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Turning Your Catering Biz Into A Really Dishy Proposition

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Let’s assume you already have the culinary talents and the dedication to customer satisfaction that are crucial to any successful catering enterprise. Besides providing food to satisfy at events, celebrations, and so on, you are also going to have to nail the image of your business. People don’t just want good food, they want good food from someone they can trust as a professional. Here, we’re going to look at how you make sure your catering biz is a tempting dish from any and all perspectives.

Make sure you are legally good to go

If you are just starting off on a freelance venture and trying out cooking for small events around you, make sure that you have all the licenses you need for a catering business. Many people will start a business off with a few trial runs for families and friends, ensuring that they get a good enough reception to start putting time, money, and effort into it. Unfortunately, many of these people keep building without realizing that they are going to need to be licensed to start charging people money for their services. If you plan on serving alcohol with your food, then you are going to need a separate license for that, too. If you can’t confirm you are fully licensed to clients, they are less inclined to trust you.

Create an online menu

As soon as your business kicks off the ground, you should try to make sure that you have some kind of online presence. Caterers are used to roaming around for their work, and often don’t have a set premises that can attract people with curb appeal. You can set up a Facebook group, but it shouldn’t serve as the “home” of your business. Take your business online and invest in a professional looking website that details your services, offers a menu, and enables potential clients to find you much more easily. A search engine optimization campaign can help you direct more local traffic to your services with little cost, too.

Tell your story

Whether it’s on your website on in brochures, make sure that you are starting to build a brand unique to your business. Your own business name, logo, and aesthetic will make up the core imagery of the brand that helps you build recognition and an image that stands apart from your competitors. But food provides a sensory and emotional journey and you can kick that narrative off with a brand story. Your brand story can talk about the inspirations for your menu and what got you started, or it can focus on the needs of the client, talking about providing convenience and comfort for those who need food quickly. Figuring out your story means figuring out which market you’re appealing to and what they want to see and hear.

Be specific in your services

Your story does not, however, tell the audience everything they need to know in detail about what services you are going to provide. It is a common mistake for brand new caterers to fail to tell clients whether they are going to be providing cutlery, what areas they can serve, even how many they can feed. Your focus on marketing your menu can distract you from some of the more crucial elements of the service that they want to hear. If you haven’t decided what level of service to offer, it’s a good idea to look at what clients look for in a caterer and figure out what you can provide without cutting too deeply into your profits. Make sure the details are listed clearly on your website and any brochures or long-form marketing material you publish.

Look the part

Your marketing and branding doesn’t end when you get the part. In fact, that’s where it starts. We are going to assume that professional caterers don’t need to be told about how to make good food or how to present it well. However, it’s wise you take the same approach to your very being, too. If you want to convince people you are dedicated to your field, then you might want to consider a uniform that makes you look like a food service professional. If you have a van or another business vehicle you use to reach venues, events, or clients, then consider investing in branding for the van, too. Not only does it cement a serious working aesthetic, but it also functions as a traveling advertisement for your services.

Speak the part, too

Professional caterers are expected to be able to communicate in detail about many different elements of the business you are in. You are going to be explaining not only your services, but your menu, specific tastes, and all sorts of other details. If you aren’t entirely confident or feel like you have trouble expressing yourself clearly, it may be worth looking into getting lessons in communication or reading books that can help you express yourself and be a little more confident. That confidence in communication will give the image of confidence in your cooking, as well.

Don’t let the strain show

As you become a more successful caterer, you are likely to become busier and busier. You might be taking on more events and clients than ever before, and you may be catering for larger crowds than you have handled in the past, too. It can be a stressful environment and you may be managing the business on the side even when you and your team is in the middle of a job. It’s important you don’t let that strain show, so it’s worth using catering management software to help you streamline all the organizational parts of it. Dealing with messy notepads or bloated Excel sheets can make it much harder to keep your cool, which can show in front of the clients and is not a flattering look.

Leverage the power of social

When you create a new dish, what is the best way to show it off to get those potential clients’ mouths watering? Having pictures to go with the menu on your website can make it even more compelling. In terms of marketing, however, food is especially powerful when published through social media. Twitter is a must-have marketing platform for any business that operates online. For food businesses, such as caterers, however, Instagram can be even more valuable. Good food has aesthetic appeal and you can use that to attract much more business, build your brand, and attract new clients through the right visual-focused social platforms.


Know your best bits

After you finish an event, it’s a good idea to review what you have learned. CRM tools can help you manage correspondence, details, and feedback from clients that can help you gather data on what works and what doesn’t. You can start to compile data based on what menu choices are most popular and which aren’t. This way, you can stop spending money on ingredients you don’t use as much and look into replacements. You can also gather feedback and see if there are any trends in which parts the clients liked, in particular, or which can be done better. Know your best bits and keep adapting your menu to maximize your profits. Even if you don’t agree with a client, it doesn’t matter. If a menu choice is costing you more money that it makes, it needs to be cut.

Keep building the network

It’s not only your reputation and image with the clients that matter. You also want to make sure that you have a firm presence within the event planning industry. Other caterers, wedding planners, and venues can all be highly valuable contacts for you. You can gain referrals from them, for instance. When caterers have a full schedule, they will often recommend an alternative. Event planners and venues often have links with local caterers. Build your links within the industry by visiting trade fairs and finding networking events near you on a regular basis.

Full mouths are good for business

Filling mouths is what you do but you should be filling them with praise as much as food. If your clients are happy and seemingly willing to shout it to the world, make good use of that. Word of mouth is one of the most effective marketing practices out there and, as food is such an emotional product, it is one of the easiest industries in which to acquire and leverage word of mouth. Ask them if they would leave a review in your Google listings or a testimonial online. Encourage them to spread the word through social media or follow you. You can even incentivize them with, for instance, a free taster or a voucher if they help you successfully gain a referral.

Food for events isn’t just a practical concern, it’s an emotionally driven purchase. Food is tied deeply to subjective enjoyment, so making it attractive as possible is in your best interests when attracting clients. The tips above should ensure that your business has an image that’s impossible to resist.

What Is Procurement?

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Procurement is a term you will hear often in business, but it may not be one which you are instantly familiar with. Procurement is all about making sure that all products a company gets are from trusted suppliers and are of good value. For example, if you had a company whose sole focus was to be environmentally friendly, the procurement team would make sure that their suppliers were environmentally friendly and that all product is sourced naturally wherever possible.

Why is it important?

Procurement is a huge part of your business strategy and it is vital to get it right in your business. If you think about it, over half of your business revenue is used to source materials and products for your company to sell on, so procurement is a department which needs to be managed correctly. You can buy Sertica’s procurement software for better management of your procurement team and this can make life much easier when researching for the correct suppliers. Making sure that the correct decisions are made with products and suppliers is absolutely essential for any business.

Visibility

In the procurement process, one of the important things to think about is visibility. Visibility means that as an organisation, you can see exactly where your money is being spent, and in turn, you can make changes to save the business money and be more successful as a result. Segmentation is a strategy which is often used for monitoring spending as it puts spending into different categories to make it easier to see what impact each type of spending has on the business.

The procurement process

The process of procuring items can involve several different steps, and here is a basic rundown of those steps which are involved here:

  • Identify requirements
  • Authorize purchase request
  • Identify suppliers
  • Make inquiries
  • Get quotes
  • Negotiate terms
  • Make a decision
  • Creating a purchase order
  • Sort out shipping
  • Receive invoices
  • Make payment

Is Procurement Purchasing?

Most people use the term purchasing and procurement as the same thing, but they are different in the fact that purchasing doesn’t concern itself with the sourcing and researching of suppliers, it is only concerned with the shipping, making an invoice and paying for the goods. Procurement is a department which you should have alongside the buying department in your business for maximum efficiency.

Learn more here about how you can use software to enhance this area of your business easily and give you a head start above your competitors for both purchasing and procurement.

Using technology

In this day and age, we are lucky enough to have software for pretty much any business process, and our procurement process is no different. Because the process of procuring items can be complicated, technology can help massively by organising data and comparing different quotes to come up with your final decision. It can make life much easier and allow for more productive working on the case.

If you don’t already have a procurement manager or team in your workplace, now is the time to take that leap and hire yourself a new member of the team. Procurement is a vital role in any business, and it can make a massive difference to your success and growth in the industry.

How to Run Your Business in the Most Cost Effective Way

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Running your company in the most cost effective way possible should be your number one priority right now. If it’s not, that suggests there’s something wrong. So why is this so important? Most business owners assume that things are being run efficiently and cost effectively, but that’s often not the case at all. Making those kinds of assumptions as an entrepreneur is almost always a bad idea.

You’ll be surprised by the many ways in which your business is probably throwing money away right now. It’s something that you can’t let continue because the sooner you look into it, the sooner you’ll realise that you’re throwing away resources unnecessarily. We’re not going to look at some of the things you can do to make your business operate in a more cost effective kind of way.

Outsource Certain Minor Things

There are are some things that you simply shouldn’t waste time and money hiring people to do. For example, something like data entry is something that’s very simply and very mundane. That’s why you shouldn’t be afraid to outsource certain minor issues and problems that might be present inside your business. Make them problems for someone else to deal with.

Put Stuff in the Cloud

The cloud offers you a fantastic way to save money because it’s all about switching stuff from your servers and putting them up in the cloud freely and easily. You don’t have to worry about running servers and paying for the electricity that powers all this stuff. It’s something that’s definitely worth considering and looking into if you haven’t had any experience with cloud computing and storage just yet. So it’s about time you started putting more stuff in the cloud.

Embrace Green Ideas

Running your business in a green way is one of the shortest and most obvious ways to make your business more cost effective and efficient. If you install water limits so that water can’t be wasted, you’ll save money. If you produce some of your own energy reserves, you’ll save money. And if you cut the amount of paper and cardboard you use, you’ll save money. When you go green, you save; it really is as simple as that.

Keep Modernising Your Advertising and Marketing Strategies

If you’re still persevering with advertising and marketing strategies that are well past their sell by date, you’re only going to run into disappointment sooner or later. Those strategies will produce ever diminishing results, and they’re not cheap. The modern ways of reaching people via targeted online ads and social media content is much more cost effective. So if you’re still living in the past, it’s time to drag yourself into the future.

Choose Tools and Components That Reduce Wastage

Depending on what kind of sector and industry you’re working in, there are all kinds of tools and components that can help you to make less. If you’re working in manufacturing, for example, you can use a flow meter to help keep things safe, secure and efficient. There are plenty of other examples of similar components that you can make use of in your place of work too, so this is something for you to look into.

Travel Around Less

Business travel can be really expensive, even if you’re just travelling across the city. Of course, you do still have to do a little travelling in order to run a successful business, especially if you want to go global. But you certainly can minimise the amount of travelling you’re doing by embracing conference calls and things like that. With modern tech, you don’t need to travel to discuss things with your clients, partners or suppliers, so why waste the time and resources?

Be More Careful During the Recruitment Process

Your recruitment process is something that you should definitely try to perfect as soon as possible. This is a cost effectiveness issue because it’s all about making sure you hire the right people the first time. When you hire the wrong people, it can unbalance, undermine and massively damage your business. It can set you back years, so it’s vital to get it right the first time.

Your business is going to have to operate in an efficient and cost effective way if you want it to be a major success going forward. No business succeeds if it’s wasting money on a continual basis, so it’s time to get things in order and make your business even more profitable and sustainable than it is already.

Top Tips To Start An Online Business

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E-commerce businesses are conquering more and more market shares. Since it is tempting to be there among the top performers, you can get a head start by implementing a few straightforward things. These are some of the most important steps.

Have A Unique Business Idea

The business idea is, of course, the starting point and the heart of every online business. Maybe you want to sell products, whether digital or real goods, but maybe you also want to offer services. To develop a viable business idea is, in any case, the basis of your business success. As well as a unique idea, you should develop a clear strategy early on.

Always Remember Your Target Audience

If you do not think of a specific design concept for your online business, think about what your target group is. In the end, customers should immediately realize that they are on the right track with what they are looking for.

Also, the emotions of your visitors should be addressed. If your clothing store is aimed at women under 25, it makes sense to show fashionable and chic clothes. This is how the visitors understand that they have landed right with you.

Find A Domain Name

If you want to open an online shop, you need a good, memorable domain name. The most important rule here is that short domains are better than long. You can remember them better, and there are fewer ways to mistype.

Choose The Right Merchandise Management

What is often overlooked by many, is the right choice of inventory management. With increasing sales, many online shops often fail due to improper storage and bookkeeping. That is why it is important to ensure that you work with good software for inventory management right from the start. LFORM can help you get started with creating the most suitable website for your business.

Choose A Memorable Brand Logo

The image of a company is crucial to its success, as it is a reflection of how your brand is different from the others. Therefore, it is a high priority that the company image is in the header of the page and is easily recognizable. One thing is for sure – you have to spend your money on a good logo design because the logo quality can say a lot about your business. The same brand logo also needs to be disseminated through your social media channels. Your customers need to be 100% sure that they have really come to your site.

Choose The Right Payment Methods

On the subject of payment methods, in general, PayPal is a standard payment method that very popular with online retailers. Often, however, sales potentials are lost due to missing payment methods. You, therefore, need to analyze your target audience closely to determine which payment methods are needed. If, for example, you have an online shop with a target group from the middle to upper class with a high income, aim to offer a credit card payment method that doesn’t require the customer to leave your website.

If the online shop targets a target group with a rather low income, then you can probably do without the credit card. The age structure of the target group also plays a major role in the preferences of the payment method. Therefore, an in-depth analysis of the target group is an essential prerequisite here.

Find A Suitable Storage Place

Your business will require a suitable storage area, that is not your living room. This includes a warehouse with equipment such as a packing table, product storage shelves, hand truck, pallet trucks, shelving for shipping utensils, barcode scanners and so on.

Find A Professional Photographer

Good product pictures and descriptions are indispensable. The aim is to convince customers that your products are a top quality which will result in a purchase. This is when you should be honest and ask yourself if you are a gifted as a photographer so that you can do the job yourself. If the answer is no, find some assistance.

Offer Multiple shipping methods

So, once you’ve set the general structure, products, and prices, it’s time to think about shipping. Usually, a standard shipping method offers variants such as standard of express shipping. The standard shipping should, however, bring no additional costs, since this can deter a customer and in the worst case, can even lead them to abandon the cart.

In addition to the choice of shipping, you should also give buyers the opportunity to determine their preferred parcel delivery service. This is important to consumers and is a definite advantage over the competition.

Have An Effective Advertising Plan

An online business can only succeed if the world knows about it, so advertise wherever possible. Also, you can use social networks like Facebook or Instagram. Implementing a successful advertising plan and giving time, effort and thought into ensuring you have an effective strategy is vital to the success of any business.

Your Website Should Be User-Friendly

Experienced e-commerce business owners understand very well that website and web design alone are not very crucial. With today’s rivalry, you can only win with the help of a well-thought-out strategy. The usability of your site guarantees that your customers will have positive experiences with it.

A clear menu, a contrasting color palette, a small selection of main categories and a clear number of sub-categories. If is efficiently implemented, your visitors will understand at lightning speed whether the online shop looks attractive or not. It’s a lot faster than a regular shop – the distance between you and your competitors is just a few clicks away.

If the potential customer comes to your online shop, they must be able to access the desired product with a maximum of 2 clicks. If your customers have positive experiences after visiting your website, you are already ahead of your competitors by a few nose-lengths.

Analyze Your Competitors

Take a look at the pages of potential competitors. See what they are doing differently, so you can do better. Pay close attention to details that you find to be poorly implemented so you can learn from the mistakes of others and perform them better or differently.

This puts you one step ahead of your competitors. For example, develop an extraordinary concept or score points with particularly extensive customer service. When you exploit the unique potential of your online store, this will bring the decisive advantages.

Conclusion

For more way’s to make money online, check out this helpful guide.

Effective Communication For Your Small Business

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Being able to communicate effectively is one of the most important skills you need to have as a business owner. Every element of what you do is based on some form of communication, whether it’s with suppliers, staff or customers. Communication takes many different forms as well, including face to face, letter, email, phone call, video link, text messaging and collaborative online groups. Mastering the skills to be effective in all these formats and with a diverse range of people can be a challenge, as they all require a different approach to work well. Examining the communications generated by your business is well worth your time, and improving both your own and your team’s communication skills will have a significant impact on your success.

Being able to say what you mean

One of the problems with effective communication is the common situation where you think you’ve said one thing, but the recipient understands what you’ve said as something entirely different. Ensuring absolute clarity in terms of what you provide, and the message you are trying to send is paramount for any business. Understanding what you can offer so, you can present this to your customers in a concise manner is always worth establishing early on. Clear communication and an obvious understanding can be misconstrued if you stray too far in terms of your creative energies. This will especially be the case if you, understandably, have in-depth knowledge of what you’re offering, and may forget that some people aren’t familiar with what you are offering and are finding out about your business for the first time. The first rule of communication is to make sure that what you think you’re saying, is what the person you’re communicating with thinks you’re saying too!

Civil discourse can be defined as respectful conversation, wherein each participant is felt to be heard and respected. In the context of a small business setting, civil discourse is an essential tool for effective communication. By fostering civil discourse definition in conversation, small businesses ensure that their employees feel like their voice is being heard. This not only creates a positive work environment but encourages problem-solving and collaboration. Civil discourse also allows small businesses to express what they mean clearly and concisely, so there is less chance for misunderstandings or disagreements.

Clarity and conciseness

The simpler your message, the more easily it will be understood. Adding lots of unnecessary text to a marketing campaign or an email will just put people off reading it because with so many emails being received every day, it’s only the important ones and the ones that catch your eye that you’ll bother to read. Make it crystal clear what your message is in the plainest language you can, without leaving anything important out.

Construct your message around the key facts, dates, times, prices, product details, whatever the essential information might be in your case, then add your call to action. Leading with a lengthy paragraph about how excited you are to be launching a new product will leave readers cold, but if you have a headline at the top of your message that is short and snappy. This way you’ve hooked them straight away, and then you can follow up with the essential details. Linking through to in-depth information is fine because readers can choose whether to read more or not, but you don’t want to have pages of writing obscuring the vital initial message.


Quality

Seeing poorly written posts, emails and web content is very off-putting. It speaks of a lack of care, of there not being attention to detail, and comes across as being unprofessional. When buyers are looking for products and services, they want to feel they can trust the supplier, which means they need to be demonstrating their care and attention, and the overall quality of the work they do.

Having well-written content on your site is also important for boosting your search engine rankings, as the quality of articles is one of the factors used by search engine algorithms to determine how far up the list of results your site will appear. The odd typo won’t be a deal breaker, but frequent mistakes, badly written sentences and content that is more filler than helpful article will all lead people to believe your business is of equally poor quality. Writing well is not a skill that comes naturally to everyone, and if you struggle with writing articles for your website or posts for your blog, you need to either improve your own writing or find someone who can do a better job. You might have someone on your team who would be better suited to the role of writer, or you could outsource your content writing. There is an army of highly skilled freelancers available that you can hire, and it’s worth finding out more info on how to engage them and what rates you’ll be paying.

Consistency

Communication needs to be consistent to be effective. Don’t start a blog and then forget to post for months on end; you need to communicate regularly, and the most effective frequency can differ according to the mode of communication used. Tweets, for example, are best posted daily, but you might want to do Facebook posts every other day, or three days a week. You don’t want there to be a bombardment of information, or you will be seen as a nuisance; but if you don’t communicate regularly, people will either forget about you or think you aren’t reliable. If you’re looking at maintaining a valuable online presence you need to be using a scheduling tool that will send posts out for you to all or some of your accounts, and have the ability to send posts out at allotted times, so you are never late and don’t miss days because you haven’t had time.

Communication skills can be learned, and indeed training should be considered as mandatory for your team. So much depends upon your ability to communicate effectively, and very often the lack of clear, positive communication results in missed opportunities and lost sales. If you can’t make clear what you’re selling or promoting, or if your message is delivered using poorly constructed sentences with misspellings and grammatical errors, your communication efforts will have been largely wasted. No matter how brilliant your company, your product or your service, unless you can tell people what you do in a way that they understand and that appeals to them, you will fail to get the message across. Look at the effectiveness of your own communications and see how you could improve them going forward.