Start & Run a Catering Business. George Erdosh

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      2.3a Good serving staff

      One ingredient of a successfully executed event — besides your excellent food, good planning, and timing — is the gracious and superb service your staff provides. How your people present themselves, how they interact with the guests, how much they are interested in serving the food and not just receiving their weekly checks, is what the client perceives as service. Good food with mediocre service will not bring you repeat clients. Good food with poor service gives rise to complaints.

      There are two common problems with serving staff. One is accepting that being a server puts them in a subservient position. This is often a problem with better-educated staff from middle-class backgrounds who take catering jobs to earn extra income. They resent being treated like servants. A second problem occurs with serving staff being overly friendly with the guests, talking with them and treating them as equals, even engaging them in lengthy discussions while the food is getting cool on the serving trays they are supposed to be passing around.

      When hiring your staff, make it clear to them that you are in a service business and their role is to serve the invited guests, not just to dispense food as a host or hostess would. (See Chapter 7 for further discussion on staffing.)

      Determine how to give good service. Choosing and motivating your staff are two essential parts of this. These two items also apply to your kitchen staff. In the kitchen you are dealing with a staff whose duties include work that is often monotonous and unpleasant, such as cleaning a small mountain of shrimp. Rotating your staff from monotonous to creative work is helpful. Doing the routine work in teams is also a good way of easing the burden.

      Your relationship with your sales and marketing staff will probably also be reflected in their performance, unless you are lucky enough to find someone who works well without supervision.

      2.3b Combating employee theft

      Theft is a serious problem in virtually all food service facilities; the bigger the institution, the bigger the problem. The main problem is the staff stealing your raw ingredients. This is not easy to deal with. If the amounts taken are relatively small and the food value low, poorly paid staff may hardly consider it dishonest to take a package of butter or half a dozen chocolate chip cookies. The issue is more serious if half a dozen pieces of filet mignon disappear regularly. Even $20 worth of food taken from your kitchen by the staff can have an impact on your profit margin if it happens routinely.

      To make matters worse, in a small business you don’t purchase many extra supplies. If you need 23 steaks for a dinner, you may buy a few extra in case the guest count increases at the last minute or as insurance against one steak being ruined beyond repair, or being dropped in the dog dish in front of the client. Six steaks taken from the refrigerator can spell disaster.

      Theft is usually not much of a problem in a small business with a small staff. You know each other well and your relationship is cordial. Once your business and your staff grow and you hire minimum-wage dishwashers and extra food prep staff, theft could become a real problem, particularly if you are frequently absent from the kitchen.

      Larger restaurant, hotel, and institutional kitchens deal with the problem by daily and weekly inventory control. This does discourage theft since the staff know about the strict control. If they are taking the butter, it will be limited to one pound instead of four. The disappearance of a package of butter is hardly noticeable when a lot of food is being prepared; four packages missing will be noticed. Large kitchens put someone in charge of logging everything coming into the kitchen in raw form and keeping track of each item and quantity being used. (This serves as more than theft prevention; it is also the system for ordering and restocking.)

      In your much smaller business, the idea of inventory control is still valid. You have to know what you have in your freezer and refrigerator, on your shelves, and in the bins. You don’t need to itemize every last article, but at least keep track of the major items (e.g., how many chicken breasts, how many cans of caviar). Do your best to make your staff understand that you know every spoonful of vanilla in the vanilla bottle and every cup of flour in the flour bin.

      Another way to make the staff less likely to take food behind your back is generously sharing the delicious extra food after a successful party.

      2.4 Financing and budgeting

      Records compiled by the Small Business Administration indicate that a significant number of small businesses fail because of undercapitalization. What a waste! Would-be entrepreneurs start their undertakings full of enthusiasm, hope, diligence, skill, and a willingness to put in 80-hour work weeks — but without enough money. All their resources are put into the business — the money from a second mortgage on the house, a spouse moonlighting for extra funds — just to end up losing it all.

      No amount of work and enthusiasm compensates for undercapitalization. You must have sufficient financial backing to start a business, to pay monthly fixed expenses even in negative cash flow months, and to have a cushion for unexpected expenses, which can be large if you need sudden repairs. You shouldn’t have to worry about paying your bills even if they turn up unexpectedly. The only thing that should concern you is cash coming in. That is plenty to worry about. You cannot afford to start your business until you are sure that you have enough money to support both your family and the business for at least six months to a year without relying on what you’re bringing in from events.

      Budgeting skills are also necessary. Once you have a financial cushion, you can’t afford to see it shrink because of poor budgeting. It is definitely a skill you can learn. You know if you already have it. Have you survived so far in your personal life by bringing in more than you spend? If so, chances are, budgeting in your catering business will not be a problem.

      2.5 Dealing with seasonal highs and lows

      Seasonal highs and lows are difficult to deal with in small businesses. The smaller the business, the harder it is hit by a month or two of little income and negative cash flow.

      In your catering business, the seasonal highs and lows will vary with the type of catering you do. If much of your business comes from industrial catering, the holiday season will not affect you very much; it might even reduce volume. But most caterers are in great demand around the holiday season, with up to one-half of their annual gross income earned in two and a half weeks. Caterers who specialize in weddings will be very busy in May, June, July, August, and September — the traditional wedding months. But they will have slumps during the early and late months of the year. Corporate catering is fairly even throughout the year, though it tends to dip somewhat during summer vacation months.

      These are just broad generalizations to give you a concept of what to expect. In reality, the highs and lows are very difficult to predict from year to year, even by caterers who have been in business for a long time. No one knows why. For example, most caterers expect to have slow months in January and February. But the same months could be very busy if corporations decide to expand their employee training and schedule classes right after the holiday season in January. If they want you to cater breakfasts and lunches for their classes, you’ll be swamped with work.

      If you have planned your finances adequately and have a comfortable cash flow, you can also take the seasonal highs and lows without losing your peace of mind. You will simply have to dip into your bank account during lean months, while keeping your faith in the financially solid future. When money pours in all of a sudden, put some back into the savings account for those future lean months. Rely on your good budgeting skills, and invest СКАЧАТЬ