Executive Chef and Owner of The Sunday Dinner Company Catering and Personal Chef Services, Eric S.C. Giles, passed away unexpectedly at his home on Friday, January 31, 2014. He was 49.
Giles, known locally and nationally as an award winning entrepreneur, culinary artist and social activist used his talents to provide training and numerous job opportunities, for youth, seniors and returning citizens. His most recent venture, “Pop – Up Restaurant, Lunch at Techtown” was scheduled to premiere February 5, 2014 in Detroit.
David Theriault, business partner and co-owner of The Sunday Dinner Company Restaurant (temporarily closed pending relocation) fondly remembers the eatery’s debut. “We opened Sunday, May 9, 2010 on Mother’s Day. Chef Giles greeted our guests ebulliently – exuding pride, not in himself, but in our staff and in our mission.” During a radio interview on WDET’s “The Craig Fahle Show” Chef Giles stated. “We’re really only 25% restaurant and 75% social enterprise. It’s what Detroit has to do. There’s a church on every corner of this city but so little forgiveness. You have a generation and a half that has no training and no hope. Local businesses have to engage, period.”
The duo employed returning citizens from Goodwill Industries’ “Flip the Script” program to renovate the historic building using exclusively recycled materials. They hired young people, some with no prior work experience, as wait staff. Molly Abraham, restaurant critic for the Detroit News, noted in her column on May 27, 2010 …”You won’t find a more courteous and helpful staff, both on the phone and in person, or a better-dressed one. As a table is seated, a waiter in a crisp white dress shirt brings the menu and explains the system. …The Sunday Dinner Company offers a second chance to those whose lives have been disrupted by poverty and crime.”
“Chef Giles was an urbane, erudite gadfly who left an indelible mark on Detroit by reaching out to help some of the city’s most challenged residents”, said Michael g. Cunningham, pastor of Historic East Lake Church of Detroit. “Regardless of whether he was catering a luncheon at the Governor’s mansion, hosting a dinner for Obama staffers at his restaurant, or serving homeless people in a shelter, he brought the same level of elegance and excellence to the event.”
In 2002 East Lake boldly opened The Kingdom Men’s Café – a full service soul food restaurant – and housed it inside the church. Giles, already a church member, was hired as the Executive Chef. It was at the café that Eric Giles became the persona Chef Giles. In a glowing 2004 Metro
Times review Elissa Karg wrote, The food is equal to many other soul food restaurants, but it costs less, your plate sits on linen tablecloths and the service is fastidious. Chef Giles sees the café as an opportunity for men in the church to work together on a project, at the same time providing work experience and mentoring for teenagers. The café closed a few years ago but the legacy continues in the form of Chef Giles’ Café Salad Dressing and Marinade which can still be found on store shelves.
In 2013 Chef Giles was invited to participate in Model D’s IdeaLab as part of the Revitalization & Business Conference hosted by the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. The published recap of the event stated, “Eric Giles, chef and co-owner of the Sunday Dinner Company, added a jolt of energy to the program, speaking of the love he felt from the speakers and the audience as he paced around the stage.”
A perennial entrepreneur Giles founded Clyde’s Cleaning Service (named after his late beloved father) in 1983 during his senior year of High School. Business prowess continued to manifest early in his professional career as he sought challenging, innovative and creative employment opportunities. During the ‘90’s he honed many of his management, training and development skills under the tutelage of Judy Wiles as operations manager of her staffing company, First Impressions. At the company’s peak Wiles and Giles maintained offices in Atlanta and Detroit; staffed major city wide events (Grand Prix, NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner); were featured in a front page, above the fold, Wall Street Journal article (January 1999); and profiled in a Darden Graduate School of Business case study (Yemen/Werhane, 1999).
Tunde Wey of the Urban Innovation Exchange interviewed Chef Giles in 2012 and said, “Chef Giles is the right Stew of pragmatic and idealistic. He is at the helm of socially important work that requires both of these virtues in varying quantities. Chef Giles is a social entrepreneur, in the least pretentious and most practical definition of the title.”
Over the years Mr. Giles has received numerous awards and accolades acknowledging his business and civic accomplishments including most recently a 2012 Knight Foundation award and recognition for The Sunday Dinner Company Restaurant as one of 2013’s “50 Coolest Small Businesses in America” by the Business Insider. He will be mourned and missed by many. He had a brilliant mind, a big heart and productive hands.
A memorial service for Chef Giles will be held on Saturday, February 8, 2014 at Historic East Lake Church of Detroit, 12400 E. Jefferson St., Detroit, MI 48215. Family and friends fellowship hour will begin at noon with a “Celebration of Life” service commencing at 1:00 p.m. The family has requested a private visitation. However condolences may be sent to Cantrell Funeral Home, 10400 Mack Ave., Detroit, MI 48215.
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