Catering orders without losing the cafe's day

Catering looks like free money. The margin beats retail, the order arrives in advance, and it uses a kitchen already on the payroll.

Then the order falls due at nine on a Friday, the hour your counter is three deep. The day costs more than it made.

Take the whole order the first time

Most catering problems are order taking problems. Somebody writes sandwiches for 30, Friday on a docket, and every real detail surfaces later on a call back to the customer.

The order is not taken until you have the delivery or collection time, the exact head count and the dietary requirements. Then the address and who meets you there, whether it needs platters, and whether those platters return. Ask all of it once, at the start, when the customer is already on the phone and willing.

Dietary requirements are a count, not a note

Three vegetarian and one coeliac is a number a kitchen can plan. A note saying some vegetarian options please is a decision you have pushed onto whoever is making it at six in the morning.

Ask for the count. Customers can nearly always give one. The ones who cannot hear what you will assume, which turns a complaint on the day into an agreement beforehand.

Price the hour the order displaces

A catering order costed on food and a margin ignores what actually makes it expensive. The prep competes with your busiest service.

Either the prep happens the night before, and somebody earns those hours, or it happens in the morning and the counter slows. Both carry a cost. Nobody prices the second, because it arrives as a worse Friday rather than as a line.

A minimum order value makes the disruption worth having, and a lead time moves the prep to a quieter shift. Those two numbers protect the cafe more than the margin does.

Quote it, and have the customer accept it

A catering order agreed by text is a dispute waiting for a head count change. A quote carries the priced lines, the time, the place and what the customer receives, ready for them to accept.

In Diract the customer opens a link, picks any optional extras, signs to accept or declines, and pays a deposit by card. For a corporate order the deposit matters less than the acceptance, because the acceptance is what settles the head count.

A cut off for changes belongs in the quote. After that point a reduced head count still pays the agreed number. That is fair once both sides agreed it, and impossible to argue otherwise.

Put the prep in the roster, not in somebody's memory

The order is due Friday, so the prep is a Thursday evening job and the packing is a Friday early job. Both of those are shifts, and the only reliable place for them is the roster the kitchen already reads.

The prep goes on as tasks on the day it needs doing, each with an owner. A catering order living only as a docket on the pass depends on one person arriving. Catering goes wrong on the day they do not.

Count what catering really earned

At the end of a quarter, total catering revenue and set it against the food cost plus the extra hours rostered for it. Then look at the counter takings on catering days against ordinary days.

Some cafes find catering is their best margin. Others find it breaks even once the displaced service counts, and keep it only for the customers who also fill the room on a Tuesday. Either answer is useful, and neither is visible without the count.

What to do first

• Time, head count, dietaries, address, contact and platters all get taken in one pass
• Ask for dietary counts rather than accepting a note
• A minimum order value and a lead time move the prep off the rush
• A quote the customer accepts names the date changes stop
• Roster the prep and pack as shifts, with tasks and owners
• Compare a quarter of catering against food, hours and counter takings