Rags-to-Riches Caterer Faces Tough Transition : Business: Hard work and government contracts were main ingredients in Desia Ritson’s success. But now she fears for her employees’ future.

WASHINGTON —  For more than a decade, Desia Ritson waited on tables at other people’s restaurants more than she cares to recount--the Proud Bird in Inglewood, Ship’s Coffee Shop in Culver City and the Fire Pit in Del Mar to name a few--before she caught her first break in the catering business.

After trying for three years, Ritson won a small government contract in 1986 to feed illegal immigrants who were detained at the Mexican border. Each day, she drove a small truck to San Ysidro, unloaded her cooking equipment and prepared burritos, fried chicken, beans and rice for the inmates.

Ritson then struggled through personal bankruptcy and IRS troubles for several years before hitting it big in the food service business. Her firm, Balantine’s South Bay Caterers Inc. of Del Mar, now operates dining facilities on military bases in California, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and South Korea and at immigration centers in downtown Los Angeles and Manhattan. Last year, Balantine’s had 500 employees and surpassed $9 million in annual revenue, Ritson said.

“I am living proof of what you can do in America,” she said.

Much of Ritson’s success was made possible by Defense Department incentive programs for small businesses and minorities. But, like many defense-dependent entrepreneurs who dipped into the Pentagon trough, Balantine’s is beginning to feel the effects of defense downsizing.

In January, Ritson was forced to lay off 167 employees after losing defense contracts in San Diego and Sacramento. She anticipates even more cutbacks in future months as other California bases are closed. Meantime, Ritson said, she is looking for business everywhere--airports, colleges, private corporations, jails and hospitals--to avoid putting more employees out of work.

“You’ve got a group of people who do not read or write or understand English, who are special, who are a little slow and a little handicapped working for contractors like myself washing dishes and scrubbing floors,” Ritson said. “And they’ve got nowhere to go.”

Ritson, 51, has known her share of hardship. She was born in Cape Town, the daughter of a South African Royal Air Force officer. After her parents split up, she was raised in a boarding school.

Her marriage to a U.S. Marine in England fared no better. In 1963, Ritson said, she found herself in Southern California, a single mother of three with no job. She worked days as an airport reservations clerk and spent evenings as a cocktail waitress.

“She was very dependable, a good worker and honest,” said Tom Ranglas, owner of the Fire Pit restaurant. He is not surprised that Ritson became successful in business. “She works for many hours. She is an immigrant just like me. We don’t have watches,” he said.

Ritson started catering parties out of her home in 1972 when she underwent a foot operation, which put her waitressing on hold. “I didn’t type or use calculators but I had a lot of moxie and worked like crazy,” Ritson said.

She named her business after California Highway Patrol Sgt. Jim Balantine, who had helped her feed orphans at Christmas each year, transporting clothing and gifts to poor children in Tecate, Mexico, before he died.

After getting her first government contract to feed illegal immigrants at San Ysidro, Ritson won awards in 1989 to run dining facilities at March Air Force Base, the 32nd Street Naval Base in San Diego and the San Diego Coast Guard Air Station. In 1991, she added Mather and McClellan Air Force bases, where 140 employees served a combined 46,000 meals a month around the clock.

On May 15, Balantine’s won its biggest contract yet, a $15-million award to handle food services for all U.S. Army dining facilities in South Korea. Ritson has about 220 Korean nationals and two dozen Americans working there.

But now Ritson’s firm is beginning to feel the impact of military downsizing. She worries that more layoffs will follow if McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento is shut down.

To survive, Ritson has negotiated a freeze in wages and benefits on 12 union contracts. She has transferred some catering jobs from Mather Air Force Base to the Sacramento Airport. In addition to studying other private sector markets, Ritson said, she is hoping to run soup kitchens at closed military bases.

Her worst fear, Ritson said, is that many of her unskilled workers will wind up unemployed and destitute. She applauds President Clinton’s $20-billion conversion plan to retrain high-technology defense workers, but wonders what the program will offer her employees.

“I don’t think you will see people who carry food trays and cook going into the high-tech world that the Clinton Administration is talking about,” Ritson said. “We need to slow down (or else) the welfare rolls, the unemployment rate and the homeless are just going to increase.”