We’re gearing up for the “busy” season for catering. Weddings, graduations, big family celebrations. It’s an exciting time for people who haven’t seen their family in awhile. It’s an exciting time for restaurants to make money outside their four walls.

Restaurants have taken a hard look at their catering programs over the last year and a half. Evaluating catering can be really overwhelming. Where do you start?

Let’s focus on the Top 5 considerations for now. Sure, there’s more to think about, and there’s plenty of time for that later.

1. Menu Items.

   Think carefully about what menu items you offer for catering. It’s ok to not include every single item on your menu. It’s also ok to offer catering exclusive items to ensure that you’re providing a “balanced” meal to potential clients.

   1. Only include food that travels well.

   2. Offer additional menu items or categories to ensure that potential clients won’t have to supplement elsewhere. (sides, desserts, catering to unique dietary needs, etc.)

   3. Consider building boxes for business lunches. You can also promote boxed meals on EZCater. They are very popular.

   4. Suggest add-ons that make sense; plates, silverware, serving ware, cups, chaffing dishes and Sterno. A lot of venues don’t supply those things and it’s an easy sale for you.

2. Travel Integrity.

   Consider how your food travels. You may want to do some testing to see how your food looks after 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and 60 minutes of travel. Sure you can heat food up, but does it affect the taste or texture?

   Either adjust your maximum travel times or packaging to make sure that the quality of your food is up to your standards. If certain foods need additional attention at venues, make sure your CSMs are aware when selling items.

3. Pricing.

   Firstly, make sure that you're pricing your food PROFITABLY. Make sure your taking food cost and COGs into consideration when pricing your food. Never pay a customer to take your food off your hands. Don’t forget to include catering packaging.

   This becomes especially difficult when you’re creating packages. You may need to adjust the price of your ala carte food to be slightly higher to ensure that packages are less expensive and still profitable. Most people will buy packages because it requires less choices and is usually more inclusive.

   Also compare Catering prices against your regular menu. If you charge $3/individual sides on your menu, but then charge $40 for a catering side item that feeds 10 people, savvy clients will request 10 individual sides, rather than larger catering side dish.

   Charging profitably doesn’t end with food. Make sure you’re getting your money back on packaging, delivery, and add-ons.

4. Operations.

   Create processes for your team to make catering execution as pain-free as possible.

   Assign someone to follow up with customers ahead of the event. By confirming what’s ordered, where it should be, and if there is anything else they need, you can overcome many day-of issues ahead of time. Sometimes, you can also make additional sales because someone didn’t realize there wouldn’t be beverages at the location or because they didn’t order something that they thought they did.

   Give your kitchen team recipes that correspond to bulk food sizes. Don’t make your team recreate those measurements every time they have an event. By having catering recipes created for them ahead of time, you’re taking out the guesswork and making the kitchen more operationally efficient.

   Assign a person to be “in charge” of packaging each catering order. Give them a checklist of what should be included, when the food has to go out the door, and any special instructions. By giving each order a point person, you’re creating a quality assurance cycle by assigning eyes on the entire order. The kitchen team isn’t going to be concerned with napkins. Conversely, runners aren’t going to be concerned if you’re packing Chicken Piccata or Chicken Marsala, as long as they’ve got two pans of Chicken.

   If or when you’ve implemented changes, check in with your team to see what’s working and what needs more attention. If catering orders are easy to execute and make sense to the team, they’ll be more excited about making catering orders. If they’re excited, things generally go more smoothly.

5. Guest Experience.

   Consider giving someone a discount for order a catering from you, in order to test the customer experience. It’s better to have someone outside your restaurant team do the testing. Their fresh eyes and perspective can provide some insights you’d never thought about.

   Allow them to test any online ordering options you have, the in-store experience for pickup, and the food quality - the order from start to finish. Then have a frank conversation with them about their experience.

   You could even consider contacting guests up after their events to see how everything went. Be open to receiving criticism. Sometimes it’s tough to hear that something we spent so much time, energy, and money on might not quite be perfect yet. Every pain point you hear about is an opportunity to learn and grow. That’s a great blessing.

Good luck and Godspeed with growing your Catering program! Do you agree that these are the most important? What should we cover next?

If you or your team need help evaluating or creating a catering program for your restaurant, please feel free to reach out - info@makegoodlemonade.com.