Catering: It's Not Just Serving Good Foods

Those we think catering is simply a business of delivering food service, they are wrong. Catering is not just serving good foods to the customers. It means more than that.

Catering has come a long way to be considered as an artisanal affair. It is an integral part of hospitality industry and lifeblood of event management business. Being a caterer, you need to create an experience that involves the senses.

 Catering is a humble profession. Like other careers, catering also calls for a systemic training, hard work and other public relations skills. In addition to ensuring and maintaining quality food, a caterer undergoes other challenges as the business fundamental of food industry is rapidly changing.   You need to tactfully deal with business matters like administration, accounting, sales, marketing and customer relations.

In these days, catering service is much needed in major events such as conferences, seminars, meetings, trade shows, business dinners, office trips, networking events, opening ceremonies, theme parties, shareholder meetings, award ceremonies, weddings, birthdays, family events etc.

 At the core of catering service is quality food. It is undeniable.  It does not matter what venue you have selected, whom you have invited or what accommodation you have arranged for your guests, if the food is not tasty and hygienic, then your program will hardly make any impact. Your guests will return home dissatisfied. Being a caterer, you must hire an expert chef, who can better understand various changing needs of the customers.  As a professional caterer, you should also ensure that your company follows the food safety laws.

 Better customer service is essential to gain confidence of your client. For this, you must work with your customers to finalize a menu. Your team members should be courteous, polite and gracious while serving the customers. In some cases, you will be forced to undergo last moment changes in menu or you may feel it necessary to change a menu against your client's wishes.  It is very challenging to persuade your client in either situation. A good communication skill plays a vital role in handling this unwanted situation.

Your team should be flexible and creative.  Leadership skill is also highly essential to run a catering company successful.  A caterer needs to manage different employees every day, such as chefs, assistant chefs, servers, waiters, cleaners, dishwashers, sales team and finance departments. These are in-house employees. Besides this, a caterer will also deal with outside people.  To manage all the teams, a positive motivation is highly needed.

 There is no substitute for hard work. It is one of the very few industries, which calls for 24x7 alert and hard work. Your team should be prepared to work long hours. Sometime the caterer may enjoy five-star comfort and vice versa.  Business management, marketing and corporate governance are the other areas, where you need to focus.

After considering above points, it is very much clear that catering does not mean only serving foods.