I believe that catering is the selling, producing and performing of outstanding foodservice usually in situations that are not ideal for anyone, under pressure circumstances, with a lot of people watching chefs as they work, and a host wishing to pay the least amount of money possible. From a culinary point of view, a simpler definition of catering might be that catering is the art of quality volume foodservice balanced by the science of making profit.
WHY IS CATERING IMPORTANT?
One just can’t escape the truth. Catering is the fastest growing segment of the foodservice industry growing 7% to 10% per year. Since your clients want it and are buying catering somewhere, they should be buying it from you. Additionally, catering gives a foodservice business a competitive advantage and enhanced image in today’s marketplace. Plus, catering is usually a “life-saver” during recessions.
HOW SOME CHEFS VIEW CATERING?
Some chefs love to do catering and some hate it outright! Let’s face it, catering is very hard work and it often viewed as taking kitchen time away from one’s “primary” business. Add to that the potential for last minute changes and adjustments due to host’s that change their minds, and you get a product line that the culinary department is unable to totally control. Then again, a lot of dollars are made when catering!
HOW CATERING DIFFERS FROM RESTAURANTS
Restaurant foodservice usually has a twenty-minute window from when the client places the order to when it needs to begin arriving at their table. All catering is presold days, weeks or months ahead permitting better buying and the advantages of volume preparation. At a catered event, only the host knows what the menu is. Guests are looking for a great meal.
In restaurants, diners don’t haggle with the servers for lower prices than are printed on the menus. In catering, everyone haggles. Since hosts often don’t now all the guests eating preference and allergies they request more traditional menus with less experimental or cutting edge cuisine. Lastly, event food is usually prepped many hours before the event is served and the food is often held and/or transported raising the level of concern over the safe temperature zone. Then again, a lot of dollars are made when catering!
GUIDELINES TO CONSIDER
Successful and profitable catering needs the total commitment of the culinary team. Here are some proven guidelines to insure outstanding catering:
1. The culinary leader needs to have veto power over any menu or presentation requests from the sales department that don’t offer proper profitability, safety, or company image.
2. During busy times of the year, a limit needs to be established on the total variety of different entrees and hors d’oeuvres offered to customers. There is no logic for having a culinary team prepping 67 different types of items for ten different events on a busy day!
3. Require salespeople to work a bit in the kitchen to learn the joys of woes of the culinary team.
4. Resist lowering the prices of your “regular” menus. Instead, create new menus that offer more value to shoppers. In other words, never sell your “A” menus at “B” prices. Create “B” menus and sell them at “B” prices. Also, keep offering your “A” menus along with the “B” menus.
5. Last minute popup orders should be limited to only a few easier to produce menus choices.
6. A culinary leader must have a sit-down meeting with the salespeople to go over each menu sold… item by item. This is the only way to discover errors and omissions.
7. The culinary team must be involved in all sales of high volume events before they are presented or sold.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Catering is a good thing because is challenges the culinary teams creativity and makes money for the company at the same time. Catering broadens a company’s footprint and image in their marketplace. As long as the culinary team gets accurate information from the sales department in a timely manner success is easy. The total amount of planning and work that goes into a $40,000 catered event is not as much as one might think. Catering gets easier the more you do it! Did we mention that a lot of money can be made with catering?
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