Since 1987, Susan Lacz has been the CEO of Ridgewells Catering, a 96-year-old, high-end event planning and food service business based in Bethesda, so it’s a good thing she is passionate about entertaining and loves to cook. The business’ tagline is “Passion for Celebration.” Lacz, who lives in Chevy Chase, says she is always up for a pickleball game. She has two sons: Nathan Gersten, 33, serves as director of operations for Ridgewells and Ayden Niemann, 22, is a senior in college. She says she learned her caring management style years ago when she was taken for a “loop.”
My father, John [Lacz], was my mentor. Early on, he ran a very successful planning, architectural and engineering firm in New Jersey. When I first bought [Ridgewells], I made him my chair of the board. And I remember, as a little girl in Jersey, Dad said, ‘Hey, we’re going to take a loop, Susie.’ I go, ‘OK, what’s the loop?’ And he would have a [car] trunk full of gifts—poinsettias or scotch, I don’t even know what it was—and we’d go to the Paterson Housing Authority and drop off a case of this, and then we’d go and drop off another case of that.
He was a very hands-on manager, a hands-on owner, a hands-on person—and he really cared about his employees. He really felt it was important that his employees were solid in their positions. He was just a really great mentor for me, with his leadership and his business acumen. I would go to him a lot during some tough times. He helped me and molded me into who I am today. That’s not to say I haven’t got a bit of my mother in me, too.
During COVID, it was a devastating time for everybody in the world, but the hospitality business got just clobbered. So I would do a ‘loop’ with my own kids. It was Mother’s Day week, and I baked all these breads—banana bread, breakfast bread—and I bought tulips. My younger son, Ayden, and I went to every mother’s [who worked for Ridgewells] house and delivered bread and tulips. He did the loop with me, and he knew how important it was for me to do that.
Everywhere I went I would be crying, because I hadn’t seen anyone in so long, and I care. I care for the employees—it’s because of them I’m still here and why I’m successful. It’s not me. It’s them.
I want my sons to see who I am and they remember me as, ‘Oh my gosh, my mom was always giving back. She was always caring.’ And I hope that at some point they give back as well.
This appears in the January/February 2025 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
