Wednesday, October 19, 2011

How Corporations View Caterers - Part #2


Corporate catering is usually quicker to sell than social catering like weddings. To be a successful corporate caterer, you need to be looked upon by corporate buyers as a source for solutions and you need to be perceived as different from the other caterers who are also looking to sell their catering to corporations.
Corporate buyers have a unique perspective on caterers:
They can get cheaper food from dozens of other places. Isn’t a chicken-salad sandwich the same whether you pay $7.50 or $4.75 for it? To understand the impact of this, ask yourself this question: When you buy Driscoll strawberries for your business, don’t you shop for the lowest price? Isn’t your assumption that a Driscoll brand strawberry is the same no matter where you buy it?

That’s just the point. To your buyers, the brand is the product line, or chicken-salad sandwich, not the caterer who is making it for them. The obvious solution is to stress the benefits of your brand name over others.

You would do this by stressing that your price contains much more than just the words “chicken-salad sandwich.” Your price includes the highest quality purveyors, 6 ounces of salad, safe temperature control, on-time delivery, sanitation and overall quality service. This is hard to do in a society where most people are looking for price advantages.

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