Blog posts tagged with 'caterers'

Photo Source: Favored by Yodit

Let’s face it. Sometimes we make mistakes in the event industry – whether an order gets lost in the shuffle or inventory gets double booked to be rented out – it happens because we’re human and mistakes happen. What we can also encounter… is the irrational bride or angry bride who regardless of what does or does not happen is going to make your life difficult. This post is to help those caterers, event rental companies and event venue companies protect their online reputation should a situation occur where your business is facing some harsh criticism – warranted or not.

1. Make sure your website is up to date and that you’re continually updating it

You are directly responsible for your own business’ brand identity and your website is one of the first places a potential prospect or customer will look. Making sure your website is up to date helps to legitimize your brand and your company. Blogging also helps in this regard as it helps position your company as a thought leader and “authority” on your industry. It also helps ensure you’re driving traffic to your website and creating positive content for the search engines. Not only that but it helps to create shareable content you can use on your social media sites. A little social media every day can help negate the angry reviews. Neil Patel, founder of KISSMetrics and Crazy Egg noted in a Forbes article on tips for creating a positive online reputation “’If there’s negative information out there, you need to participate in all the social sites.’ That consistent content will come up when your name is searched and will help inoculate you against any negative content that might be out there or might arise in the future (a blog post by an angry ex, or a diatribe from an angry customer).”

2. Invest (time and in some cases money) in Monitoring – Social Media and the entire web

Monitoring the entire web is a great way to ensure you’re keeping up with not only your industry but any positive and negative reviews that could bolster or hinder your online reputation. Google Alerts is a fantastic way to monitor the web, and determine what sites are linking to you, quoting you, supporting you or complaining about you. Hint – it can also be used to track your competitors. I have a google alert set up for “National Event Supply” (including the quotation marks so it doesn’t send me news on articles that include the words National or Event or Supply) so I can monitor any mentions. To create a google alert, check out this thorough blog post.

Along with monitoring the entire web, you should also be monitoring your social media mentions. Hootsuite is one of the best free monitoring tools out there if you want to monitor 3 social profiles (there’s also two paid versions as well). It allows you to schedule your social media messages, and monitor your mentions across those 3 social media platforms. If you’re just on Twitter, TweetDeck is a good monitoring tool as well.

3. Consider along with your own brand content, adopting a positive referrals program

Creating a positive referrals program is another way to protect your online reputation. Not only do referral customers come at a much lower cost than traditional customers, they also have a higher tendency for maintaining loyalty and are easier to retain. Having a group of brand evangelists out in the market singing your praises helps maintain a solid positive brand reputation. Check out HubSpot’s blog post on how to build a customer referral program if you’re interested in learning more.

4. Set up your Defence

Dr. Chris Anderson of Cyber Investigation Services (CIS) suggested to Forbes there are different ways of reacting to negative online reviews including: Doing nothing, crafting a polished written response, trying to resolve the issue with the poster, asking the website to step in, identifying an anonymous poster, using legal letters to threaten the poster and filing a lawsuit to seek damages and force removable. It’s a weighty issue because if you or a member of your team reacts badly to the negative attention, things can quickly spiral. The first thing I suggest is take a deep breath. Listening to the customer and trying to understand their issue is the second step to dealing with the customer. In terms of an online review or mention, responding to the customer is a must – but with a carefully thought out response. Consider in advance of a situation occurring brainstorming with your customer service team potential issues that could occur and jotting down responses. The Young Entrepreneur Council has a great post on 17 ways to deal with unhappy customers that should give you more defence moves to use.

5. Learn from Any Mistakes

This goes without saying but it’s so easy in this fast paced industry to forget to learn the lesson associated with the mistake. I’m of the firm belief that a lesson will keep repeating itself until it’s learned so really taking pause to examine how the issue could be avoided or circumvented in the future can go a long way to tactfully maintaining your brand reputation.

Our melamine platters and bowls are a really popular line of serveware for party rental and caterers to purchase. We’ve seen a lot of really great feedback on the durability and look of the melamine – in particular that it looks almost identical to porcelain with more durability. Recently though, we had a potential customer stump us with a question we’d never been asked before about our melamine – can your melamine platters and bowls stain? This is a fantastic question to be asked and one we wanted to inquire about further – both so we had the knowledge for future reference and also to answer that customer’s concerns. So we set up an informal test to test whether our 14.5” square melamine platter would stain. Take a look at the test and results below:

1. Put a number of different acidic condiments and sauces on the platter. Top Left = Pasta Sauce. Top Middle = Mustard. Top Right = Ketchup. Bottom = curry powder mixed with water

2. Let the stains sit for a total of 37 hours before washing

3. Wash off Stains

4. Photograph the evidence

As you can see there is no staining that has taken place. Even with closer inspection it looks as if the acidic condiments did not even touch to glossy exterior finish of our melamine platter. Since our melamine platters and bowls are made at the same factory we assume that this test should apply to our entire line of melamine serveware.

Serveware is one of my favourite catering and restaurant supplies to talk about. I know it’s nerdy but I really think that with the right kind of serveware (along with the esteemed Chef’s skilled plating skills) a passed hors d’oeuvre, buffet, or catering station can be transformed into a work of art. Caterers, restaurants, event venues and party rental companies need to stay on trend in the competitive market of special events so I thought it made sense to provide a glimpse into what serveware trends we’re seeing from a restaurant and catering supplier point-of-view. Here’s the first of the two part blog post series.

In terms of the latest trends in servingware, buffet trays and gorgeous food displays, there’s still a very rustic, elemental theme happening in the serveware trends. Chefs tend to be using slate, wood, marble, and glass as platters to add another texture and layer to their platings.

Picture Source: American Metalcraft

We’re seeing lots of buffets outfitted with lucite / clear acrylic stands similar to these food displays below offered by SmartBuffetware.

Photo Source: SmartBuffetware

Bite-sized offerings in the form of amuse bouche and single bite hors d’oeuvres are still on trend with Chefs utilizing bamboo skewers, amuse bouche cutlery, hors d’oeuvre forks (both disposable and stainless steel), wonton spoons and porcelain tasting spoons for easy sampling.

As far as shaped serveware is concerned, still trending are square and oval dishes along with other interesting shaped dishes such as a wide rim bowl, straight slanted bowl and quad divided bowl.

Glassware is also being used in the form of shot glasses, stemless glasses and martini glasses.

Photo Source: Hostess Handbook

Our Catering Customers and Party Rental Customers are asking for greater varieties of melamine servingware for increased durability from chipping, and breakage.

They’re also looking for new and unique shapes and smaller plates for tapas and other hors d’oeuvres.

The Bocuse d’Or, often touted as the culinary equivalent of the Olympics, is the only culinary contest where live audiences can view the chefs performing work in the kitchen. 24 countries compete in this event with each team consisting of two chefs, one lead Chef and a Commis who must be under 22 years of age at the time of competition. The team has 5 hours 35 minutes to prepare two elaborate meat and fish dishes in an open culinary theatre facing members of the jury, press and audience. Dishes are evaluated based on the level of perfection in the plating, technical skill, cooking sophistication, creativity, and visual aesthetic. The chef with the highest score is awarded the Bocuse d’Or trophy, a gold effigy of Chef Paul Bocuse in his chef’s outfit and receiving a grand prize of 20,000 euros. Silver Bocuse receives 15,000 euros with the Bronze Bocuse winning 10,000 euros.

Chef Corey Spiegel is from Albany, NY and started his culinary career at the young age of 14. Since then he has become a decorated and awarded chef having won the Northeast Regional Student Chef of the year for the American Culinary Federation in 2010 and being hand selected by Chef Richard Rosendale to be his Commis for the Bocuse d’Or USA Finals (the stepping stone to the world Bocuse d’Or held biennially in France). In January 2013, Chef Rosendale with his Commis Chef Spiegel competed in the Bocuse d’Or in Lyon, France.

This fantastic podcast was recorded just weeks after Corey competed in the 2013 Bocuse d’Or in France for Team USA. Corey touches on his life getting to the Bocuse d’Or including his quick progression from high school, through culinary school to apprenticeship. After the years of prep work involved including plenty of full practice runs completing their whole program for the Bocuse d’Or, hearing Corey speak about the competition is eye opening. Though the podcast is decidedly Western New Yorkish – it’s produced by Buffaloeats.org and Buffalo Spree – it’s still an interesting podcast for Canadian chefs – especially those looking to learn more about the competitive culinary world. Listen to Corey and Donnie chat about this insane culinary contest experience, his training towards the contest and future plans.

With the holiday season (Thanksgiving and Christmas) barrelling towards us at full speed, restaurants should consider promoting a catering special to help customer’s out. I’ve noticed within the past few years that more and more restaurants and grocery stores are jumping on the catering wagon. It makes perfect sense for consumers to look towards a restaurant or grocery store for their thanksgiving meal preparations as they’re less likely to seek out a formal caterer for a crowd of 4-8 people. In fact we’ve been using a local grocery store for a couple years to cater our Thanksgiving. It takes the stress out of the holiday – all we have to do is pick it up. And we completely understand the need to pay ahead of picking it up. For consumers, trusting their favourite restaurant or favourite grocery store with their meal preparation is a logical step and one that restaurants can take advantage of to generate more revenue without having to turn out more tables.

Part of catering is ensuring you have a proper process. Processes are a great thing to implement as they help ensure minor details are done properly and efficiently. As an avid checklist maker I am a pretty big nerd about lists so this post is a pretty thrilling topic to write about. Here’s a checklist to use to plan and execute a catering order for the holidays.

1. Plan the menu and write down what day and time prep should begin.

2. Assign tasks for each station and make a sample of each dish on the menu.

3. Take pictures of the samples to use to promote the menu and catering offer.

4. Price out menu per person ensuring you build in any extra labour and time required to pull off catering orders.

5. Draft order form that should include customer pick up times, credit card fields for upfront payment (and state that payment is non-refundable), number of people, preferred pick up date/time, whether utensils and any condiments are required and order by date (so you’re not taking last minute orders).

6. Promote catering offer through social media, on tables either as a promotion in your menu or on table tents, in your cheque presenters, via your email list, on your website, and on your window to gain attention of passersby.

7. Order necessary food-safe take out containers to ensure food can be safely picked up and transported by customer.

8. Order any extra disposable utensils or condiments required.

9. Order any extra business cards or promotional flyers to staple to catering orders promoting the restaurant.

10. Call any food banks or homeless shelters around the area to ask about food donations on the chance that orders are not picked up (or give to your employees).

11. Cook, assemble and pack all catering orders – ensuring someone double checks each order to make sure nothing is left out.

12. Run all credit cards, staple order form, customer receipt and credit card receipt along with business card or promotional flyer to each catering order.

13. If pick up times are during your regular service, bring in an extra hostess/host in to facilitate pickups. Several if your pick up schedule is close together.

14. Donate orders not picked up to someone who could use it.