By Lorien Green, Marketing Insights Manager

We recently asked our Catering Partners to share advice on how they’re adapting to survive during COVID-19. Here are some valuable tips we picked up:

Proactively reach out to your community

MTF Catering suggests an old-school technique: cold calling.

First, drive around your area and see which businesses have cars in the parking lots. That tells you who has on-site staff working that may need a food at work solution. Then call them. Ask to speak to the person in charge of food ordering. Once you have the right person on the line, ask if their company is supplying employee appreciation lunches. Let them know that you are available to supply individually packaged meals to their employees so that they don’t have to worry about leaving the building during the day and risking potential exposure.

Offer individually packaged meals

Clearly label each package so that the orderers don’t have to open them to find out what’s inside. You can also offer trays of assorted sandwiches, but you may want to individually wrap and label each half sandwich. Perhaps you still offer a pastry assortment, but now place each pastry into its own sleeve.

Add DIY kits to your menu

Jerome Dees of Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen in San Francisco is thinking outside the box. “Grocery packages have been easy to put together and deliver. We are also toying around with DIY kits at the moment. I’m looking forward to our DIY French Toast kit where we provide challah and the mixture for the bread to be dipped in.”

Paul Barker, owner of Pauli’s North End in Boston, is also exploring DIY kit options: “We expanded a little bit into doing meal kits, like lobster roll kits, and we have some ideas to do some additional kinds of kits. A lot more people are stocking up, cooking, doing stuff at home. So I think that’s a good idea.”

Deliver outstanding customer service

Customer service that goes above and beyond is more important than ever. If you’re delivering an order to an office address, keep in mind that if you don’t include utensils or paper plates and they don’t have them in the office, they can’t necessarily run to the corner store and grab them. Missing items such as beverages or ice present a similar problem, so making sure each order is complete, and including extras such as plastic cutlery and paper plates routinely,t will help ensure a good experience.

The world of business catering has probably changed forever. We all need to be agile and creative to adapt to the new way of doing things. 

At ezCater, we believe our restaurant partners are just that; partners. If your restaurant is not yet listed on ezCater, let’s talk. We can help you attract new customers and grow your catering business.