Catering orders without losing the cafe's day

Catering looks like free money. The margin is better than retail, the order is known in advance, and it uses a kitchen you are already paying for.

Then the order is due at nine on a Friday, which is the hour your counter is three deep, and 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 is discovered later by ringing the customer back.

The order is not taken until you have the delivery or collection time, the exact head count, the dietary requirements, the address and who meets you there, whether it needs platters, and whether the platters come back. 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 you can prep to. 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, and the ones who cannot are told 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 the thing that actually makes it expensive, which is that the prep competes with your busiest service.

Either the prep happens the night before, and somebody is paid for those hours, or it happens in the morning and your counter slows down. Both have a cost, and the second one is the one nobody puts in the price because it arrives as a worse Friday rather than as a line.

Set a minimum order value that makes the disruption worth it, and a lead time that lets the prep move 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. Send a quote with the lines priced, the time, the place and what the customer is getting, and let them accept it.

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.

Set a cut off for changes and put it in the quote. After that point a reduced head count is charged at the agreed number, which is fair once it was agreed and impossible to argue afterwards if it was not.

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.

Add the prep as tasks on the day they need doing, with an owner. A catering order that exists only as a docket on the pass is an order that depends on one person being in, and catering goes wrong on the day that person is 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 is break even once the displaced service is counted, and that it is worth keeping 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

• Take time, head count, dietaries, address, contact and platters in one pass
• Ask for dietary counts rather than accepting a note
• Set a minimum order value and a lead time that moves prep off the rush
• Send a quote the customer accepts, with a change cut off in it
• Roster the prep and pack as shifts, with tasks and owners
• Compare a quarter of catering against food, hours and counter takings