How it all began– Launching the company

The history of Matusz-Vad Plc. reaches back to 1994, when Balázs Matusz – the owner and vice president of the company – founded it as a one-man enterprise with the heart and head of a catering professional. Before founding the company, the owner was working in the catering industry fulfilling every stage of it. He started his career as a cook student beside István Pető - who has been the chairman of the Hungarian Gastronomic National Association for six years now – in the Kuckó Restaurant, Győr. Then he became a cook, a chef and after that a catering master. After working in Club Tihany****, having experiences in Germany and being the chef of a Spanish restaurant in Győr, Balazs Matusz opened his own restaurant called Piero. The guests were standing in long queues in front of the popular French restaurant, but the constant, large rise of the rental fee led to a final decision: a new kind of business has to be started. Balázs Matusz was one of the first caterers in the middle of the 90’s, who realized that the Hungarian restaurants are really poorly supplied with wild game meat. “I really liked being a chef, but I had an intension to create a little bit bigger thing, that is not so much surrounded by the four walls of a restaurant. So in ’94 leaving catering behind, I jumped into game meat processing. I laid tiles on the walls of my parents’ cellar, made a bench, stalled and insulated a fridge-cell - although I’m neither a bricklayer nor a locksmith – and founded Matusz-Vad game-processing enterprise. My starting stock – which took a week to proceed – was fully bought by a restaurant in Mosonmagyaróvár. By this time I knew I was on the right track.” – remembers the founder of the company, Balázs Matusz. Soon after the beginnings it turned out, that beside game there was a lack of many other qualitative frozen products. Realizing this market demand the company offered chicken- and turkey products and constantly extended its palette of products – following the changing needs of the market. The knowledge and experience that launched and made Matusz-Vad a successful trade company among the suppliers of the catering industry, are based on the owner’s previous years spent in the different restaurants mentioned above. Founding the company was a unique and innovative initiation in its kind because there were hardly any companies that specialized in restaurants and ensured such a wide variety of raw material-supply.