Leonard Bernstein once said, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.”

Never having quite enough time feels like a prerequisite for owning a catering business. Something always comes up to throw you a curveball. All we can ever do is roll with the punches.

The one thing we do have control over is the plan.

I don’t like to give discounts.

Even though we have couponing features built directly into CaterZen’s software, I learned long ago, when I was still getting my feet wet in the catering business, that it’s always better to add value than to give discounts.

People use catering for a lot more reasons than just food.

Whether it’s the convenience, or a company's willingness to accept last-minute orders, people want a company that’s easy to do business with.

Sometimes it can be easy, while you’re trying to lead your business to success, to lose track of the day-to-day operations within your company.

I’m part of a CEO roundtable group, where we share ideas and strategies in how we run our businesses. It’s an invaluable resource for all of us, and because we can feed off each other’s ideas, we all benefit from learning ways to improve our business strategies.

There are very few things in the catering business that will have a greater impact on your overall success than staying organized.

It’s that time of the year again.

That’s right – every company that’s got your email is going to start flooding your email inbox with ads and promotions for every Christmas or holiday sale you could imagine.

A few weeks ago, in the first part of this series, we discussed some of the ways that you can continue to grow your catering business and get more catering orders. We talked about the importance of offering convenience and giving your customers the personal touch.

This time, I want to take things in a bit of a different direction.

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, especially when they’re new at something.

In fact, there’s a reason why they say most jobs have a "learning curve" right?

Value comes in many forms.

For some people, they find value in hunting down the best discounts or limited time offers. Others look for freebies or buy-one-get-one type deals. There are tons of different kinds of catering rewards program options you can offer.

Growth is by far one of the most important parts of achieving success in any industry.

Catering is no exception to this rule. In fact, in the saturated food services market, you should always be expanding your horizons and growing your customer base.