklyn. This is the annual "Oscars of Public Service" organized by The Fund for the...

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Politics in Every Bite

(2) Comments | Posted March 12, 2012 | 4:57 PM

The phrase "food festival" is so overused.  It is a label plastered onto every gathering that features food, without regard for a genuinely festive component -- and the events are often comprised of entitled attendees and self important or reluctant exhibitors.
 
The NY Vegetarian Food...

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Of Presidents and Paupers and Food

(0) Comments | Posted March 6, 2012 | 9:46 AM

It was a busy week with once again, President Barack Obama as the guest of honor as he rolled through Manhattan on mega-fundraising multi-destination evening, one of them included Great Performances.  The protocol associated with the visit, the gravitas of the office, the honor of being in such...

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So Much More Than 'Just Food'

(0) Comments | Posted February 27, 2012 | 12:31 PM

On a weekend of two major annual gatherings in the food world -- the South Beach Wine and Food Festival and the Just Food Conference -- my heart was in the Florida sun, but my body and activist spirit was at the High School of Food...

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Giant Meals

(0) Comments | Posted February 14, 2012 | 11:52 AM

There is nothing quite as therapeutic as a night in the country, most specifically, Columbia County within close proximity to Katchkie Farm. A cold brisk night, the promise (more accurately, threat) of snow, is the perfect tonic to an intense workweek characterized by unending great food. It is...

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In the Market for Green

(2) Comments | Posted February 7, 2012 | 11:10 AM

Off to the market Saturday morning with Chef de Cuisine Matthew Riznyk of Great Performances in tow to celebrate and explore the color we least expect to see in the middle of the winter -- GREEN! It is truly the season of the storage vegetable and time for farmers to...

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An Amazing Performance!

(0) Comments | Posted February 6, 2012 | 3:30 PM

Sometimes, it is the thing that is right in front of you that remains hidden in plain sight.

Since inception in 1979, Great Performances has drawn its service staff from the arts -- in fact, they are what sparked the creation of the company -- to provide...

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Planting Season vs. Playing Season

(2) Comments | Posted January 25, 2012 | 2:42 PM

I was waiting for the Giant-49'er game to get started, but it wasn't the football East-West Coast rivalry that was on my mind last weekend. What I was thinking about was their local farm produce vs. ours. Last weekend I spent Saturday in NYC's Union Square Greenmarket and then Sunday...

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Potluck in the Lobby

(1) Comments | Posted January 10, 2012 | 11:47 AM

"In the 35-40 years I have been living in this building, nothing like this has ever happened!" So spoke Julian, the co-op owner with the most longevity, on Sunday evening during the first potluck dinner in our building's 100 year plus, history. His wife Jackie chimed in, "When we bought...

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A New Year That Feels Slightly... Used

(0) Comments | Posted January 4, 2012 | 6:22 PM

You know how sometimes just saying the numbers of the New Year feels so awkward, it kind of gets stuck in your throat coming out? Not the case with 2012. In fact, it almost feels like a familiar, if not slightly used, year. As well it should! We have been...

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Worth the Drive!

(0) Comments | Posted December 20, 2011 | 10:18 AM

400 Mile Drive to Top Rated Farmers' Market!

Circumstances took me to Portland, Maine this weekend, at the end of an unseasonably warm stretch of December weather and NYC holiday party madness. Imagine the elation awakening Saturday morning, in this quiet town, to temperatures in the teens and snow gently...

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Cooking Up a Storm!

(1) Comments | Posted December 12, 2011 | 2:39 PM

Within less than 24 hours I had two memorable and quite unique food experiences this weekend. And while that might not be a surprising statement for someone in the food business to make, consider this -- one was a holiday party meal for close to 2,000 guests and the other...

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Contemplating the Seasons

(0) Comments | Posted November 29, 2011 | 2:46 PM

The change in seasons is clear in spite of the balmy temperature as I head up the Taconic Parkway Saturday morning. The leaves are finally down revealing houses, buildings, lakes, and otherwise masked structures along the highway. Regal pine trees and other conifers now stand apart from their previous leafy...

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Pickle or Perish

(1) Comments | Posted November 16, 2011 | 2:54 PM

2011-11-15-A.JPGWhat could have more appeal than a Pickle Festival? And this year, the Lower East Side International Pickle Day was held at the New Amsterdam Market, an historic food site not far from the immigrant roots of our pickling forefathers/mothers.

...
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A Snow Man for Halloween?

(0) Comments | Posted November 1, 2011 | 2:04 PM

In a year when nothing really should surprise us anymore... after the earthquake, tsunami, Middle East upheaval, hurricanes, international bankruptcies, congressional gridlock, nascent national protest movement... what's a minor blizzard in October? Try as I might to be shocked or outraged at Mother Nature's bold foreclosure on autumn, I merely...

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I Was a CSA Junkie

(0) Comments | Posted October 24, 2011 | 8:53 PM

I confess -- it started about 12 years ago when a neighbor upstate was talking about the vegetables she was getting from a Putnam County organic farm. There was an air of mystery surrounding her description of where they came from.... one had to apply... you had to become a...

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The Best Acre on the Planet

(1) Comments | Posted October 18, 2011 | 4:36 PM

I have thought a lot about where change comes from; government regulation; populist movements or private enterprise. This week I was exposed to two very different, yet in some way linked, movements for change, which tie into my question.

I spent time visiting OccupyWall Street, the first truly significant sustained...

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