Catering: The New Rules…While Rome Burns…

Today the New York Times carried a story titled:
“Forget Caviar: Holiday Parties feel the Pinch”

Even the venerable, Danny Meyer, CEO of Hudson Yards Catering and Union Square Hospitality Group, said: “(his) catering company has lost three grand-scale holiday parties by three different investment banks that we had done last year."

The article went on to state: “…and the Grinch came to ABC News last week in the form of a cost-cutting memo announcing that there would be no company-sponsored Christmas celebrations this season.
Against a backdrop of gyrating markets, widespread layoffs and bank failures, the fall social season and holiday fetes are being downsized. Caterers and party planners said they were seeing cancellations — and, even more, the entertaining equivalent of a buzz cut, with simpler menus, fewer guests, shorter hours and less glamorous glassware.

The new austerity is partly about saving pennies in a time of uncertainty. But corporate executives, hosts and the professionals they hire say it is also about that essential element of party planning: setting the mood. "Everyone is very conscious of the fact that while Rome is burning, we shouldn't be having a great time," said Sean Driscoll, a partner in Glorious Food caterers. "Nobody's ordering caviar as a first course."

Naturally, this is happening, not just in NYC (the epi-center of the stock market meltdown), but in Melbourne, Montreal, Munich, Miami and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. If you generate part of your revenue on “catering” there still might be time this holiday season to make some changes in how you market your services.

But you have to move fast.

It makes sense to not only be cognizant of this cutting back by corporations and individuals; but to be proactive in how you react to prospective clients and their concerns.

No one wants to be perceived as uncaring. There are a lot of newly unemployed people out there; people are frightened about the future; they are going to think negatively about firms that seem to be unaware – or worse – uncaring of others and the mess we’re all in these days.

Imagine how people now feel about A.I.G. after this: “….companies care about appearances, too. As Mr. Meyer, of Union Square Hospitality Group, put it: "I keep hearing, 'We don't want to be seen as another A.I.G.,' which is code for 'unnecessarily excessive in these times.' ”(A.I.G. executives drew scorn after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a retreat at a luxury beach resort in California days after receiving an $85 billion federal bailout.)”

No one wants to be seen playing while Rome burns.

Being aware of this and offering scaled-down menus and even glassware will make sense and provide the opportunity for prospects to not only reduce their normal expenditures; but appear…and be…frugal in doing so.

The name of the game is to get “some” of this business. Sure you likely won’t get the same amount or type of catering business as last year; but any business is good business this year.

Even Danny Meyer admitted in this article that: “…As October began, bookings for parties were down sharply from last year; by month's end, "we ended up well ahead of last October." The cancellation of those three corporate holiday bashes was partly offset by a number of intimate home parties. "It takes a lot of parties for 60 in someone's home to make up for a party for 500," he said. "But we'll take it however we can get it."

It’s likely not as good as in the past; but someone’s going do it.

‘Might as well be you!