How do you create a memorable catering experience that encourages repeat business and word-of-mouth?

To create a memorable catering experience, start by understanding your audience. Know your clients' goals, preferences, and event expectations. Consider the demographics, tastes, and dietary needs of their guests. Tailor your menu, presentation, and service to match these requirements. By researching and asking the right questions, you can design a catering experience that not only meets but exceeds their expectations, showing you care about their satisfaction.

To create a memorable catering experience, offer variety and customization. People enjoy having choices and appreciate when their specific requests are considered. Provide a range of cuisines, dishes, and styles to appeal to different tastes and create excitement. Allow clients and guests to customize orders, portions, and ingredients to accommodate dietary needs and preferences. This approach makes them feel valued and special.

We have taken steps over the last year to dramatically improve our catering inquiry process. The lasting impression it gives our clients is incredible...by being able to quickly switch service options and available cuisines, we can literally price quote any service on the initial call. This investment, tied back to our internal price list had lead to winning catering contracts with short lead-times, and because we spend less time on quoting, we have more time to get to know the customer's preferences and to build a relationship with them.

To create a memorable catering experience, add flair and creativity. Make your food and drinks look, smell, taste, and feel amazing. Incorporate unique elements that surprise and delight your clients and guests. Showcase your skills and personality as a caterer. Use themes, colors, shapes, textures, garnishes, decorations, props, music, and lighting to enhance the experience. By doing this, you can create a distinctive and unforgettable catering experience.

To create a memorable catering experience, prioritize communication and follow-up. Clear and frequent communication builds trust with clients and ensures smooth execution of events. Confirm details, expectations, and address any concerns promptly. After the event, thank clients and guests, request reviews and referrals, and offer incentives for future bookings. This approach helps create a lasting impression and fosters loyal relationships.

Our quoting process includes tooling that builds highly-customized details for their event and automatically gives us that text for their invoices. This clear form of communication sets expectations of service for both sides while simultaneously creating the text we need to share with our staff for success. This has helped to reduce errors and improve execution on nearly every contract, from $200 to $25,000.

Watching what your competitors do can show you where you can improve. If you can gather information about what they are offering, it will allow you to reflect on your own services and what you provide to your clients. This can work both ways: we have found that we were overpriced in one area, which lead to us improving our internal processes and finding alternate suppliers, but in a separate instance we were able to confirm that our pricing - even though much more expensive - was correct. The caterer that was trying to undercut us learned the hard way that a race to the bottom isn't a way to find success in serving their clients.

To create a memorable catering experience, always seek to learn and improve. No matter your skill level, there’s always room to grow. Learn from experiences, feedback, and competitors to identify strengths and weaknesses. Enhance your catering skills, services, and offerings to increase your value, stand out from the competition, and attract more clients and guests.

Keep track of the portion sizes you offered, the type of crowd, the time of day, the nature of the event, the number of guests and the number of staff you brought. These details will help you ensure that as you grow and learn, you can improve your consistency and demonstrate your reliability, all the while customizing the experience for the type of event you are servicing. Serving a crowd of parents after a hockey game is different that a wedding crowd that happens in a rural town during harvest season. You can't anticipate the unique needs of each unless you capture and review the details of events you've already completed.