Along with being challenging, catering can also be an extremely competitive business right? Your probably not at home having meaningful discussions with a direct competitor about food costs and business trends. This is not true in Vegas… you will interact with hundreds of other business men and women in which competition is not an issue.

The educational conference is a learning experience like no other. You will take away useful knowledge and skills from the 4 days of seminar’s taught by industry experts. Mike Roman, founder of Catersource and catering guru, guarantees it. The main selling point for Catersource is continued growth of your business with success along the way.

Don’t let the glitz and glamour of Vegas take away from the value of the show. It is not a non-stop party. You are there to learn and study. Sure, there is a lot of fun to be had too, but the daytime class schedule is designed to maximize your education. Even the night time special events are meant for learning. They are a great way to show all the new trends for the year “live and tangible”. I know I personally have never been short of amazed over the years at the creativity on display.

The tradeshow portion of the conference is also a great way to see new products in the industry. It is a buying show, so be prepared to be offered some amazing deals from the vendors!

Lastly, but certainly not all inclusive in this blog article, are the tabletop contests, chef challenges, and unbelievable raffle prizes. For full detail about the show, or to register online, visit the Catersource website .

If you are planning on attending, please stop by booth #649 at the tradeshow and say hi to the Total Party Planner catering software team. We would love to meet you!

The biggest hurdle often times is just getting started. Sometimes it’s best to schedule time – just an hour or so – and commit to creating an email list and writing a few short stories. It may be useful to think about people in your circle of friends or family who could help. Do you know someone good at data entry who could help import your contact list? Or, maybe you know someone who likes to write and can assist with creating stories?

Even if you don’t have anyone to help, most emailing programs are fairly user friendly and they make it easy to learn how to get started. Pick a template that compliments your business (colors, themes, number of stories), and just start plugging in what you want people to know about your business. Be sure to include links back to your website and ways to connect with you. More specifically, include a “call to action.” Ask them to come out and try a specific dish, or book now for great wedding specials. The best part is that when you send out your newsletter to customers, it’s easy for them to forward to friends and that leads to more referrals for you.

If you get stuck and don’t know what to include, check out your own in-box. What emails have you gotten recently that caught your attention? Reading what others are doing can spark an idea that can be related to your own business. Creating a data bank of ideas that you want to include is a great way to always have a list to refer to in case you get stuck. Start a folder within your email box to keep emails that you like, as reference.

Make 2012 the year that you reach out for more business. If you can carve out an hour or two each week to manage your list and write some short items, customers will stay connected and forward your emails, leading to more referrals. At Total Party Planner we want this to be the year you really prosper!

Ready to start? Use this link to sign up for a free 60 day trial of Constant Contact today.

And you ask yourselves… what does that have to do with catering John? Well, just a nice segue to a share a quick movie story about growing up in a catering family. 

Every time we went to the movies, no matter what the film was, my parents made my brother and I sit through the entire credit list at the end of the movie. Was it punishment for us squabbling over who ate the most popcorn? No. It was the fact that my parents were fascinated to read who the caterer for the film was!

Now admittedly, we never knew any of the companies, but I think it made them feel part of something bigger – and that they were in the same profession of the company that had their name “in shining lights”.  They were also, in their own strange way, recognizing a peer in the industry. Conversations between them always led to what they served, how they did the setup, and which actors and actresses had special diets. (And just to note, while they dreamed of the Hollywood catering glamour, my brother and I were discussing the awesomeness of Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker’s father…)

So, were we just an odd family? Or does anybody else out there want to admit that they too are among the last people to leave the theaters waiting for the 2 second “Catering By: ” credit line! Or maybe you are a Hollywood movie caterer willing to share an interesting story with us.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Enjoy your family, friends, and all the fantastic food that I know our catering friends are going to be cooking up this week!

It was exactly 15 years ago when my parents decided they were going to offer dinner meals available for pick-up on Thanksgiving day. I distinctly remember thinking “Who would buy that? Doesn’t every family get up early to cook their own Thanksgiving meal?”

Well let me tell you, I could not have been more wrong! The business ended up serving about 300 meal packages. With each meal feeding up to 4 people, they fed about 1200 people that Thanksgiving Day.

So why did it work?

• They did effective advertising. In the case of an inaugural launch of a “new product”, word of mouth would not be enough. The main marketing was done through some well placed ads in the local newspaper (remember 15 years ago the Internet wasn’t anything that it is today).
• At the time, it was a relatively new concept – at least in their region of Western New York. It caught people’s attention.
• My parents had an excellent reputation for fresh home cooked food. People knew it was going to taste great!
• They heavily stressed how convenient and EASY it would be for people who bought the meals. All they had to do was follow the reheating instructions.
• An on time promise for pickup. Meals would be ready either the night before or Thanksgiving morning – without delay.
• They kept the meal simple. Each meal included all the traditional fixings : turkey, dressing, vegetable, sweet potatoes, vegetable, cranberry, chef salad, and fresh rolls.

My parents also knew that giving people more than enough food to provide leftovers was important too. Everybody loves those leftover turkey sandwiches on Friday! From a pure marketing standpoint, they were already thinking about the following years – and earning repeat business. The few extra dollars in food cost by “overloading” this year would be money well spent in families coming back year after year.  

So if your not offering a Thanksgiving dinner special this year, perhaps build it into your marketing plan for 2012. It could be a great spike in revenue and profits right before heading into the last wave of holiday business.

• “Value” is different from “price”
  Woe unto you if you decide everything based on price. Even more woe unto you if you compete solely on price. Price is not all that matters—what is important, at least to some people, is value. And value takes into account training, support, and the intrinsic joy of using the best tool that’s made. It’s pretty safe to say that no one buys Apple products because of their low price.
• Marketing boils down to providing unique value
  Think of a two-by-two matrix. The vertical axis measures how your product differs from the competition. The horizontal axis measures the value of your product. Bottom right: valuable but not unique—you’ll have to compete on price. Top left: unique but not valuable—you’ll own a market that doesn’t exist. Bottom left: not unique and not valuable—you’re a bozo. Top right: unique and valuable—this is where you make margin, money, and history. For example, the iPod was unique and valuable because it was the only way to legally, inexpensively, and easily download music from the six biggest record labels.

Unique + Valuable = Has a market

• A players hire A+ players
  Actually, Steve believed that A players hire A players—that is people who are as good as they are. I refined this slightly—my theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves. It’s clear, though, that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players. If you start hiring B players, expect what Steve called “the bozo explosion” to happen in your organization

If these ideas interest you, please feel free to leave a comment.  

Bill Keeler has extensive experience working with small businesses from his 14 years in the radio advertising industry…first as a top seller working directly with small business owners throughout Central Virginia, and next as s Director of Sales building winning teams. He’s been a leading member the AdviCoach system (www.AdviCoach.com) for over 2 years, and helps small businesses throughout Virginia. To learn more about Bill Keeler please visit his website http://bkeeler.advicoach.com/.

I thought a few bullet points for clarification might help…

• Having accurate food costs will help you set competitive and profitable menu prices.  
• After setting initial menu prices, the program will help manage fluctuating ingredient costs. What effect does a +/- 10% ingredient cost have on the menu item(s) associated to it? Knowing this, menu item prices can be adjusted accordingly.
• Having an auto-generated shopping/order list from a program will save countless hours of a kitchen manager trying to figure out that detail. Even if not wage related, what else more productive (and profitable) activities can they be doing in lieu of creating an order list by hand?
• Eliminate waste by only ordering what is needed. The system will tell you exactly what you need to order.
• A program will easily calculate overall event profit. We can tweak pricing (not just menu – but beverage, rental, staff, etc.) to make an event profitable. When we just cant work out pricing to get out of the red? Pass. Nobody wants to work for a loss. 
• Quick turn around times for professional proposals. Ultimately this will mean more business from very impressed prospects. Even after a proposal bid is won, changes in client choices can be immediately evaluated in terms of the effect those changes have on profitability.
• Never miss an outstanding accounts receivable. Easily run a report to see which clients have payments due, or coming due.
• Time is money! Automating everything you do on a daily basis means more time for you to do what you do best : running your company from the kitchen – not behind a pile of paperwork.

The order list is an important report mentioned a couple of times in this article. For more information on better shopping, see Mike Roman’s blog post from last week by clicking this link .

If you have any specific experiences on saving time or money through the use of automated systems, please share your comment!

I think all caterers would agree that food costing is a critical component for the success of their company. But at what lengths would you go to get costing information that is accurate and continuously up to date?

I hear all the time, “It’s not worth the time to track costs in full detail - I already have a general idea of costs.” or “It’s going to cost too much in wages to track the level of detail where it would make a difference.”

Whether you manually tabulate every receipt from your vendors in a spreadsheet, or use a sophisticated program like TPP to automatically generate the data, it is important to know your numbers. Let’s consider a very simple example of the numbers for 1 month at a small to medium sized business:

Food inventory cost and kitchen manager labor per month : $10,000
Month sales : $30,000
Calculated food cost : 33%
Other monthly expenses (insurance, utilities, building, etc) : $8,000
Profit for month : $12,000 or 40%

Again, a very simple example!

So what if a program could help us shave a few percentage points (even just 3%) of our raw ingredient cost and kitchen labor? Oh, and by the way, a program will absolutely help you make those savings!  Watch what happens to our example above (assume everything else remains constant):

Food inventory cost & kitchen manager labor per month : $9,000
Month sales : $30,000
Calculated food cost : 30%
Other monthly expenses (labor, utilities, building, etc) : $8,000
Profit for month : $13,000 or 43%

With 12 months in the year, that’s an addition profit per year of $12,000! Money that can then be invested in new equipment, marketing, vacation, etc.

We would probably all agree that the initial time invested up front should bring a significant ROI. So what are you waiting for?

An interesting article I found on calculating menu prices once you know food costs is:
http://www.foodservicewarehouse.com/education/pricing-a-catering-menu/bd175.aspx

Also, for more information about Jim Israel, visit his website : http://www.conjureconsulting.com

Do you have a successful method for calculating food costs? Share your story with us!

Yes, I will invest:

• The product itself is unique and marketable.
• The investor themselves had already had success with a similar product in the past.
• The investor feels they will see a positive return on their investment sooner rather than later.

No, I do not want to invest:

• The owner is too tied to the success of the company.
• The business is early in it’s infancy stage and unproven.
• The investor feels it would take too much of their time to be involved.

Interesting enough, the entire theme of Shark Tank also closely parallels a recent event I attended through the Chamber of Commerce. They hosted speaker John Warrillow – author of the book Built to Sell. John’s moving speech talked about steps to take to build a profitable company that both investors (or according to ABC the “Sharks”) and buyers will be attracted to.

So, using John Warrillow’s principals, what steps can a catering company do to make their companies more investment, or sale ready? Here are the key points from John’s book:

• Identify your products that are scalable. That is, they are teachable, repeatable, and valuable. I think we would all agree that your catering company fits nicely into all three of those categories.
• Create a positive cash flow. Charging up front for your events (or at least enough to cover costs) reduces the amount of working capital you would need to continuously provide the company. Investors or buyers like to know that the required working capital is not an impedance.
• Hire a sales team. Although you may have the most passion for your food and service, investors and buyers want to know that it isn’t just one person responsible for the success of the company.
• Sell what you do best and nothing else. Even if the extra revenue of helping a bride with her full wedding plan sounds attractive, skip it if it isn’t what you defined as your scalable product. Stick to what you do best.
• Build a loyal management team around long term incentives. Investors and buyers want to know that your catering manager, executive chef, and sales manager are locked into the company for continued success after investment or sale.

For detailed information from John Warrillow, visit his blog page at http://www.builttosell.com/blog/ .

Do you have a catering investment story or business sale (or purchase) to share? We would love to hear!

Growing up, my father always told me that the gene he was most proud to give me was the empathy gene. My father is a banker. When he was a child, he saw a bumper sticker that said “Bankers Are People Helpers”. Being a people helper himself, he decided that banking was the perfect career for him and it has been for 35+ years. He has always instilled in me that relationships are what last in business. Policies and products may come and go, but if you have a solid foundation with your customers, they will stick with you.

In my former career, I worked in retail sales for a very large company. My mantra every day was, “I am a customer service representative, who just happens to sell things.” I was commended for my attention to my customers’ needs, but my managers always harped on the fact that I spent too long with my customers. I was building relationships which, to me, meant loyal customers that would not only come back, but would pass my name along to friends and family. I was building a solid foundation to cultivate a loyal client base. But, sometimes in the fast-paced world of corporate America, the “what have you done lately?” mentality is encroaching upon doing what’s right for the customer in order to build a healthy relationship. This leaves a lot of customers feeling like a number, not a person.

The wonderful thing about being small is the personal touches you can give a customer. Never forget that! You can take the time to foster a relationship. If you have messed up, admit it and find a special way to make it up to your customer. Last year, John ordered some shirts from a small printing company and our order was not as requested. Not only did the company discount the order, they sent a stress ball with “Sorry We Caused You Stress” printed on it. He was blown away. The company realized the mistake, owned up to it, and sent a simple, yet thoughtful, gift to him that made a lasting impact.

No matter what I do or what industry I am in, I am a service representative first and foremost. I went to a chamber of commerce lunch discussion recently and one word that the leader stressed really stuck with me: servant. Isn’t that where the word service stems from? Take a look at your business. Are you and your employees truly being a SERVANT to your customers? Are you going that extra mile to make your customer feel special and loved?

That’s right! I said loved! I love my customers and I strive to get them to love me back. It is not always easy, though. People can get mad and upset, but it is my job to turn it around. In my experience, it is sometimes our largest critics who can become our biggest fans. I truly believe that a company’s character is best displayed under fire. When the chips are down, how do you react? Do you wipe your hands clean of the situation and point fingers? Or do you own up to it even if it was not directly your fault? Ownership is a huge part of being a customer focused company. Take responsibility of the situation, make up for it, and do everything in your power to make sure it does not happen again.

A fantastic customer centric company to use as an example is Zappos.com. Their founder, Tony Hseih, lives and breathes customer service. Here is a great link to a slideshow presented by him that outlines the Zappos.com customer service model. http://www.slideshare.net/Thor/zappos-lessons-building-a-customerfocused-culture

The bottom line is that good customer service gets people talking and if people are talking about your business, then your name is going to be on the tip of their tongue when they need your service. As caterers, you should be catering TO your customers as well as FOR them!

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”  ~Mahatma Gandhi