Recently I found myself in a certain grocery store, and I started thinking about their catering program, as I often do. I decided to look it up on their website while I enjoyed one of their burritos. Unfortunately, to my not-so-great surprise, while catering was listed on their website when you selected the store it came up with a sorry message. Weird, right? So I just selected another branch, another sorry. Okay, I decided, I’m just going to ask the guy who made my burrito. “Excuse me,” I said, “I have an event coming up and was wondering who I should speak to about getting it catered.”
The response? “Oh, I don’t think we do catering…”
That’s strange, I thought, I knew they catered. They even had it on the website. Even if this specific branch didn’t have a catering program surely they could just refer my business to a representative of one of their other branches, right? I didn’t feel quite satisfied with my little impromptu investigation so I decided to ask someone else. I walked up to the nearby customer service desk and I asked again.
“Hi, I’m hoping to get an event catered, how would I go about doing that?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted, “I think we only cater on holidays.”
Let’s let that sink in. This was someone sitting at a customer service desk, and when I asked a question about their catering program he wasn’t sure about the answer and didn’t refer me to anyone with more information. Now, it wasn’t this guy’s fault; this was a failure in the training and cultural integration of off-premises revenue channels into day-to-day workflow. But let’s put into perspective just how big of a failure it was, how bad could it be? The answer? A whole lot of bad. This wasn’t just a failure of marketing and not onboarding new business, this was a failure to intake an existing sale. I was standing there ready to spend money and was told “Nope, sorry.” This was not a failure to make a new sale, this was an inability to accept my money when I held it out in front of them and waved it around begging them to take it.
I will admit, I was a little flabbergasted.
Maybe this example feels too small or too isolated, but I want to emphasize that this attitude is potentially costing millions in revenue. And for a business so perfectly positioned to cater I don’t mean one or two million, I mean tens or even hundreds of millions every year.
This is why catering experts are so key to driving the value of your off-premises programs. There is currently a huge disconnect that catering operations are feeling because they are so often looked at as a secondary function. This is not a viewpoint that will lead you to catering success. In order to really grow your off-premises program you need to see catering as a core and complementary feature of your strategy. This means that training your employees with your catering program in mind is fundamental. The guy who wraps the burritos needs, at a minimum, to know that a catering program exists and who to send me to if I have further questions. And then, and this is an absolute must, the person I’m directed to needs to be able to help me with the sale.
How can you expect a revenue channel to make money and grow when there are no touchpoints for a customer to latch onto? Catering is a complicated process. There are parts of catering that are genuinely difficult to operationalize without a solid foundation of planning and strategy, directing a customer who is already determined on your catering program towards placing an order should not be one of those parts.
This experience highlighted something for me. Namely, there is an immediate and substantial need for off-premises training at all levels, from cultural integration through leadership to on-the-ground customer guidance. If restaurant operators want to seize the huge opportunity that lies in front of them they need to see training and expertise as a core piece of the catering infrastructure.
Catering has been my passion for the last 30 years, and it’s safe to say I’ve seen my share of what works in a catering program; one thing that successful catering programs always have in common is passionate people who know what they’re doing. I’m calling for a commitment to catering education to ensure businesses that are ready to take the next steps along their catering journey have the tools to go the distance.
As time goes on expertise is increasingly worth its weight in gold; so, if you’re interested in building the future of catering, it’s time to start investing in learning. 30 years in and I’ve dedicated the vast majority of my professional life to understanding catering, there’s so much that has been ironed out with time and effort but there’s always more to refine. I hope you’re as excited as I am to continue down the catering road as I am; I have many more thoughts to share.
So if you’re ready for it, let’s talk catering.
