As more employees return to work and the holiday season approaches, your restaurant may be looking to raise your revenues by adding catering to your roster. Food On Demand Off-premises University’s recent webinar covered this topic, highlighting what operators need to know to grow their business in the catering space.
Jim Rand, from Rand Parker Group, started off the conversation by affirming that “catering is relationship business,” listing five key areas that are crucial in building the catering part of your business, including ease of ordering, executing the order, accuracy, meeting expectations, and follow up that grows that connection.
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The webinar featured a panel of experts, including Lindsay Crasnick from Bartaco, Jenn Saunders-Haynes from Subway, and Chris Heffernan from Dlivrd. Here are the highlights of the webinar that restaurants need to consider:
- Be intentional. Plan to execute in a way that reinforces your brand and keeps the restaurant experience that’s expected from your guests, from packaging to freshness to flavours.
- Consider practical aspects like kitchen capacity, off-peak opportunities, and impact on in-restaurant operations to create a strategy that works for your business.
- For your menu, look at popular items, dishes that are easy to create for a catering order, and menu items with the highest margins to create a menu that delivers what guests are looking for.
- Know your customers and be flexible to meet your guests’ needs. Listening to feedback can help you shift your catering operations to remain relevant and deliver on guest experiences.
- Invest wisely to automate what you can to be able to humanize what’s important and focus on the customer experience. Investing in marketing is key as well to build awareness about your brand and this branch of your business.
- Data is critical. Understanding what the market is doing, where it’s headed, and analyzing customer behaviour and what is important to them affords you the opportunity to address their needs and grow your business.
An important takeaway from this webinar was that catering is not just about creating a menu and putting it online; planning your execution is the key to restaurant success in the catering space.
