Four Years of The Missing Link Carts & Catering
On Saturday, March 29, 2025, we’re celebrating the four-year anniversary of becoming The Missing Link Carts & Catering! It’s been such an exciting, challenging, and rewarding journey, that wouldn’t be possible without help and support from numerous family and friends, and of course…our wonderful customers.
In honor of the special day, we’re looking back at how we got here. From our humble beginnings as a tent (and even before!) to finding our home here in Kalamazoo. We hope you enjoy this tour through the timeline of The Missing Link!
September 2020 — Shane begins to prepare and cook take-and-bake style meal delivery for friends and family. Menu items ranged from salads and soups to casseroles and bakes. Most items were vegetarian or met other dietary restrictions.
November 2020 — After much discussion, we settled on a hot dog cart. We decided to start saving some money and figuring out how to start a business.
March 29, 2021 — The Missing Link Carts & Catering officially becomes a registered LLC!
May 2021 — We ordered our food cart, which was manufactured in Michigan and estimated to be ready for pick-up in eight weeks. (Spoiler…it was not ready in eight weeks.)
June 2021 — The Missing Link is announced on social media, and the website goes live.
Summer 2021 — We get certified with the Health Department as a food stand and begin setting up at farmers markets and other events in the Ann Arbor area, where our business was located. We had a great time at the Dexter Farmers Market, Dixboro Farmers Market, and our biggest event of the summer—Astronomicon. It was a challenging summer where we were forced to change plans due to restrictions in our commissary kitchen. We learned a lot.
October 2021 — Our brand new food cart is ready to use…at the end of food cart season.
Fall 2021/Winter 2022 — We launched our Bigfoot Bakes delivery and pick-up service with several tasty casseroles and meals hot and ready to eat.
April 2022 — We open for season 2…this time with a fully licensed food cart! Throughout the spring we set up at several locations including Ann Arbor Distilling Co, Dexter Farmers Market, Stony Lake Brewing Co, and the Halfway to Halloween event.
July 2022 — We relocate to Kalamazoo! We’re excited for the new community and start setting up at the Battle Creek Farmers Market, Murray Street Brewing Co, Horrocks, and more.
Fall 2022/Winter 2023 — We start offering a small catering menu featuring some of our bakes, along with soups, salads, and charcuterie.
Summer 2023 — We begin our first full food cart season in Kalamazoo! We set up at the Kalamazoo Night Market, Begg Park, Battle Creek Farmers Market, Vicksburg Farmers Market, the Augusta Arts & Crafts Fair, and more.
September 2023 — We cater our first wedding — our own! Margo and Shane get married.
October 2023 — The Missing Link wins 2nd Prize in the first-ever BC Food Prize Competition’s prepared food division!
Fall 2023 — We launch our delivery and pickup catering menu. Now you can enjoy The Missing Link for gatherings of any size, all season long!
Spring 2024 — We begin the food cart season with a new regular spot — the Saturday morning Kalamazoo Farmers Market. Thanks to the support from Food Prize, we have a new tent, lights, POS system, merchandise, and other upgrades.
Summer 2024 — We have our best vending season yet and get to fulfill one of our bucket list items: hosting a hot dog eating contest!
October 2024 — We are honored to win 3rd prize in the BC Food Prize’s second annual competition in the packaged food category. We soft launch The Missing Link’s new packaged food line.
March 29, 2025 — We celebrate 4 years of The Missing Link filled with gratitude for the support we’ve received! We love getting to serve this community.
West Michigan Wedding Event Catering
Congratulations! You’ve found the love of your life, and you want to celebrate. You’re probably planning an event or two, and The Missing Link Carts & Catering is here to help. We’ve got catering menu options that cover all of your wedding events, from the bridal shower to the post-wedding day brunch!
We’re offering some suggestions that can make a big impact, with little effort from you!
Bridal Shower Catering
Curate a tasty bridal shower brunch with a selection of our delivery items: the biscuit breakfast bar, the BYOB mimosa board, a fresh fruit board, and a cheese and cracker or veggies and dip board.
Enjoy a lovely luncheon with our build-your-own sandwich bar and a few of our delicious soups and salads.
Wouldn’t it be fun for your guests to enjoy fresh squeezed lemonade from a lemonade stand?
Rehearsal dinner catering
Our build-your-own taco or chili dog bars would be a great way to feed your wedding party after a practice run of your special day.
The Missing Link Picnic Party food cart service offers your guests a fun experience along with our delicious specialty dogs.
Wedding dinner catering
If you’re looking for something casual and fun yet delicious — our Chili Dog Chow Down or Taco Walk on the Wild Side food cart services are perfect for your dinner. We can accommodate about 100 people for a dinner service.
We can supplement your food cart service with salads, charcuterie, or other options from our delivery catering menu.
Late-night wedding snack
The Chili Dog Chow Down and Taco Walk on the Wild Side options are also wonderful ways to feed your guests near the end of your celebration. Everybody needs a little extra fuel for the dance floor.
Take a look at our catering menu and let us know how we can make your day extra special!
Winter Birthday Parties
Are you celebrating a birthday this winter? You don’t have to be stuck ordering pizza. The Missing Link Carts & Catering has a variety of options that will make your party memorable (and save you some work)! We offer catering delivery to the greater Kalamazoo area, including Portage, Mattawan, Marshall, Battle Creek, and more.
Try one of our Build-Your-Own Buffets.
Build Your Own Hot Dog or Chili Dogs - You can recreate some of our specialty dogs for your celebration! You’ll get a hot dog bar with all the fixings. You can add specialty toppings or even our scratch-made chili to top your dogs.
Build You Own Tacos - Enjoy ground beef or black bean tacos, with the option to add chicken or chorizo, and a variety of tasty toppings.
Build Your Own Sandwiches - Various breads, meats, cheeses, veggies, and condiments to make sandwiches whichever way you like!
Build Your Own Loaded Baked Potatoes - Steaming hot potatoes with butter, cheese, and scallions. Add additional toppings or our Missing Link chili to take it up a notch.
We also suggest our casseroles or bakes. They’re hot, ready to eat, and sure to please a crowd!
Baked Ziti - House-made beef and Italian sausage bolognese over ziti pasta, béchamel, and three cheeses, topped with fresh parsley.
Shepherd’s Pie - Ground beef, vegetables, house-made gravy, topped with our buttermilk biscuits and fresh parsley.
Bacon Smashburger Bake - Ground beef, bacon, pickles, ketchup, mustard, cheese, and croutons, topped with lettuce, tomato, and red onion.
Baked Mac & Cheese - Ziti pasta, béchamel, and three cheeses with chopped herbs.
We also offer soups, salads, and fruit, veggies, cheese & cracker, and charcuteries boards. Check out our catering menu and reach out to us to book your event!
Holiday Catering in Kalamazoo
This Missing Link is here to help ease the burden of your holiday cooking! We’ve got several tasty options for both large gatherings and family meals.
Start your morning with our Biscuits & Gravy Bar — a best-seller — or the Biscuit Breakfast Bar — our Big ‘N’ Fluffy Buttermilk Biscuits with our seasonal fruit topping and jams. Both options are designed to serve 12-18 people, and keeps you out of the kitchen until lunch or dinner.
Our Fresh Fruit platter makes a great addition to your breakfast spread. It comes with our house-made fruit dip.
For a little morning fun, try to BYOB Mimosa Board. We’ve got the fruit, snacks, and juices covered. You provide the bubbles!
Our Build Your Own Bars are the perfect option for lunch or a casual dinner. We’ve got our specialty chili dogs and hot dogs, tacos, baked potatoes, and a great sandwich spread — all for groups of 12 to 18 people. Get two or three different types of BYO Bars if you’re serving a larger group!
Charcuterie, crackers and cheese, and veggies and dip boards are great appetizer options!
We’ve got salads, soups and stews to serve for an easy lunch or alongside your favorite dinner entree.
Or let us take care of a cozy dinner at home with four options of casseroles — Baked Ziti, Shepherd’s Pie, Bacon Smashburger, and Baked Mac & Cheese.
We can be the Missing Link to your happiest holiday! Contact us today at missinglinkcateringllc@gmail.com or 734-883-7700 to place your catering order.
Support The Missing Link on Small Business Saturday
It’s the time of year when, among all the messages to shop for the holidays, we’re reminded to support our local small businesses! This year’s Small Business Saturday is November 30, and we’re sharing several ways that you can support our small family business. While supporting our business often means making a purchase, there are several FREE ways that you can show us some love.
Ways to support The Missing Link on Saturday, November 30:
Enjoy a taste of The Missing Link at your home by purchasing our Everything Possible Seasoning! Created initially to top our Windy City Wild Man specialty hot dog, we’ve discovered that this seasoning is good on everything. It’s only $4 for a small jar, and we can ship it anywhere—well, probably anywhere in the continental US.
Wear our merchandise! We’ve got two t-shirt designs, a hoodie, and a youth tee currently available in our shop.
Display our stickers! You can grab a Missing Link logo sticker, but we also have two fun and creative designs hand-drawn by Shane— the Illuminyeti and the Huckleberry Swamp Monster.
Spend your year with The Missing Link with our 2025 Calendar! Enjoy twelve months of photos of your favorite Missing Link chili dogs, hot dogs, and more. On sale now!
Join our mailing list to stay updated on new products, where to find us, and more.
Follow us on Facebook or Instagram, and like, share, and comment on our posts to help with our engagement.
Leave us a review on Facebook or Google, or send your kind words to us at missinglinkcateringllc@gmail.com.
Your support is crucial to a business like yours! We are so grateful to you for allowing us to do what we love!
Everything Possible for Thanksgiving
When I think of Holiday meals, what always comes to mind first…Everything! I love to pile my plate, overflowing with a small amount of each type of food that the year’s spread has to offer. I try to eat them separately, but the edges where the flavors meet and mix is always intriguing to the palate.
I’m sure there are no shortage of Thanksgiving/cornucopia/everything-on-the-plate metaphors out there. I believe that’s because the essence of a holiday meal is, and has always been, the coming together of people and cultures who aren’t necessarily alike (even within our families), mixing it up together, and finding warm merriment in the often divisive cold.
We have tried to embody that spirit of warm merriment in The Missing Link’s Everything Possible Seasoning. Developed initially as a topping for our Chicago-inspired hot dog, the Windy City Wildman, The Everything Possible Seasoning delivers flavor, texture, convenience, and versatility.
How can you use Everything Possible seasoning to spice up your Thanksgiving?
We use it in our home as a dry rub on meats. Poultry, beef, lamb, and pork — and the Thanksgiving turkey — would all benefit from the savory punch of onion and garlic and the satisfying crispiness of the large onion flakes and poppy seeds.
Rounded out with sesame seed nuttiness and smokiness from our own hickory-smoked celery salt, Everything Possible goes fantastic on roasted veggies, too! One of our customers at The Kalamazoo Farmers Market roasted brussels sprouts with it and said the whole family loved it!
Mix it with some melted butter, let it soak for 15 min or so, and brush it on our Missing Link Big & Fluffy Buttermilk Biscuits in the last 5 minutes of cooking!
Sprinkle on your favorite Thanksgiving appetizers, like deviled eggs. Mix it with sour cream for a quick chip dip.
Bring it to breakfast! Top your avocado toast for a crunchy, flavor pop. Even try it on a bagel if you want!
Brush on a pizza crust the night before Thanksgiving, because we know you’ll be too busy prepping for your main event.
Like that one family member, Everything Possible Seasoning magically gets along with everyone at the table. It can even help bring the meal together when the flavors (and personalities) begin to mix at the edges.
Get Everything Possible Seasoning shipped to your home or stop by our booth at the Kalamazoo Farmers Market on Saturday, November 23 from 8 am until 1 pm. Order now!
—Shane
2024 Food Prize
In 2023, we participated in the first-ever Food Prize competition, where we won 2nd place in the prepared foods division. The financial support we received in 2023 helped us take our business to the next level. So we were thrilled to find out we were finalists in the 2024 competition.
We returned to Kellogg Arena on October 5 for this year’s event, with a whole new set-up! We knew we had grown, but we could really see it when we compared our booth to last year’s. Thank you to the 2023 Food Prize for the glow-up!
This year, we entered the prepared/manufactured foods division. We were pitching to support our new packaged food line. At the event, we launched the line with two products on sale — frozen biscuit 4-packs and our Everything’s Possible seasoning.
The products were a hit, and we got so much joy just from sharing these items with the people who stopped by our table! It was truly a dream to have people buy our products to enjoy at home.
At the end of the day, we won 3rd place in our division and came home with $3,000 for our new venture! We’re so grateful for the belief in and support of our small business!
Special thank you to the Food Prize sponsors and partners Kellogg Community Credit Union, Small Business Battle Creek, Penetrator Events, Sprout BC, Kellogg Arena, BCFR-Battle Creek Food Reimagined, Uproot Market & Eatery, Taste The Local Difference, Battle Creek Community Foundation, The Guido & Elizabeth Binda Foundation, and The M Group.
The Missing Link launches a line of packaged products
We’re excited to share that we’ve been working on a new way for you to enjoy your favorite foods from The Missing Link…at home! We’re launching three packaged products: two signature items currently featured on our food cart and catering menus, and one item we currently serve but is getting our special touch.
Our scratch-made Big ‘n’ Fluffy Buttermilk Biscuits regularly sell out at our morning markets with our Biscuits & Gravy or Bigfroot Cobbler. We’re packaging them up — frozen — for you to bake and enjoy any day of the week. They’re perfect with butter or jam, as a side for your favorite comfort food, or making a breakfast sandwich.
We’re bringing you the Everything’s Possible Seasoning, our twist on a favorite mix that’s good on — you guessed it — everything! We use this as the topping for the Windy City Wild Man specialty hot dog, but it’s perfect for seasoning all types of meats, roasted vegetables, or dips.
Later this winter, we’ll be jarring up something extra special, our very own sauerkraut! You’ll be able to enjoy the kraut found on our Captain Caveman chili dog when you visit the cart, and reach for your own jar in the fridge to top any of your favorite dishes.
Big ‘n’ Fluffy Buttermilk Biscuits and Everything’s Possible Seasoning will be on sale Saturday at the 2024 Food Prize Competition in Battle Creek. They’ll be available online and at our food cart services next week.
We hope these products offer the opportunity for more people to enjoy our food — near and far! This expansion of The Missing Link Carts & Catering has only been possible because of our wonderful customers and supporters. THANK YOU!
Graduation Party Catering
You’ll be busy with invitations, decorations, and all the details…so let us help with the food for your graduation celebration! We’ll make your event memorable with a variety of delicious options to fit any budget.
Food Cart Fun
Try our food cart catering for a full-service option! Items are made-to-order, and we provide plates, cutlery, and napkins. A visit to the food cart provides a fun experience and a satisfying meal. We have three menu options that would be the perfect complement to an afternoon or evening of celebrating your graduate: the Chili Dog Chowdown, Taco Walk on the Wildside, or the Missing Link Picnic Party. If you want to get your party started early, we have a brunch menu, too!
Build Your Own Buffets
If you’re interested in tasty options that you can serve yourself, we recommend the Build Your Own Buffet options. All items are portioned to serve 12 and can easily be doubled, tripled, etc., to accommodate the size of your party. Guests can build their own tacos, hot dogs, chili dogs, baked potatoes, sandwiches, or biscuits (with gravy), and we can provide items to keep your food hot throughout the event.
Boards & Salads
Are you looking for appetizers or snacks to add to your spread? We’ve got boards and platters of veggies & dip, fruit, cheese & crackers, and charcuterie. We also offer two scrumptious salads to keep your meal balanced.
Lemonade Stand
What would be more memorable than a lemonade stand? We can keep your guests refreshed with freshly squeezed lemonade made to order. We’ve got classic and specialty flavors made with real fruit (no syrups).
You can add beverages to any food cart catering package or delivery order.
You’ll be GRAD you hired us! Check out our catering menu and give us a call at 734-883-7700 to reserve catering for your special event.
Catering to Your Business Needs
The Missing Link Carts & Catering offers several menus and service options that are perfect for a variety of business needs! Learn more about how The Missing Link can work with your organization.
Breakfast Catering
Do you have a morning meeting? Are you hosting an early event? Fresh fruit trays offer a light option for your guests. We’ve got you covered with our Brunch Boxes — individually packaged boxes with breakfast snacks and fresh fruit. If you’d like to serve a warm breakfast, we suggest one of our Biscuit Breakfast buffets (with the option to serve our signature biscuits & gravy). Pair any menu items with our coffee, tea, or fresh squeezed orange juice beverage packages.
We even offer a brunch service with our food cart! The menu includes our biscuits & gravy, Second Breakfast hot dog, egg bites, and more.
Lunch Catering
Our salads, soups, and build-your-own sandwich buffets make delicious and easy lunches for small or large groups. You can get many of these options in individual portions or boxes. We’ve got a variety of boards and trays like veggies & dip, charcuterie, and cheese & crackers to build a spectacular snack spread.
Our specialty chili dogs, hot dogs, and tacos are available as build-your-own buffets delivered to your business or with full service on our food cart. We’ve also got a lemonade stand featuring our fresh squeezed specialty lemonades.
Dinner Catering
Our casseroles — Baked Ziti, What’da Shells & Cheese, Bacon Smashburger, and Shepherd’s Pie — offer a hot and hearty dinner option. Our build-your-own buffets with hot dogs, chili dogs, tacos, and baked potatoes are delivered hot and ready to eat. Our Chili Dog Chowdown, Taco Walk on the Wild, and Missing Link Picnic Party food cart menus feature our most-loved items, perfect for a delicious dinner.
Special Events
Are you looking for a way to honor your employees during Employee Appreciation Day? Do you have a business milestone or anniversary? Want to bring a fun food experience to your holiday party or celebration? Make your event memorable with The Missing Link’s full-service food cart!
View our catering menu.
We would love to incorporate a fun theme or customize a menu for your business! Please reach out to us at misssinglinkcateringllc@gmail.com or by calling 734.883.7700 to discuss ideas.
We look forward to working with your Kalamazoo-area business!
2024: What We’re Looking Forward To
2024 Preview: What We’re Looking Forward To
#1. Providing a memorable and fun experience for your special event with our food cart catering. We love a party, especially when we can provide the food! We’ve had a great time meeting your friends and families, and we can’t wait to be part of your birthday parties, family reunions, graduation parties, showers, and more this year.
#2. Reaching more businesses with our new catering delivery menu. We’ve got various unique options and classic meals perfect for business meetings - breakfast, lunches, and dinners - and breakfast and lunch boxes that make set up and clean up a breeze.
#3. Hot dog and lemonade season! We can’t wait to get back behind the cart and serve our signature hot dogs, chili dogs, and fresh squeezed lemonades. We’ll be popping up at several locations across the Kalamazoo area beginning in May.
#4. We’ll be rolling out some merchandise so you can sport The Missing Link wherever you are. Look for t-shirts, hoodies, stickers, and more coming in March!
We’ve also got some new food items and activities (yes…activities!) in the works. We’re looking forward to a great year ahead, and we thank you for coming along on the ride! Join our email list to get information about new releases and where to find us in the community.