There’s been a pretty poor start to this year’s season. The recession bites hard, the weather sucks and everyone’s walking around in their empty restaurants speaking doom and gloom.
Right?
Well, yes in some cases and no in others actually. So what are the bars and restaurants doing it right, doing?
It’s a core truth that you can’t sell food and drink to people when there are no people around to sell it to. But it is also true that you can overlook the audience living on your own doorstep. The catering industry is, or it should be anyway, as much about delivering a regular and trusted service to local customers as it is about attracting tourists and holidaymakers.
Price is a key issue for many. Which is why, it seems to me, the two extreme ends of the spectrum are doing pretty well so far this year. Upmarket never changes because there are always people for whom the words “double dip recession” mean nothing. And low end should be doing better than ever, with more people squeezed out of the middle bracket where food and drink out of the house are a luxury.
With the middle market struggling, cheap and cheerful can be the way to go. The onus here is on the word “cheap”, which has two connotations. One: poor quality. The other: doesn’t cost very much for what it is. In other words a bargain.
Everyone’s out for a bargain at the best of times. Right now the low cost end of the catering market should be experiencing a boom it hasn’t seen in years.
Providing catering to locals, cheap in the good sense has a double ramification. If you’re selling good cheap food and providing a friendly atmosphere in which to eat it, you create regulars. Regulars promote your business on your behalf – taking friends and family in to eat with you and enthusing about you to colleagues.
Clearly one of the key things you need to get right in order to supply cheap and cheerful catering is the right commercial catering supplies. And that doesn’t just mean food. The bigger your overheads in terms of bowls, plates, cups and cutlery, the more you have to put on the price of each cover to maintain your margins.
Now is a great time to shed the excess weight of your business, trim it back down to the basics of great food, cleanly presented, in an environment that makes people feel welcome. Everything else is just bells and whistles. So let’s stop making noise and start making some profit again. Streamline your menu. Adjust your suppliers. And create, and retain, an audience who’ll stick with you through thick and thin.
Lauren Aspall has worked in the catering industry for more than 10 years. He writes regularly on all matters hospitality – from commercial catering supplies to menu promotions.
