Running a restaurant and running a catering business both have, at their core, the same objective: They aim to feed people. But the two business types operate under different models, face different problems, and serve different customers. While both are rooted in a love of fine food and are devoted to good service, the two are very different animals. Feeding people in either kind of establishment may be in “the same game”; however, the nitty-gritty of running either business is very different.
Fixed Location vs. Mobile Service
A restaurant is established in a fixed location where people come to eat. Dining in a restaurant is an experience that encompasses ambiance, service, and, most crucially, a reliable menu. When I say “reliable menu,” I am referring to the sort of menu where a customer could order any dish at any time and expect a meal that consistently meets standards of quality and, yes, even creativity. Unlike the famous “surprise” menu at Grant Achatz’s Alinea, dining at Alinea’s sister restaurant, Next, entailed much less suspense. Expectation, however, is a dish best served warm; Next is a memory frozen in time. Yet catering food is not so different from running a restaurant, or so it seems from the outside looking in.
Menu Flexibility
Typically, restaurants operate with a menu from which customers can make selections. Although there may be some daily specials or changes according to the season, a restaurant’s core menu tends to be steadfast. Cooks and servers alike can count on its consistency from day to day and week to week. Many caterers, on the other hand, must operate with some degree of menu flexibility. When a caterer takes on a job, the first order of business is to work with the client to design a menu that fits the event, the event’s theme, and the event’s budget. Caterers who work with a high degree of menu flexibility can put together quite a mix of recipes, often with little or no overlap between menus served at consecutive events.
Customer Interaction
In a restaurant, the staff-customer relationship is ongoing. Regular customers tend to return, building a rapport with the staff at the restaurant. And while the dining experience is undoubtedly about the food, it is just as much, if not more so, about the service. The front of the house—waiting, hosting, serving—plays a critical role in making the space a hospitable one and ensuring the customer enjoys their time even if, say, there was a slight error with the steak temperature or one too many breadcrumbs in the desert. On the other hand, with catering, you come in, planning and executing a vision, for an event that could last anywhere from a couple of hours to a languorous cocktail reception. Once you’ve done that, you won’t likely see those customers again for some time, if at all. “If we made the meal a good memory, then they’ll want to book us again,” said a friend of mine who runs a catering company.
Operational Challenges
Every day, ownership and management of a restaurant must attend to the nitty-gritty of staff management, the continued draw of customers, and the smooth functioning of the kitchen. The restaurant must function well enough to entice the return of customers and be efficiently managed to assure the retention of staff in a notoriously high-turnover industry. On top of this, the restaurant faces a seemingly endless series of decisions that concern the way it uses its physical space, both front-of-house and back-of-house, and its decisions around the kitchen and food. These challenges are intensified for catering, where the caterer must solve the issues of stage 1 of the restaurant, on the road, followed by stage 2 of the restaurant, on premises.
Financial Models
There are also differences in the financial models of restaurants and catering services. Restaurants need a steady stream of customers, which can be unpredictable and influenced by an array of factors including location, season, and competition. Ongoing overhead costs, such as rent, utilities, and wages, can be and often are substantial. Caterers, on the other hand, work mostly on a contract basis, which provides a somewhat steady rhythm of income per event. However, that rhythm can vary; a slow period with few events can really impact a caterer’s bottom line. And in some respects, catering can be more profitable than service in a restaurant because it is per event and more contracted and manageable, and in some respects, less risky.
Conclusion
While both running a restaurant and catering food events stem from a deep love for the culinary arts, they demand different sorts of skills and even outright different business approaches. Restaurants are what you might call a “controlled” environment. They have ongoing customer relationships, predictable schedules, and a menu and personality that simply are not varied from one day to the next, at least not without some prior warning to the customers. Catering, on the other hand, is a business of endless variety and unpredictability. It requires meeting different types of client needs all the time and, when necessary, making “last minute” changes to fit some problem that has suddenly cropped up or some new idea that the client has just come up with. Understanding these basic differences is important to anyone who aspires to serve in the food business.
