Blog posts tagged with 'caterers'

With any company dealing in the foodservice industry – whether it be catering, banquet halls, golf courses, restaurants trying different plating options, hotels with meeting space or party rental companies – picking the right platters for food presentation is important. You want to ensure you’re presenting aesthetically pleasing food while ensuring your inventory / material costs for the platters doesn’t affect your bottom line. Add in the breakage, potential stacking or transporting issues and it can be a bit overwhelming.

This article presents an easy to view list of the pros and cons of melamine platters vs. porcelain platters.

Melamine Platters:

• Durable
• Break resistant
• Can scratch with use of sharp objects on the surface (like knives)
• Commercial dishwasher safe
• Lightweight
• Can withstand temperatures from 32°F to 220°F (0°C to 120°C) – ruling out baking / food preparation in them
• Non-microwavable
• Potential long term health risks (jury still out)
• Easy to stack
• More expensive to purchase due to material cost

Porcelain Platters:

• Durable
• Breakage occurs more frequently due to the nature of the material
• Scratch resistant
• Commercial dishwasher safe
• Heavy in comparison to melamine
• Oven safe to 400°F
• Microwave safe (unless porcelain contains metal detailing)
• Can become cumbersome to stack
• Less expensive to purchase than Melamine
• Can look better longer

As you can see, porcelain platters and melamine platters both have their place at a buffet or party; neither one can be ruled out as “better” than the other – it generally comes down to how the purchaser plans to utilize the platter and personal preference.

Restaurant critiquing can be thought of as a profession of duality: the dream profession for everyday diners in love with food and a profession that incites anxiety, boasting, tears of joy and tears of happiness for restaurateurs. Part of being a notable restaurant critic means remaining anonymous to ensure their readers get the same dining experience. With so much cloak-and-dagger antics, the world of restaurant critics is riddled with more questions than answers. What is ideal service? How does a restaurant critic choose the restaurants to review? How does one go about assigning stars or ratings to the restaurant? It’s enough to make any restaurateur overwhelmed.

New York Times released a fascinating video series interviewing 5 of their past and present restaurant critics to get a behind the scenes look at what goes into creating a review, what a restaurant can expect when being reviewed and the tactics used to produce said review.

Check out the full video series here.

It goes without saying that the makings of a good restaurant is one that is consistent, has kind, hospitable and prompt service, and produces great food. Behind the scenes, an efficient restaurant is one that is able to partner with a restaurant supplier of dishes, cutlery, and stemware able to quickly and effectively meet your equipment needs while providing you great value – so you can focus on creating culinary masterpieces to make revenue. National Event Supply would like to be that restaurant supplier partner for you. Check out our Tabletop Catalogue for more details on our porcelain dinnerware lines, platters and bowls and cutlery.

As it’s quickly approaching the end of the year and the holiday season, we thought it would be fitting to compile some of the articles we consider to be some of the most useful, most insightful or most educational of the year. This has been a fantastic year for National Event Supply. We hope you’ve had a great one as well. Click on the industry you’re interested in below and you’ll be fast tracked to the articles of interest for you.

• Party Rental
• Restaurants
• Catering

Party Rental

Rental Essentials: Party Rental Stops 'Death Spiral' Discounting Policies

With the business climate becoming better every passing day, no longer are event rental companies in a discount death spiral of discounting far or fast enough. Now, many companies are using discounting as a strategic business tool instead of a way to survive. Check out this article from Special Events Magazine to see how other event rental companies are utilizing discounts.

10 Predictions About the 2014 Event Rental Industry

According to a number of big party and event rental companies profiled by Special Events Magazine, “business has firmed up in 2013, and they expect the same continued–albeit slow–growth in 2014.” With 2013 nearing an end, a number of publications across the entire foodservice, hospitality, and event industry have been forecasting how the 2014 Party and Event Rental industry will fare. Check out 10 of the most interesting things we’ve uncovered!

Compete or Collaborate?

In business, it’s more often you hear about strategic alliances with complementary businesses. Very rarely do you hear about strategic alliances with the competition. But an article by InTents Magazine suggests there are potential benefits with collaborating with your competition – while carefully analyzing the pros and cons prior to entering the partnership. Check out the full article for what you should be asking before going ahead with a potential deal.

2 Crucial Items Required to Start a Party Rental Business

Perhaps you’re an equipment rental company, looking for a way to add additional revenue through the expansion of your products and services. Perhaps you’re a catering company looking to service a greater portion of your clients' needs. Or, perhaps you're thinking of starting a new Party Rental business and not sure where to start. Whatever the case may be, when looking to expand your revenue there are a number of crucial items that it makes sense to begin stocking as additional revenue generators.

Restaurants

Podcast: How to Focus on Catering to Transform Your Restaurant

I stumbled across a podcast I think is a gem for anyone in the restaurant industry looking for additional ways to build revenue. Mark Deo, Veteran CBS Radio Host interviewed a man by the name of Erle Dardick, author of the books “Get Catering and Grow Sales!” and “501 Killer Marketing Tactics for Cranking Up Your Catering Sales”. Erle joins Mark’s podcast entitled “The Small Business Hour, as heard on CBS Radio” to discuss how focusing on catering helped transform his restaurant. To listen to the full podcast – click here.

[Infographic] The Top 35 Restaurant Apps Consumers Are Using Right Now

As a restaurant, including your establishment on the top 35 restaurant apps that consumers are using right now – ensures that you’re putting your best foot forward and getting found where consumers are looking for you. We found an infographic on Visual.ly by Pizzamarketplace.com, fastcasual.com and QSRweb.com that summarizes the top 35 restaurant apps consumers are using right now.

Menu Optimization: Three Ways to Help Your Outstanding Menu Items Take Centre stage

A restaurant's menu is its single most important marketing tool once a patron is in the dining room and even when the decision process is being made whether to eat out. Menu design has widely been touted to help increase sales and hook prospects into a sale – but have you focused any attention on your menu to ensure its doing you justice? This article outlines 3 key tips restaurateurs should do to optimize their menus to get the most marketing mileage possible.

The 2013 Hospitality Market Report

Canadian Foodservice and Hospitality magazine detailed how the 2013 hospitality market fared in their annual report. One noteable quote from the report states that “while baby boomers represent a significant portion of restaurant sales at 26 per cent, millennials, in fact, represent 28 per cent of all restaurant meals consumed, NPD Group’s [Robert] Carter says. “A lot more operators are targeting that [group], because it’s the largest cohort next to boomers.” To read the full report including the state of the 2013 market, click here.

Catering

Staff Training That Pays Off

With service attributing highly to an event attendee’s overall satisfaction, caterers cannot afford poorly trained staff members working events. This article from Catersource has some excellent guidelines on how to train staff properly for events.

Take it outside: Adding more control to outdoor events

Many dream of having events outdoors during the warmer weather – but sometimes the anxiety associated with lack of control of the weather can deter those from actually making a go of it. While you can take the route of a more controlled indoor event, adding control to outdoor events is possible. Check out this article in Special Events Magazine on tips to ensure you select a caterer experienced with the outdoors.

Dominate the Catering Industry with These 5 Killer Techniques

Like most businesses, as a caterer, you’re looking to dominate your industry in a market filled with competition. In Toronto, when wedding season seems to last a few months, it takes a creative company to find new ways to generate revenue to ensure the “slow season” has a consistent revenue stream. Check out these 5 killer techniques you can employ to dominate your market.

Now this may seem like a strange question, how can paying more for anything cost you less? The reality is that there are many times that paying more now can cost you less in the long term. Here are some things to consider when you are making your next purchasing decision to make sure that you get the most from your money.

Quality

As many buyers know by now, quality plays a big role in making sure you get good value for your money. You can buy cheap but generally you will get a product that does not hold up well enough for your commercial needs. This especially rings true in businesses with high turnover of their inventory such as the party/event rental industry. The more times you can turnover the same product, the bigger return on your investment. A lower quality product won't net the same return on investment that a better quality product will. As a result you are better off buying a more expensive, better quality product at a fair price to get the most out of the money that you spend.

Delivery

Another factor that most people don’t consider is when will you get delivery? Most companies that do events in Canada, especially those focused on weddings want/need delivery in April or May so that they can be ready for the start of the spring wedding season. So what happens if your delivery slips into June? Have you lost any events or rentals as a result? What about if it slips into August or September? Have you lost more events or rentals as a result? In most cases the answer is yes. Did you save enough buying the less expensive, slow to deliver product to make up for the revenue that you lost because you didn’t have the product? In most cases the answer is no, making this a crucial but often over looked factor to consider when you are buying.

Service

Service is another crucial factor when considering a purchase. If you do have a problem with your purchase, will your supplier fix it or help you troubleshoot the problem? If it is a special order item, how accurate is their delivery time table? Are you confident they can deliver in the timeline provided? Has the company you are buying from added value in any other way for your company? None of these are questions that I can answer for you but they are aspects to consider when you are making your purchase decision.

At National Event Supply we are constantly bringing in samples of potential new inventory items and working with existing customers on custom items they’re interested in stocking. We’ve been doing some cleanup of our showroom and warehouse and decided to get in the holiday spirit by donating a number of samples and over 250 barely used porcelain deep rectangular platters to local soup kitchens in the Greater Toronto Area and Mississauga. We had three non-profits including Good Shepherd Ministries, Syme Woolner Neighbourhood & Family Centre, and Eden Community Food Bank accept our donation.

Here is a picture of some of the items we donated:

The Executive Director of Eden Community Food Bank reached out to us to say:

"Thank you for thinking about Eden Community Food Bank for your donation. They will be put to good use in our food bank and in our new Community Learning Kitchen."
 

Eden Community Food Bank is located in Mississauga, Ontario and is a non-denominational, charitable organization, working to eliminate hunger through food distribution to qualified individuals and families living in selected areas of Mississauga, as well as providing education and advocacy services to our clients and the general public.

If you’re interested in spreading some holiday cheer by making a donation to help ensure those who need it most don’t go hungry throughout the season, please feel free to reach out to the three organizations (links above) and help them out.

The team at National Event Supply are thrilled the items can be put to good use and hope to provide more non-profits around the area additional items in the future.