What:
Catering is a way to expand the business and serve your food outside the four wall of the restaurant. Building catering sales can be a new stream of revenue and expose your brand to large groups in the nearby community.
Why is this important?
Many groups need food catered offsite and can’t come into the restaurant, such as for business meetings, a family party, weddings and more. Many competitors in your space will offer their food in trays, buffets or box lunches to accommodate these groups, and we want to stay competitive. Plus, many groups become “regulars”, offering consistent sales without filling up seats inside the restaurant. Starting to get leads and build catering sales will help make the business profitable.
What’s needed prior to execution:
- It’s important to know
your trade area and which businesses, organizations or community groups may
need catering. Here are some examples of occasions that need catered food:
- Large office businesses (corporate meetings, office celebration, trainings, seminars, holidays)
- Medical offices/hospitals/pharmacy sales reps
- Family events (reunions, parties, graduations, wakes, holidays)
- Non-profit organizations/churches (large events, staff meetings, holidays)
- Schools (Generally for sports/teams at higher levels such as High School or University, but may need for beginning or end of year, trainings, etc)
- Professional Sports Teams (getting a contract with a team to feed their or the opposing team)
- Big Box stores for Black Friday/Holidays
- Banquet venues/weddings (may need preferred caterer status)
Execution:
Unfortunately there is not one way to find leads, and they may come through a variety of places. Having a listing with an updated menu on the website can bring leads in naturally, as well as reminding guests on social media and email that catering in an option at certain times of the year. However, most times you’ll need to put in some special effort.
- Google Maps
- Doing searches on Google Maps can get you a good start of businesses in the area. You’ll want a list of 100 or so places to get started.
- Searching 5-10 miles out may help increase leads.
- For example, a search of medical nearby Lola’s
turned up multiple places, which can be seen by the red dots on the map and the
side list.
- Write
down the name of the business, their phone number and website in an Excel sheet
for all the results in your radius and move on to the next category
- Repeat this until you have a solid list of leads
- Write
down the name of the business, their phone number and website in an Excel sheet
for all the results in your radius and move on to the next category
A list like above can help you stay organized:
- Once you have your initial list, you can either
go to each website and try to find additional contact information (such as for
a specific person or a contact email).
- This may help in later follow up
- Now is the time to start contacting your leads. You can contact them through a “cold call”, introduction email, or stopping into their business.