Blog posts tagged with 'flatware'

Image Source: Jim Lee Eventos

If you’re a foodservice operator chances are you’re always looking for new ways to invent yourself, stay top of mind to consumers, and stay ahead of your competition. Creating a catering arm to your business could be a lucrative and exciting opportunity to consider. Every day is a different challenge for caterers and you’re constantly up to date with food and industry trends. Ensuring you have the tools necessary to make the transition from restaurant to caterer is vital. This blog post provides a checklist of 7 things restaurants and foodservice professionals should consider before starting a catering business.

• What type of catering do you plan to provide? Do you plan to be off premise, on premise, third party, full service, drop off, mobile / food trucks? Keep in mind that if you’re a restaurant with a specific style you need to ensure the type of catering offered works well with your restaurant style. For example Takeout/drop off/Third party/mobile catering lends itself to fast food & fast casual restaurants while Off Premise and On Premise lend itself to casual dining, family/buffet and fine dining
• Where do you find service & culinary staff? Often servers aren’t serving as their career and so availability can often be trying. Make sure you have a good rapport with staffing agencies or other caterers across the country. Often your slow season doesn’t coincide with theirs and those that are willing can serve events across the country.
• Do you have the proper licenses in place? Make sure to check with your municipality to ensure you have any or all of the following licenses: the Liquor Sales License with catering endorsement, Off premise catering license, insurance coverage, business license, special event liquor license, health inspections, insurance coverage, food handler certificate etc.
• Do you plan on serving liquor and if so, how do you plan on offering liquor? Full bar, beer & wine only, mixer packages, will you choose a corkage fee?, cash bar, package vs. consumption
• Do you want to own your own equipment or outsource (rent) only? If you want to own, where can you find the catering supplies including serving platters, serving bowls, porcelain dinnerware, stainless steel flatware? If you want to rent, who do you know or who can you build a relationship with in the party rental industry?
• How can you ensure food sanitation and safety when transporting food to the middle of the woods for instance?
• Do your menus include options for religious (kosher or halal), vegetarian or vegan, sustainable, allergies, organic?

An additional item to consider – ensure your customer is prepared for the service charge – you need to remind them they are paying for a moving restaurant and that includes the cost per hour for servers and other wait staff.

Hopefully this blog post provided you with some food for thought to begin working through the steps necessary to starting a catering business.

Can these short snippets of foodservice and restaurant operations wisdom make you think differently about your work?

This is our 2014 collection of the best of the best quotes we have uncovered so far. Some quotes touch on restaurant growth and food costs, others talk about working relationships and nutrition. We've also included a timeless quote from Julia Child. There’s a little bit of entertainment and inspirational thoughts in here for everyone. Enjoy!

Do you have any favourite motivational or inspirational quotes that weren’t on the list? Let us know in the comments.

2014 has been an exciting year for the National Event Supply Blog. We announced 5 new products and 3 new product lines including the 4.75" straight sloped bowl, 13.125" flat pizza plate, 11.125" square plate, propane patio heaters, a new folding chair dolly that seamlessly transfers from grass to pavement, a new line of wholesale tablecloths and crystal stemware. We were awarded Canadian Rental Association Ontario Division’s Supplier of the year. We invested in expanding our market as a restaurant supply in Toronto. We introduced a brand new site design and enhanced functionality including the ability to buy products online. We launched the NES Reliable Rhino Plastic Banquet Table collection – a proprietary folding table line manufactured to compete with MityLite ABS Plastic Tables at a 50% lower cost. We provided comprehensive coverage of the Rental Show 2014, the world's largest party rental, equipment rental and tool rental conference.

Over the course of the year thus far, more than twenty-five hundred readers visited our site. So what were the most popular posts of the first half of 2014?

10. How Strong are 60inch Round Plastic Folding Tables?

9. What to Expect at The Rental Show

8. It's Radiant Orchid! #2014ColorOfTheYear

7. Resin Chiavari Chairs vs. Wood Chiavari Chairs

6. How Much Weight Can Plastic Folding Tables Hold?

5. Where to Buy Wedding Linens Direct in Canada

4. How Much Weight Can a White Resin Folding Chair Hold?

3. How Much do Wedding Folding Chairs Cost in Canada?

2. How Much Do Chiavari Chairs Cost to Buy?

1. The Best Restaurant Supplies Store in Toronto

Did your favorite posts from the past 6 months make this list? If not, share them in the comments below -- and on social media!

With the weather finally turning a corner in Canada (HELLO 32°C in Toronto!), we’ve got summer reading on our minds. With that in mind, I surveyed some of our amazing restaurant and caterer customers to find out their best recommendations for foodservice summer reads. Here’s what we came up with to keep you entertained at the cottage, at the beach or on a sunny patio during a day off. We’d love to hear what your favourite foodservice books are so tweet us or comment on our Facebook page so we can all pick up a copy to read.

Momofuku (By David Chang & Peter Meehan)

Written by the chef of the award-winning restaurants by the same name, Chef David Chang relays with his rise to superstardom, as well as the perils and pitfalls that marked his rise. This book portrays both the story and the recipes behind the cuisine that has revolutionized cooking with his bold Asian flavours and impeccable ingredients. As stated by Amazon – “this is a must-read for anyone who loves food”.

Read reviews of Momofuku

The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs (By Karen Page & Andrew Dornenburg)

Surveying dozens of leading chefs’ combined experience in top restaurants across the country, these authors create the go-to guide to coaxing the greatest possible flavour from any ingredient. Ingredient entries in the thousands, organized alphabetically and cross-referenced, provide a spectacular encyclopedia of flavour combinations. Featuring tips, first-hand stories and signature dishes from some of America’s most imaginative chefs, it was named a winner of the 2009 James Beard Book Award for Best Book: Reference and Scholarship.

Read reviews for The Flavor Bible

What to Drink with What You Eat: The Definitive Guide to Pairing Food with Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Tea - Even Water - Based on Expert Advice from America's Best Sommeliers (By Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page & Michael Sofronski)

A fantastic read for any “business-focused” foodservice operator that lacks proper sommelier training. What to Drink with What You Eat is the definitive guide to matching food and drink and includes pragmatic advice from the best wine sommeliers and chefs in America. Though the majority of this book is focused on wine, there are matches for a variety of other beverages. Provide a value add to your customers (and a sneaky upsell as well) by utilizing this guide to pair alcohol with your specials and/or entrées.

Read Reviews for What to Drink with What You Eat

Remarkable Service: A Guide to Winning and Keeping Customers for Servers, Managers, and Restaurant Owners (By The Culinary Institute of America)

Restaurants must distinguish themselves in a market oversaturated with competition by offering consistent, high quality service. This book addresses the service needs for a wide range of dining types – fast-casual, fine dining and even catering operations. This is the best guide to service and hospitality on the market and provides foodservice operators, as well as their servers and managers the tips they need to stand out from their competition and win customer loyalty instead of customer satisfaction.

Read Reviews for Remarkable Service

Lessons in Service from Charlie Trotter (By Ed Lawler)

Charlie Trotter’s name has become synonymous with outstanding service in the restaurant industry. Trotter has perfected the subtle relationship between food, wine, ambiance and service and has trained his staff to his exacting standards. In Lessons in Service from Charlie Trotter, the author details the secrets behind Trotter’s success and shows other restaurants and businesses how to improve their levels of service.

Read Reviews for Lessons in Service from Charlie Trotter

We could go on and on with the thought provoking books we found. What other books would you add to the list?

Jonathan and I recently attended the National Restaurant Association’s tradeshow in Chicago, IL to learn more about the foodservice and restaurant industry including the trends that are occurring, what’s new and innovative in the industry and any additional education we could learn on the industry. As a restaurant supply store in Toronto, we thought it best to see what the largest restaurant show had to offer our customers and potential prospects. We toured both the tradeshow floor to see exhibitors such as Steelite, Oneida, Dudson, Mitylite and Lenox as well as attended some sessions of interest. Here are some of the lessons learned from the show:

1. One of the most important marketing tools next to your menu is your website.

Ensuring you have fantastic pictures of your food on your page will help ensure you differentiate yourself from the multitudes of restaurants in your area. Showcasing beautiful photos of your food enhances the likelihood of a potential customer choosing your restaurant over another. We attended a session called “Food Selfie” that featured a food photographer on how to take the best pictures for your website. While I think that the session could have been done better to provide more value some of the greatest tips learned from this session include: the quality of light is the most important factor next to what camera you use to ensure a great photo – and the sun is the best quality of light. Make sure to pre-visualize your shot in your head and keep a portfolio of magazine / web images that appeal to you as a reference. And finally play around with the angle at which you shoot the photograph as well as the textures in the photograph to ensure the photo doesn’t become too one dimensional.

2. Online restaurant reviews are a hot topic in the industry.

What I heard continuously (and quite unfortunately) is with the apparent freedom of digital anonymity, often the review tends to go past the point of civility. While sitting in a fascinating “He Said/She Said Session” other restaurant operators both independent and large multinationals chimed in how they combat the negative reviews that might be received. One session attendee, an independent restaurant operator, has seen a lot of traffic (both web traffic and actual customers) from sites such as Yelp, Groupon, and OpenTable. A specific person has been allocated to monitor all the different sites that reviews can be written on. They then collate all reviews (both negative AND positive) and have incorporated the “hits and misses” into their weekly meetings with their entire front and back of house staff. This approach has not only given them the ability to actively respond to any negative reviews to thank them for their frankness but also allows them to look for trends. It can be hard to hear but if you keep getting a review saying your salmon is too dry – that is a great opportunity to take the review into consideration and better your restaurant. This operator showed how phenomenally they’ve addressed reviews to grow the restaurant and turn negatives into positives based on how the issues are dealt with. Another operator has helped train their staff to proactively identify issues so that an issue isn’t left to fester once a diner leaves the restaurant. The staff look for cues such as a meal not being finished, a takeout container not request or feedback that the meal was “just fine” and help to circumvent a potentially negative review. Regardless on how a restaurant is dealing with reviews the overall consensus was that if you aren’t responding to your restaurant reviews – you’re missing a HUGE opportunity to ensure your customers are heard and responded to.

3. Where are trends in the industry coming from?

It used to be that the trends that ultimately prevailed would start at either coast and work in. Nowadays with culinary education, the advent of the Food Network trends truly have started to pop up everywhere because of digital prevalence. While food trends can come from anywhere these days, it certainly can be from a large national chef or a small locally owned restaurant or even in supermarkets. Also, fine dining seems to not be driving the trends the way it used to and the majority of trends appear to be coming from either supermarkets or diets.