Dishing on football: Meet the executive chef alumnus who feeds the Washington Commanders

As he attempted to establish a career as a chef in the restaurant industry, Connor McGuire ’10 found himself with a unique opportunity to follow his mentor and be a sous chef for the NFL’s Washington Commanders.

And after letting the idea briefly simmer in his mind, the Virginia Tech alumnus came to a simple conclusion – being a cook for one of the NFL’s most popular franchises wasn’t a half-baked idea.

McGuire now serves as the executive chef for the Commanders following a promotion in 2018 after working five years as a sous chef. Armed with an appetite for cooking and for hard work, the Washington, D.C., native today takes pride in providing tasty and nutritious food daily for some of the world’s top professional athletes.

In the culinary world, McGuire has found that variety, well, really is the spice of life.

“This was such a unique opportunity,” McGuire said recently via Zoom from the Commanders’ headquarters in Ashburn, Virginia. “I thought maybe I’d do it for a year, just to get that experience. My mentor brought me along with him, and I fell in love with it. It was incredible. It’s such a fun atmosphere. Sports is like no other business.”

McGuire’s culinary career started after he earned his degree in consumer foods from Virginia Tech’s Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “After I graduated, I enjoyed cooking so much that I had to try to become a chef,” he said. He worked at two high-end restaurants before a painful bout with ulcerative colitis sidelined him for several months.

McGuire’s mentor, Jon Mathieson, eventually invited him back to work at a high-end restaurant in Washington, D.C. When Mathieson left that position to become the executive chef for the Commanders in 2013, he brought his sous chef with him.

“When Connor was an entry level cook, I threw a lot of tasks his way, and some tasks were a little bit above his abilities,” Mathieson said. “He was always very conscientious and willing to put in a little extra time on his own to learn. He took a lot of notes, and he took the opportunities to heart.

“I think, as a chef, when you see little things in people, like passion and drive, you try to throw a little bit at them and see how they’re going to be able to handle it. Connor was able to pick those things up rather quickly, quicker than most. He was always there to ask questions and always looking to put in the extra work.”

Daily routine

Promoted after Mathieson left in 2018, McGuire and his 15-person staff have been providing meals for approximately 225 people three times a day from July through January for the past six-plus years. The contingent includes players, coaches, executives, personnel staff, and others.

During the season, McGuire gets up at 4 a.m. for the start of a 16-hour day and gets to the team headquarters by 5:15 or 5:30. At 6 a.m., he meets with his cooks, who already have prepped breakfast, to go over the menus for the day.

“Our menu switches every single day,” McGuire said. “We feed the same people, obviously, every day, so we don’t want to be too repetitive. We don’t want to give them the same thing every day, so we talk about the menu and any special things going on, any special prep items that need to be made.

“Then from there, we start prepping for lunch, and then roll into our snack, which is later in the afternoon, around like 2 or so. From there, we roll into dinner time, and then we’re closing shop around 7 or 7:30, sometimes 8.”

Lunches and dinners can consist of items such as salmon or grilled flank steak with fingerling potatoes and garlic kale one day to swordfish, garlic parm chicken, and sauteed broccolini the next. Pasta dishes and stir fry are regular items, along with desserts.

All dishes get seasoned differently to create variety as well. McGuire and his staff members have traveled all over the world on vacations – places like Thailand, Colombia, Brazil, and throughout Europe. They take in the local cuisine and bring those flavors back to the Commanders’ kitchen.

“It’s a balance, how we feed the players,” McGuire said. “There is a lot of performance and nutrition that goes into it, but we’ve got to make sure that they’re eating. We feed a very wide degree of palates. … We’ve got to make sure that we’re cooking items that they want to eat and that are approachable.”

Food figures

McGuire not only oversees the cooking, but he also sets the menu, with help from his chef de cuisine and his sous chef. They start writing each day’s menu a week in advance, leaving room for tweaks.

McGuire communicates daily with the Commanders’ dietician on the menus. The dietician builds meal plans for certain players, and some of those plans require special food items, so McGuire considers that and any food allergies when preparing menus.

The volume of food cooked and consumed is staggering. McGuire and his staff cook 200 pounds of meat per meal. The team usually goes through 25 to 45 pounds of vegetables for a single lunch, roughly 14 pounds of pasta, up to 20 pounds of rice, and 10 pizzas – cooked in one of the kitchen’s two pizza ovens.

Such large quantities of food beg the question – what about leftovers?

“Well, there aren’t a lot,” McGuire said, laughing. “I’ve been doing this for 11 years, and I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing how much of each thing we need and we document all of it, and that helps us.

“A lot of the leftover vegetables and proteins, we will utilize in the coming days in a pasta or in a stir fry. If we have 2 pounds of asparagus left over on a Monday, then maybe on a Wednesday, the person making pasta will incorporate that into their dish.”

The kitchen’s lack of storage for large quantities of food and for leftovers works to the culinary team’s advantage, preventing food waste. McGuire orders food daily, which ensures freshness, and he uses vendors from all over the country.

For example, he orders salmon from the North Atlantic, Alaska, Chile, and New Zealand. Eggs and salmon are the two most cooked items.

“They all have different flavors because of their environment and what they eat,” McGuire said of the salmon. “So even if we’re doing salmon each week, there are ways to make it seem different.”

The NFL offseason offers a break for McGuire and his staff, as they only fix two meals a day. The cooks change stations in the offseason – for example, one may go from making entrees during the season to making pasta dishes in the offseason – to cross train.

“That way, if anyone is out, another person is prepared,” McGuire said. “It also helps them grow and learn and become better cooks, and it keeps things interesting. It will help them go further in their careers.”

Finding his niche

McGuire admitted that this past season was probably his favorite. New ownership has the organization moving in the right direction. The Commanders advanced to the NFC Championship for the first time since 1991, and McGuire’s interaction with the players and staff adds to the joy of his job.

Life may cook up other opportunities for this chef, but he doesn’t see himself leaving any time soon.

“I see myself in this position, in this organization, for a very long time, as long as they’ll have me,” McGuire said. “There’s room for growth in this organization and different ways that I can continue to branch out and continue to help the team.

“There’s so much going on, there’s so much to do for the team that I’m happy to do what it takes and continue to grow and learn.”