Along with having culinary prowess and hospitality driven service, caterers need to be more than just order takers. Caterers often bear the greatest accountability and workload at an event; collaborating on the inception, managing design and logistics, the length of physical time at an event, the onsite workforce, number of vendors they interact with, and the framework they must work within. Building off the notion that Off-Premise Catering is both a science and art, also comes great accountabilities to clients, employees, profitability for company owners, the working with the guidelines of the facilities we work within, environment and community connections.

To become ultimately a successful operation, caterers need to establish guidelines on how they operate to ensure all of these responsibilities are addressed in their day-to-day operation. In this session, a "playbook" will be shared that incorporates more than 30 years of professionally learned "know how," how to harness the power and leverage the role we play at an event, how to provide proper estimates taking into account event logistics, highlight client contract requirements that protect your services based on working conditions, collaborate with other caterers to establish ground rules that create "industry standards," and how to support your community at large.

Presentation Files

830T_GBD_CSTSE25_PPT_Bringing_More_to_the_Table_than_Just_the_Food_RV1.pdf