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The Restaurant Roadmap is your guide to building and running a successful restaurant. Each episode explores the full journey of operations—from planning and development to menu design, execution, and growth. Hosts Danny Bendas, Amanda Stokes, and Chef Eric Lauer bring decades of expertise, joined by industry leaders and restaurant professionals who share their insights and stories. Together, they uncover strategies, tools, and lessons that help operators improve performance, strengthen teams, and elevate the guest experience. Whether you’re opening your first location or refining an established brand, The Restaurant Roadmap equips you to navigate every step with confidence.
Danny: Welcome to The Restaurant Roadmap podcast, powered by Synergy Restaurant Consultants. You are a go-to source for actionable insights and real-world strategies from the industry’s top experts, clients, and special guests. Whether you’re building a new concept or refining an existing one, we’re here to help you create a forward-thinking, sustainable brand, elevate guests’ experience, streamline operations, and maximize your bottom line. With decades of hands-on experience, our mission is simple, to deliver practical, proven solutions to the everyday challenges restaurant operators face. Let’s dive in and get to work.
Danny: Welcome everybody to The Restaurant Roadmap, powered by Synergy Restaurant Consultants. We have a great topic today: rebuilding catering, and we feel like there’s a lot of information that you all could use to help build your sales. It’s a great sales channel opportunity. I am very pleased to have with us today two very experienced individuals. We have Amanda Stokes, who I know you have seen before: operations, recruiting, training, all around good girl. And we have a great guest as well today, Monica Challingsworth, who heads up all of our catering needs at Synergy. So, I wanted everybody to say hello real quick, and particularly Monica, tell us a little bit about you and what you do, and it’s going to lead into our subject, and we’re going to have a fun 40-45 minutes or so. So, say hey to everybody and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Monica: Hi everyone, I’m happy to be here. I have been a self-proclaimed catering expert for many years. We have worked with brands big and small, whether it’s an individual, you know, mom-and-pop restaurant, to a really large 900-unit chain, to do everything throughout catering, whether it is determining the menu, packaging, staffing, training, the sales, the marketing side. So, we’ve pretty much seen all of it, and as it’s grown and expanded and changed over the years, you know, what it looks like pre-Covid, what it was post, and now it’s kind of taken on another life of its own. I think that there’s a big side of the third parties that come into play with this, so it’s always an ever-changing world, but it’s a very necessary part of our industry.
Danny: Great way to build sales, right? And I don’t want to be short with Amanda, so say hello Amanda, in case nobody’s listened to us before. Tell us a quick little bit about yourself.
Amanda: Sure. My name’s Amanda Stokes. I am on the Synergy team. My lane is operations training. I do concept development work, I write concept briefs, I do recruiting, so I wear many hats. I am not a self-proclaimed catering expert. We lean into Monica for all things catering and third-party, so I’m eager to hear what Monica has to say. I think to her point, this is an extremely necessary part of the business, and if you’re not growing this part of the business, you’re missing out on a lot of revenue.
Danny: Yeah. And I am smart enough to realize that if I don’t surround myself with really smart people, we’re not going to get anywhere, so that’s why we have both of these folks on today. So, I want to start off with, you know, this may sound like a crazy question, but just frame things for everybody, in my mind, there’s takeout and there’s catering. So, I was going to ask, Monica, can you define catering and is it the same? Is it different? What do we mean when we say catering? Because it can mean a lot of different things, right?
Monica: Absolutely, that’s a great question. So, kind of take it even once that further than that, there’s what we call drop-off catering or what some people call corporate catering, even though it’s not just in the corporate segment, full-service catering, and then takeout. So, drop-off catering is, you know, think about your foil pans, you have a third-party delivery, typically, you can of course do your own internal delivery for that, but not really a lot of setup, just kind of there with disposables that would be likely in an office-type setting. Then you have your full-service catering, which then think graduation parties, weddings, where you have it fully staffed, maybe you’re doing chafing dishes and sternos as you’re set up and your team is there replenishing that, or you have takeout, which is your individual, you know, maybe you have family-style or family-sized meals that could be in the catering category, depending on how you’re tracking your revenue, or that would be something that would be in your everyday regular, you know, takeout dining sales.
Danny: Okay. All right, so all-encompassing, various segments. I just want to make sure as we talk through things today, you know, if we can identify any specificity for each of those, I think that would be really helpful. Because we really want to target, you know, operators, chefs, people that are wanting to get into this. It’s almost like you kind of get forced into it these days to maximize revenue and we—a lot—say, “How can you maximize your sales for square foot?” Catering is definitely a really great opportunity to do that as well, so we want to target all three of those areas.
So today, we’re going to talk about challenges, people and pipeline, right? So, we got to have the right people, we got to have the right sales, and then the other part of the people on the other side is once you get to sale, really being able to execute so that you can make your customers extraordinarily happy so they want to put you on your on their list whenever they need the types of services that you can provide. So Monica, you had put together a little something here, some statistics, which I thought we were really good at. You want to talk about that a little bit for us?
Monica: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think it’s—you know, and it has definitely changed over the years of what our industry looks like regarding staffing and what it looks like now for catering. So, I think it’s really interesting that I read a statistic that says only 42% of—when we say cater, any restaurant that’s doing catering—that their biggest challenge is staffing and only 14% of them feel like they’re properly staffed. And at the same time, a lot of operators that are seeing there’s catering staff that they have, but then they don’t actually have anybody to go out and drive sales. So, you kind of run into this give and take, that it does take a lot to have both of those things.
And I know the first thing that an operator might be thinking is, well, I can’t afford that. My labor is already so high, my margins are so tight, so how do you expect me to have more people for catering when we can’t afford that? So, I think those are things that we need to talk about today because those are very important questions and that is something that we’re seeing as a big challenge in the industry.
Danny: Yeah. And Amanda, you and I do a lot of operations work and we always fight that battle. It’s like, what came first, the chicken or the egg, right? Do your staff for success or do you cut staff and then you end up working your way to the bottom, right? So, you know how that goes. So, you want to add anything to that?
Amanda: No, I think Monica hit the nail on the head with those statistics. And I think it’s interesting where the old school was, go hit the pavement and go talk to 30 businesses. And now I think you can do that digitally. I think there’s a way to be really efficient and still do that guerrilla-style marketing. But I think businesses that don’t do it are not investing in their future.
Danny: Yeah. And I think anybody that listens to this—and we do a lot of operations work, Amanda and myself and the rest of—others on our team—we also do a lot of concept development work and a big part of this is if you want to get into this business, you really have to think through all of it. And when I say that, the physical plant, we’re going to talk about a lot of the other stuff today, but if you don’t have the space to actually execute things like this, it really becomes a challenge. So, when we do a lot of new concept work, right, Amanda, we have to make sure we have the kitchen, we have the technology, we have the packaging, storage, all of those little details, which is usually, as they say, where the devils are. You’re just figuring all of that out beyond the things we’re going to talk about today, right, Amanda? And a lot of people just don’t think about those kinds of things, you know?
Amanda: Absolutely. And I think the businesses that build those areas to be able to execute those caterings to go out before the business even opens, like, look, you pay for everything in the building by having that order go out, so thinking about the physical plant and how ergonomic it is to execute catering is one of those things that we recommend. It is a great use of square footage.
Danny: Yeah. And you’re looking at, like, Chipotle now where they’re actually putting in a second serving line for takeout because the percentages have just gotten bigger and bigger, you know, and they want to be able to execute and, you know, not have somebody staring at you while you’re putting out a takeout order because I’m standing right there. I just want my burrito, right? So, anyway. So, we’re going to go into—go ahead, Monica.
Monica: One last little thought to add to that, we’ve seen a lot of success with catering hubs. So, let’s just say we have, like, we have a restaurant group right now that has 11 locations and they’re pretty spread out. You figure LA, South Bay, Orange County, that in those locations, we just pick our largest ones that can have the largest zip code radius, we pick the right delivery partner that can go up to theoretically, like, 50 miles, not that we want our food to travel that long, but also have, again, the capacity to have storage space, have a GM that’s very excited about the program because you could have all of those things, but if you don’t have operators who are super jazzed on catering, it’s all going to fall through because everything is going to stop with them. But I’d say that’s another big thing is even in the Chipotle model, not every Chipotle needs to have catering. So, if you do have a smaller footprint, do you have a commissary, is there, you know, another piece of the business that you can look at, or could you just do maybe breakfast catering because your lunch is already too busy? So, I think there’s a lot of really creative ways to look at this as opposed to just, you know, one size fits all.
Danny: Yeah, and that brings up another topic. We do work for a lot of clients, some pretty big ones, and they sort of moved into the call-center scenario, too. And I don’t know, have you done any call center work, you know, just thinking AI and—
Monica: Yes. Yeah. There’s a group called New Catering Connections, which I love. They are fantastic. They were actually kind of the original people who started with MonkeyMedia before MonkeyMedia was acquired by ezCater. So, they had the catering institute, they’ve been around for a really long time, and that had been something that I think our industry was missing, where if you can’t afford a full-time catering salesperson, you know, can you outsource this work and what does that look like?
And so, we’ve seen a tremendous success with them. They’ve even now gotten into, like, reaching out for private dining sales, e-commerce, really everything within our space and I think they are a really unique offering. If you can’t afford to have a full time salesperson. Especially, you know, here in California, our labor cost is ridiculous, so being able to have those types of opportunities as well as still being on the ezCaters of the world, there are certainly ways to do it, as long as you, you know, talk to great people like us to help you make sure that you’re profitable before you put everything out there because there are a lot of hidden costs that can come into play with this.
Danny: And, you know, you made a great point. If you don’t get managers to buy into it or it becomes like an afterthought, it’s never going to succeed. And we’ve actually done work together with some other clients that sort of had that experience. And, “Oh, it’s going to cost too much. I can’t afford the labor.” And before you know it, you know, the whole program sort of has just, kind of, gone downhill, right?
So anyway, let’s talk about the first part of this conversation. And you gave us permission to digress and move around Monica, so we’re going to now get back on topic. I’m known for not staying on topic, as Amanda will attest to, [laugh] right? But it always ended up being pretty good. So, let’s talk about labor staffing, the people problem. And, you know, what kind of pain points are you guys seeing that’s creating those problems? And let’s talk about and have a conversation of what can we do to help mitigate that. So, I’m going to start off with you, Monica. Let’s talk about the pain of it all.
Monica: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s kind of two parts to this. There’s the operations pain, and then you have the sales and marketing pain. And usually you figure the operating team and the marketing team sometimes aren’t always on the same page. So, you know, you have the operators who are worried about, you know, what their labor is costing, call-offs, turnover, you know, all the things that kind of come on that side, and then you have the marketing group who is saying, “Well, you know, we’ve created all these beautiful marketing pieces and we have been sending out eblasts and we made business cards and LSM documents.” And then the operator is saying, “Well, who in the heck is going to go out and do anything with this? I don’t have time. I’m already dealing with putting out fires within my four walls. You’re crazy to think that, like, I can do that.”
And then you have maybe some GMs or operators who will say, well, you know, let’s kind of merge these two worlds together. Maybe we have a really amazing team member who is looking for more hours, has a great personality, would love to be out and learn a new skill, so they would be somebody we could potentially cross-develop into doing this if we can’t afford to bring on a whole new body and how to develop the people who already kind of have that in their personality to want to go out and do it. So, I always kind of look at it within, you know, how do we use those two brains who typically think differently and find a good middle ground for both of them?
Danny: Amanda, anything you want to add to that?
Amanda: No, I think those are—you know, it’s the age old question, right? Marketing doesn’t understand us and marketing doesn’t understand why operators are not willing because we’re doing all this work to get all of these events situated and they’re just unappreciative. So, I think bridging those gaps to make it work, and I think the key for that is to have a financial incentive for the operations team. And so, a lot of great brands have a sales incentive so that it’s not just, hey, we’re layering on this complexity for you. Yes, it’s going to be a little bit more complex, but everybody’s going to share in the wins.
Danny: Yeah. You know, so we always used to joke around, you know, if it was a great promotion, you know, marketing takes the credit. If it didn’t work, the operators get blamed, right [laugh]? It’s the age-old ying-yang battle of, you know, of did it work or didn’t it work. But let me ask you another question—again, just going off topic, but what the heck, right—is it better to have this as a separate function? And let’s just take a restaurant, an individual operator, and we can talk about a chain also. What’s the best way to segregate this, or how do you dedicate the right people for the right amount of time so they’re not multi-tasking because then sooner or later, something becomes more important than something else? What do you think about that, Monica?
Monica: Unfortunately, it isn’t a very ‘this or that’ answer, but there are two ways to look at it. So, you have a centralized catering system and a decentralized catering system. So, if you think of centralized, maybe so that would be more of, you have a catering sales director, and you have catering managers who are maybe overseeing five locations per region, and so that’s kind of what they’re focused on. And so, they’re putting their resources into potentially these hubs that we talked about or underperforming locations, but that overhead is being paid through corporate. So, that’s one system.
But in order to do that, you have to be really buttoned up about what you’re doing and making sure that is treated like it’s completely own department and then the operators and that catering sales manager are, kind of, working hand-in-hand to make sure that they’re being executed properly. But usually then the operators aren’t really doing that much. Like, they’re not really involved in doing local store marketing tactics, they’re not really that involved in anything with the exception of if something goes wrong, hopefully they have a good relationship where they’ll jump in and they’ll help that.
Then you have the other model, which is basically you have—it’s kind of like what Mendo does in a way—where you have a catering lead per location and then you have the GM and the catering lead who work hand-in-hand and they’re responsible for going into their direct market and making sure that their numbers are being met. And with both of these, like Amanda said, both of them are going to be compensated based on what that is, but it kind of depends on the brands and the kind of resources that you have, depending on which of those two models that you look at. I think I’ve seen probably the—I mean, I won’t say success one or the other, but you still have to have the same emphasis and the same commitment to making sure that the programs are successful, regardless of which model you determine. So, I would say, you pretty much need to still look at what is best for your business.
But all that being said, if you’re going to do catering, you still have to have a designated person who is responsible for that at the end of the day. And typically it is too challenging for the main operator of those individual locations to be responsible for actually going out and driving sales, but they should be responsible for the success of that part of their business, meaning that if there’s somebody within their four walls that would be the best person to go out and do these LSM activities, then they’re the ones who are responsible to make sure that they’re out and doing those things.
Danny: Yeah. And again, I would say, Amanda, if—or I would think you would agree that that’s where you’re in-store people, you give them really great compensation—including the management team, I would imagine, right?—so they are engaged, where it’s not, like, oh, well, that’s a corporate thing. I got my store to worry about. And then it just kind of gets fluffed off, right? If they really see the benefit and they get some reward for it, I think that would it’s just a really good way to synergistically, if I can use that word, get people to work together, right?
Monica: You know, one more good point on that topic, too, is we kind of briefly mentioned about, doing an outsource delivery partner or doing it internally. If you do it internally, all of those tips that people put on because the majority, I would say 90% of especially corporate catering customers do leave gratuity. And those can be pretty hefty. So, if you’re finding you have a lot of back-of-house turnover, you could take that gratuity and split it with that team. So, they could be theoretically making maybe $3 to $4 more an hour. So, if you’re losing people to your competitor down the street, and you can’t afford to pay them out of your own, let’s say, traditional cash, then that’s something that will help motivate them.
So, instead of them being upset that you have a big order coming in, they’re excited because they know that now that day, they’re going to come home with extra cash in their pocket. Same thing for that catering lead. You could pay them, let’s just say, a dollar more an hour plus a small commission. And if you charge $35 to $45 for a delivery fee, maybe they keep that delivery fee and then they’re in the pot along with the rest of the back-of-the house team. So again, there’s a lot of ways to be creative with it. But that can also help. Where we’re seeing so much turnover in our industry, that is another lever that we can pull to help keep people happy and longer.
Danny: Yeah. And Amanda and I are always really big, as you are also here, just talking about process here, systems, checklists, making sure everything is right, and great trainings. I was going to ask both of you to kind of follow up on that. And the other thing that this leads to is it gives people a way to move up the ladder, right? You know, succession planning.
And we are really, really big on succession planning because that’s how you keep great people. You don’t just give people a raise because they’ve been with you for 20 years. They have to kind of earn—you know, their skills get better, they get more compensation. So, let’s just talk about process and some of those things, you guys, about the way to effectively manage these, this whole catering scenario.
Amanda: So, I think in any program—so catering is certainly not my lane, but I would say that the best brands have great training in terms of, “Hey, this is the process, this is how we do everything step-by-step,” and they’re not thrown to the wolves, you know? There has to be a way where, you know, if that is the progression of, hey, you’re going to be lead server to lead catering, whatever the brand is calling them, there has to be a progression where they learn and they feel really, really comfortable. Catering is always an afterthought, so training the kitchen well, what materials do we use? What are the portion sizes? What pan?
You know, if it’s really, really difficult for the kitchen to execute catering because they don’t know, you know, the portion sizes and they have to stop and get clarity on it. So, I think the best brands have great training. The next thing I would say is there has to be a really strong commitment from the managers in that location that catering is a priority. So, if they see that the managers and the GM are really bought into this program and how it benefits them, that, oh gosh, we got another catering, they’re going to follow the tone of the leader. So, those are things that I’ve seen be very successful.
Danny: Yeah. It can either be like, “Oh, God, we have another catering order,” or, “Oh, wow, we have another catering order,” right? So, it depends on, you know, the attitude gets really, really crazy there. Oh, sorry, Monica. I didn’t mean—
Monica: Yeah, no, I mean, Amanda said it perfectly. It really is that. I mean, the emotional reaction to it is going to be based on, do I know what I’m doing or am I panicking because I’m already swamped because four people called out and all this is happening and now we just got a big catering order and oh my gosh, what do we do? I mean, ideally, you know, you have everything set up where you know in advance, when you have those catering orders, you have on your closing checklist what you need to do to get prepared for the next morning, so when your team’s coming in, you know, they’re not panicking, they know what they’re walking into, they have everything, you know, ready to go. And at the end of the day too, you know because catering is all about repeat business, the end-user is going to feel, you know, was there was their love and thought put into packing my order or was it thrown together and the foods everywhere and it’s just a total mess and they’re just trying to get it out of the door because they don’t want to deal with it.
If it’s that way, the end-user is going to know that they’re going to feel that and they’re not going to place another order. And then we go back and that same, you know, bad cycle we talked about where then the catering salesperson, the marketing team is like, “What the heck, guys? Like, we got you this giant order and you totally dropped the ball.” But yet, maybe they weren’t set up for success. So, being able to have really open and honest conversations about how everybody’s feeling about this program and do you feel supported, do you have all the resources and all of the tools necessary? And if you don’t, then, you know, do you need to pause and take a step back and make sure that your operators feel so stoked on that as opposed to being like, we’re just going to, you know, hurry up and launch this program because our investors or somebody told us that we need to and, you know, that’s never going to turn out well for anybody.
Danny: Yeah. You know, we’ve done work, particularly one client who I won’t mention at all, but, you know, like, take out was such a hassle. Like, people were just, like, throwing stuff in bags. You know, there was no TLC, so it was, you know, as an outside consultant trying to help them observing, imagining what it would have been like to get that product if I had ordered it, I would not be a happy camper, which it gets to good packaging, how you present it, how you put it into bags. It’s a lot of little things that add up to somebody having a great experience on the other end.
But I did want to digress again and ask a question before we get into sales. And we had this conversation, Amanda, and I actually raised it and I got shot down. Here’s my question. So, how after the event, you mentioned repeat sales, what do you do to follow up with that sale afterward? Because that gets back to people and process as well, right? So, what’s—you know, people don’t like getting a phone call from a number they don’t recognize, you get inundated with emails. So, we need some suggestions. How do I follow up so that people know that we cared, and [unintelligible 00:25:02] entice someone to use us again?
Monica: There’s a couple levels to this. So, even before follow-up happens, I think people need to feel really secure that that order is confirmed for a fifth time—I mean, not literally a fifth time; we don’t want to like bombard people with that—but like, you know, that morning for sure that I feel good about my—that it will be here today. So, that could be something as, you know, an automated email that goes out. These are so easy to set up now, [unintelligible 00:25:31] used to be that goes out that says, like, “Don’t even worry, you are confirmed today, you know, for 11:30 blah, blah, blah,” and maybe it does, you know, another summary of what their order is.
And then there are a lot of these delivery systems that send tracking numbers to the guest. So, when that order leaves the four walls, they get a tracking number, so now they feel even more secure knowing that their order is coming. Because, you know, we don’t know what very important meeting is happening or what they have going on in their day, so if we can alleviate any anxiety that could potentially happen before it happens, you’re already going to be a winner. So, now we’ve confirmed the morning of, we’ve sent their tracking number, they received the order. I personally order catering a lot, and I actually don’t like when I get a call from the catering sales manager to follow up because my phone rings all the time anyways, I’m kind of sick of talking, and then I panic, oh wait, did something go wrong? Why are they calling me?
Which sounds silly because this is the world that I live in, but that tells me that a lot of people probably feel the same way from just a human standpoint. So, there is one company that I order from a lot that I did kind of express that. And I said, “Sometimes I panic when you call me because I feel like something happened because I wasn’t there. And they called me like an hour later, so then I worry and maybe I’m in another meeting and that’s all I can think about. So, instead of that, if I could just get, you know, and everything was delivered, it was great, blah, blah, blah. Let us know if you have, you know, any feedback or, you know, here’s something for a next catering order.” If I just had that in an email knowing that everything was great and fine, and if I have an opportunity to give feedback, I can give it in that email response, I would prefer that rather than getting another unnecessary phone call that I frankly don’t want.
Amanda: That’s my [unintelligible 00:27:25], Monica [laugh]. So, Danny and I got in a debate about it, and I said, you know, we’re inundated, right? So, we’re getting calls, texts, and everybody wants to get in touch with us. And so, I feel like if we have feedback and we got an email like that and we wanted to give feedback, we would. I think in the world of catering, sometimes no news is good news. I think if there’s something, you’re going to hear about it.
Danny: Yeah, or just want to be concerned that we don’t hear from them again, and they don’t order again, and something was wrong. But yeah, I like the email idea. Hey, I know we’re all inundated, and you know, I’m probably very much like you, Monica. After 6 p.m. I kind of run out of words because I’ve been talking all day. The last thing I want to do is talk to somebody else and get another phone call, right?
Monica: Yeah. And even on that, on the sales side, then is the age-old question, you know, you have somebody saying, no, you have to pick up the phone and call 50 companies a day or whatever, and that also doesn’t really work. Everybody’s screening their phones because we get so much spam. And then you’ll say, well, then how are we supposed to reach them if we aren’t calling them, if we can’t get in to visit anymore because there’s so much security lockdown, what does that look like? And that really is, you know, a new way of thinking of how we’re connecting with our guests and what that looks like, which makes it even more important that when you have those relationships, that you hold onto those relationships so dearly.
And Dean on our Synergy team talks about, all the time, of the rotation of restaurants that people go to, that you have to kick them out of there, what does he say, two to three lunch places, four to five dinner places in order to be that new one. It’s the same thing with catering. You pretty much have your sandwich place, your hot entree place, and your, you know, maybe a pasta-pizza, and if you’re in one of those main categories of catering, you have to kick somebody else out who might already been working with this potential customer for a really long time. And all of that is about relationship-building and making sure, again, that they feel safe and secure all of the time, that you know, if they need a last minute order, you’re, as a salesperson, picking up your phone to say, “Yes, confirmed. I got it.”
You know, when I was a catering sales manager, I would have, like, automated—not automated when they sent it, but at least, like, a canned response. If I was in the middle of a meeting and I saw an order come through, I would respond within seconds. Like, “I got it. I’m in a meeting, but this is received. I will send you an email confirmation by the end of today.”
Because I don’t want them going to my competitor to place an order with somebody else because they didn’t hear from me. They don’t care that I’m in a meeting. That means nothing to them. All they hear about is that their order is in and they’re good to go. So, it’s our jobs to nurture that, to appreciate that, to love on them, and then make sure that we are not one of the ones that get kicked out of the rotation.
Amanda: I also think there’s personal things you can do to engage these people that are your heavy users. Like, send them a card, send them a handwritten note. “Hey, I’ve seen you’ve ordered five times from us. I really appreciate that. Here’s a little something.” Where it’s not auto-generated, that it means something when you do have those personal touches. Those things always make me feel like I’m cared for. A phone call doesn’t make me feel cared for, but a handwritten letter makes me feel cared for.
Danny: Yeah, and I love that idea because we’re so inundated with technology, spam, emails. Personalization is really, I hate to say it, kind of going by the wayside. It’s like everything kind of recycles eventually, so a little handwritten note would be a really nice way to say thank you. And they’ll remember you, right?
Monica: You know, snail mail is coming back, which is, like, a whole thing, too. We said, we were getting, oh my gosh, we have so much mail, we have so much mail. So, then everything went digital, so now you don’t really get much mail. So, now talk about something coming back. If you could get a little something in the mail, I mean, not, dear God, not another car flyer, or something like that, and just, you know, all of the ways it goes into that, but I do think it’s funny when you say everything is recycled, that is now a not-so-new sales opportunity that we’re seeing a lot of success in right now.
Danny: That’s why I never gave up actually calling people because I hate texting. I hate typing because I’d rather call. It drives you guys crazy, but I [crosstalk 00:31:40]—
Monica: Oh, it does. I know when you—I like texting, and then you call and I’m like, “Oh crap, I got to remember, he’s wants to talk on the phone.” [laugh].
Danny: Let me digress one more time. And I think another big part of the process that we should touch on is menu and traveling, which you kind of just brought up earlier, Monica. It’s critical that whatever you’re going to sell, you can execute, it will be good when it gets where it’s going, right? So, you guys want to talk about that a little bit?
Monica: You know, there’s sometimes an urge to put everything on our menu on catering, and I think when it comes to especially drop-off catering, less is more. So, if you know something doesn’t travel well, you know, like, we all know French fries just don’t travel well. And so, you know, can we do potato chips instead? Or there are, like, Lamb Weston does make, like, very specific containers that are supposed to keep fries crispy and their particular fry in general, because of the way that it is made, does help keep the crisp longer. So, if you really need to cater French fries, then that’s something that I would look into, making sure you have that right kind of packaging with the aerator holes and everything else that goes into it.
But you know, if not, and we can keep it very simple, easy to execute, and knowing that it’s going to show up in the same kind of quality it was when it left the four walls, then that really is, you know, what is more important. I think there are some brands that try to put everything on their menu and then they upset a customer because a customer doesn’t know that it’s not going to be perfect. In their mind, unless they’re in this industry, they’re assuming it’s going to show up the same way it did if they were going to go in and have it fresh. And there’s nothing wrong with that assumption. So, what can we do as operators to, kind of, ensure, as closely as we can, that kind of consistency?
Danny: Yeah, right. You know, Amanda, we talk a lot about third-party delivery, which is a form of catering, right? Who knows how it got handled once it leaves your door, but you’re going to get blamed no matter what, right? That’s something else you got to be really careful about.
Amanda: Yeah, I’m not a fan of having third-party delivery handle catering because it doesn’t always have the same TLC that an in-house person delivering it. Sometimes you have no choice and you have to go third-party, but to Danny’s point, we don’t know how many stops they have in between, you know, what else they’re doing, how long it’s going to take them to get there. If you have no other option, I think it is a good option, but if you have the option to do it yourself, I think that’s a better choice.
Monica: On that, though, I will say there are—like, we’ve used a company called Deliver That forever, and we really try to avoid the DoorDash Drive side of things. So, DoorDash Drive right now, if anybody has toast, you know, you have that connected, it’s a cheaper delivery option, but same thing, you have no idea what you’re getting. And they do say, oh, yeah, there are better rated drivers. Again, that means nothing to me. What I do love about the Deliver That and these very specific catering delivery companies is they have to be in uniform, they have to have hot/cold bags. I mean, their job depends on all of these things.
They have to send photos of the setup. They have to go through all of this confirmation. They get tracking numbers, everything, and most of these fees are still a pass-through to your customer anyways, so if you are going to use a third-party delivery, I would avoid the DoorDash Drives of the world and look at more of a professional catering delivery company. And I think Deliver That is in, you know, every major area anyways. But if not, yeah, we can definitely help, too.
If anybody is listening to this, and they do want to set up their own internal delivery, we can help with the internal delivery fleets and getting that whole process done and making sure that it’s done, you know, legally, and in the right way and make sure that everybody’s covered on top of then, you know, if you still needed to use a third party because your delivery person called off that day, then you always have that for a backup.
Danny: Yes, so are you in the camp—there’s been, sort of, a trend, or at least seemingly a trend, people are going back and want to do self-delivery versus third-party. Are you seeing more of that?
Monica: I personally am not. We know when we go in and we walk through setting up this whole program, you know, we kind of say, you know, here the pros and cons of both of these. It typically costs more money to do self-delivery than it does to use a third party, and because I feel so comfortable with the Deliver That world, like them in particular, but there are some other competitors of theirs that I’ve also had a really good experience with, I no longer see the need to do internal delivery with the exception of, like, a little hybrid. So, if there’s going to be a $5,000 order, I mean, I want the operators to take that, I want them to set it up because I really want them to keep the gratuity. There are companies that will do, like, a split gratuity, but you know, for all argument’s sake, usually those third-party people are taking those.
Which is why an operator will say, well, that’s crazy. Now, they’re going to make 300 bucks on this order. They didn’t do anything except deliver it. Well, that’s the nature of the beast. So, I think that there is a way to do both. And maybe those smaller, you know, $200, $300 orders that are consistently going out, maybe that is by, you know, one of these companies, or if it’s, you know, anything over maybe $1,000, then it’s a part of the operating standards that we deliver that ourselves as opposed to going through with our party.
Danny: I like that. Amanda, anything you want to add?
Amanda: No, I think that makes sense. I think some people are moving away from, like, traditional just DoorDash takeout because they’re just tired of seeing some of the people that are walking up to their door and they’re a little concerned. Not everybody’s tamper-proofing, but I think catering, I think generally people feel safe. On the regular to-go side, I think people are just tired of paying these ginormous fees. Now, so they’re getting two burgers and next thing you know, they’re at, like, $68 and I think people are feeling the fatigue and they’re quite frankly feeling the pinch of watching their money and they’re just not doing it as frequently.
Danny: All right. Once again, let’s get back to our subject at hand. I digress, but I think it’s all good, right? It all ties together, right? So, you can’t have great people without great sales. So, I just want to switch over to the pipeline side of things. So, we’ll start with Monica on this one. So, what do we need to do to get the pipeline filled and how do you get people, you know, if you’re not going door to door? And how do we separate ourselves from everybody else?
Monica: So, I think we still need to have all of the potential outlets. So, ezCater is causing a bit of a stir right now with the new algorithm and how brands are showing up on their platform. I personally really like ezCater. The company, the people, the everything, they have been for the most part pretty beloved where DoorDash was not. Unfortunately, the things that I’m hearing is they’re kind of moving more towards now being perceived as the DoorDashes of the world, which kind of makes my heart sad because I think that they are really important, of these kind of third-party marketplaces, where you have, you know, a lot of them who have been really successful where they are now, kind of, your outsourced sales team.
So, they already have contracts with, you know, Facebook and Google and these really large potential businesses that if you are a catering partner of theirs and they value you as a catering company and they like your team, they like how your food travels, you make their life easier, then they’re putting you on the menu that they’re planning, so I think that still is a really important piece. But it’s not as easy as just saying, “Okay, well, here’s my menu and I’m going to go on this platform and I’m going to call it a day,” because you could be eight pages down and then that doesn’t get you anywhere. So, there is still kind of a marketing plan that needs to be in place for those types of partners, but you also can’t rely on having just third-party marketplaces for catering, the same way you can’t rely on that for restaurants and individual meals. That’s why we’ve seen ghost kitchens and things like this kind of all tank because they’re relying on that one model. So again, that is one outlet, but not the only thing you can rely on.
Then we still need what we talked about before is the operations buy-in because the operations buy-in where you could get, you know, one order doesn’t mean you get repeat orders because the food still needs to go out, great quality, and you know, something that somebody could feel really good about so they know that they want to order from them again. But then on the other side, now you still need the sales piece, ideally an internal sales person, even if it’s just part time, or somebody like a New Catering Connection to take over that piece of it, to continue to build that relationship. So, let’s just say you get, you know, one order through a third-party marketplace and you have a way that you can either contact them directly to say thank you, write them a handwritten letter, maybe on their third order or their second order, you drop in a couple cookies with a handwritten note that says, like, “Thank you so much for your second order. Like, this is a little something just for you”—because it’s usually the admin who is receiving that order—or you could call them and say, you know, let’s just say there’s a $1,500 order that, you know, we said we’re going to take ourselves, maybe call the company and ask the person in charge of placing that order. You know, are they a part of this lunch meeting or maybe this is for their leadership team and that person wasn’t getting lunch that day.
If that’s the case, bring them their own individual lunch and give that to them before you start setting up for catering. And just tell them, you know, thank you so much. Like, we’re bummed that you couldn’t enjoy our delicious food, so here’s a little something just for you so you can have your own lunch. So again, making people feel special. And that’s typically then this catering lead or this catering salesperson. And then again, you’re continuing to build that relationship with them.
There’s all kinds of ways that we can still get in front of people. I think, you know, still having a sales blitz day, doing some cookie drops, knowing that of course there are some buildings that we can’t get into, but you know, there are a lot of business parks that don’t have a lot of security that have maybe, let’s just say, 100 offices with maybe, on average, 20 people working in those offices. So, those could be a day that you go around with, you know, a bunch of cookies and a bunch of things, and you know, you’re not going in with really any intention with the exception of just introducing yourself, saying hello, dropping off the cookie, giving them a menu or something to leave behind and just letting them know we are here, we are available, if you need anything, you let me know and we will take care of it. So, there’s all different kind of sales segments that we can help with this. But you need to have a sales and marketing plan for each of those in order to really continue to generate the revenue that you need.
Danny: So, you still believe in going out in the community, touching people?
Monica: I do. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Danny: We did work for a company many years ago and it was required of the manager. Every Thursday between two and four, they had to have a marketing, local store marketing. Nobody uses those terms anymore, right? Or they had to go out and call on and they had to have a pre-approved list of where they were going, you know, I don’t know, car dealers, hotel, concierge, cab drivers, whatever it was, right? And to me, it’s just back to the personal thing versus everything just happening electronically. You’re still touching somebody and having a conversation and building a face-to-face relationship.
Monica: Yeah. And I think there’s still a lot of industries where maybe it’s too hard to walk into a big bank or finance building, but there’s still a lot of frontline workers and a lot of these, the public utility and the schools and churches and other places that you could—or even that you’re a part of. I mean, think about just schools and churches. Are you a part of a church community that maybe, you know, you already know somebody there or your kids are in school, maybe you can reach out to, like, their teachers or their whatever. I mean, there’s things that we kind of all have within our own lives and communities that we can do.
Or if you do a referral program with your team to say, hey, if you bring in a catering order from anybody, we’ll give you 3% commission on this. And then you’re opening up them to open this up to their churches, to their schools, to their—you know, their mom is a nurse, and they bring this into their team. I mean, there’s ways that we can do this where it isn’t the traditional pound the pavement or pick up the phone and do a hundred phone calls a day because I don’t think that is the answer. If you wanted to do that, then a New Catering Connections would be a great partner because their entire job is to pick up the phone and to call these people. But then we need to layer it in with how are we following up, how are we making them feel valued, and how are we using a system, like, a New Catering Connection to open up the door? But we’re the ones who are continuing to build that relationship.
Danny: So, you gave us a quote here as far as our prep notes that I thought was really good, very compelling. I wanted you to kind of read it and talk about it because—
Monica: I don’t have it in front of me, so you can read it, but I can talk about it [laugh].
Danny: Okay. I’ll read it. Okay. “The best catering marketing is not about showing food. It’s about showing trust. Consistency and reliability become your brand.” And that, I think the trust factor, you know, that’s how FedEx, you know, FedEx, they don’t really pride themselves on flying stuff all over the place; they pride themselves and their brand is built on, if I need it there tomorrow, you send it FedEx because I trust them. Same thing here. So, I was going to have both of you two, kind of, would, you know, expand on that because, you know, you make plans, you assume it’s going to happen, you don’t want to have to worry about it, right?
Monica: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it kind of goes back to some things we talked about earlier of taking away that anxiety before it happens. So, sending them that confirmation email in the morning that, you know, lets them know that it’ll be ready and taken care of, and then getting the tracking number and knowing that it’s on their way, I mean, that alone takes away a lot of fear of, oh gosh, what if it doesn’t show up on time? The same thing of, you know, not waiting 24 hours. Like, it makes me really—there’s a couple things that upset me in this whole 24-hour rule. We have a lot of operators who will say, “Well, no, no, no, I can’t do a catering order within 48 hours. Like, you’re crazy. There’s no world where that can happen.”
My response very nicely is, well, then there’s no world where you can have catering. It doesn’t work that way. People do last-minute orders. We can say, you know, maybe 3 p.m. the day before as a cutoff, but don’t invest in catering if you’re going to say, no, I don’t want it unless it’s 48 hours in advance. So, that alone, if you’re saying that to a guest, they’re not going to come back to you. They’re not going to trust you.
Who was it—Panera—that said, like, they were the last-minute catering experts?—Panera or Corner Bakery or one of those—and, you know, really put themselves on the map because of it. Because again, when it’s coming back to trust, I trust that I know if, oh gosh, this catering was dropped on me, I don’t know where to order it from. Wait, every time I go to X brand, they always take care of me, even if it’s not the exact order I could place because maybe they don’t have the inventory for that, but they’ve gave me a solution, they’re going to come back to you all of the time. So, you know, maybe it isn’t getting everything right and giving them exactly what they want, but showing that again, you value them, you care about them, you’re hearing them, you’re going to be there to protect them and take care of them, they’ll keep coming back to you forever.
Danny: Yeah. It’s sort of like you build a program for yourself or you build a program for your customers, right? Which one do you want [laugh]? All right, so we’re running out of time here, but I wanted to talk about some very clear takeaways that you would like to share to kind of put a bow around all of this before we finish for today. So, what do you got? What do you want to add here, both of you?
Amanda: So, I think one thing Monica said—I’m sorry, Monica—that really stuck with me is getting your kitchen engaged in the process. I think if anybody walks away, make your kitchen people partners in your catering business in a sense, right, so, it’s not just we’re throwing all this extra work at you that’s going to create a little bit of chaos for a few minutes; we’re throwing this extra work at you because we’re all going to share in the wins. The second thing that you said that was really impactful was you’ve got to get your team, your leaders, to believe in what you’re doing in terms of catering, right? So, if they’re not bought in, like, I don’t care how great your food is, I don’t care how great your marketing is, if the core team of leaders in the building are not bought in, you’re never going to execute any catering that’s going to do any sales. Those are my two huge drop-the-mic moments I heard from you.
Danny: And you were pretty successful of that in your last job, right, being a director overseeing a bunch of restaurants, getting that buy-in. And I love the compensation piece, too, compensating, you know, the team through the fees that you collect. And to your point, Amanda, the kitchen, giving them some of the money, I think is really great. Just be careful, make sure you’re doing it legally so we don’t get into any federal labor practice problems. All right, any final thoughts, Monica?
Monica: No, I think my whole tie a-ribbon-around-it of thought is just, you know, do the right thing. Love on your people, love on your guests, love on everybody who is a part of this chain that… right now it’s challenging for everyone. Our industry is getting hit from all sides, people are exhausted, customers don’t have, you know, the money to spend like they used to, the extra fees that have come in, it’s so disheartening all around. So, I think just keeping that in mind with everything that we do of just remember, like, how can we make somebody’s day better? How can we take care of everybody around us?
And if we can’t, then let’s figure out that problem first, before we try to throw more things on our teams and say, we need sales, we need this, but if we’re not supporting them, and we’re not listening to them, and we’re not, you know, connecting with them, then, again, we’re just going to be going in circles and throwing money at a problem that we’re not actually fixing. So, we just all need to remember that it’s a challenging world right now, so just love on each other and make the right decisions and do the right thing for everybody involved. And if you need help, we’re here [laugh].
Danny: Yeah, and do it great, right? Do it great. Don’t sacrifice. Take a point if you can’t do it, great, don’t do it because you’re going to hurt yourself in the long run. Well, I would like to thank both of you, Monica and Amanda. This has been great—it’s amazing how fast time flies when you’re having fun.
And to everybody listening in, a couple of things. We’d love your feedback, info@therestaurantroadmap.com, suggestions, feedback, if you have a topic. And we are working on a little bit of a reward thing where if you send us an email with a question on any topic that you have about how to improve, we have a whole team of experts here. We’d love to help you.
Those that are chosen to have their question answered on the podcast when we do it, we’re going to offer a 30-minute free consultation on the topic to try to help you folks. We’re here to help. We have a great stable of consultants that have a tremendous amount of expertise, as you’ve seen here today. So again, I want to thank you guys for being a part of this. Reach out info at therestaurantroadmap.com. Thank you all very much and have a great rest of your day. Take care. Thanks, you guys.
Amanda: Thank you.
Monica: Thank you.
Danny: Bye-bye.
Danny: Thanks for tuning in. We hope today’s episode gave you valuable insights you can put into action. If you have questions, want more info on today’s topic, or need support with your restaurant-specific challenges, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out anytime at info@therestaurantroadmap.com, and visit synergyrestaurantconsultants.com to explore our services, sign up for our newsletter, and catch up on past episodes. Don’t forget to follow and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook so you never miss what’s next. Do you have feedback or a topic you’d like us to cover? Contact us. We’re here to help make the world a better place to eat.