Land $1,000+ Catering Paydays by Leveraging Connections

Hey everyone, Aidan here with Catering Launch. Today we have a really cool video walking through the best and easiest way to get started booking catering business, and that's through leveraging your and your employees' connections at companies across town.

It makes sense for all of us, as restaurant owners, to try and capitalize on warm leads (so people we have connections with) before going after the totally cold leads (people who have never heard of us). Let's dive in so you can see exactly what I mean.

Tomorrow as soon as you walk into your restaurant, I want you, your managers, and all your employees to type up a list of all the people you know who work for companies in your area. It could be an aunt, an uncle, a brother, a sister, or a family friend.

In the list you type up, include contact information like first and last name, the name of the company they work for, email, and phone number. If your employees only have a name, then put them to work getting the additional contact information so that you can reach out to them personally. Or, do some digging on LinkedIn.

You're going to reach out to every person on this list and leverage your relationship, or your employees' relationship with them, to score some catering business. Don't limit yourself or your employees to 5, 10, or 15 names each. Get as many as you possibly can from every employee.

The reason I encourage you to do this, is that even your newest, 16-year old employee knows someone who works at a company that needs your catering services.

Once you gather all this information, you need to bring it together in one place. Send out a Google Sheet with a tab for each employee, so they can fill in the information.

As you can see here, we have a column for every piece of information we need about these contacts, including name, company name, email, and phone number. By giving each employee their own tab in the document, you can keep track of which employee sent in which contact.

Great, so now that you have your list in front of you, hopefully after all your employees fill it out, you're looking at 100 names or more. Now you need to get started doing the reach out. Everyone you know and added to the list, you can go ahead and send them an email message that goes like this.

Now keep in mind, you want to adapt and change this message a bit based on your relationship with that specific person. If they're a regular in your restaurant or a fast friend, talk to them like you normally would. In this example, I'm going to talk to one of my friends named John who I haven't seen in a few months.

Hey John,

I hope you've been well recently. At my restaurant, we've been trying to expand the catering portion of our business. We deliver the best catering experience around for over 250 offices in town and would love to help at your company too. I'd appreciate your help connecting me with the person who buys lunches at your office.

At my restaurant, as I'm sure you know, we pride ourselves on serving the best pizza in a great atmosphere. When we cater an office, we make everyone involved in the process look like a hero and put smiles on employees' faces. I want to send you a coupon to take your family out for some food on us. I've attached that to the email, and we look forward to serving you soon.

Have an amazing day!

Aidan

Right, so we want the people we know to be excited when they recommend our restaurant to the food buyer in their office. Now, you can handle this how you prefer. I choose to send people a pretty sizeable gift card (usually $50 or so) for them to take their whole family out for pizza.

Choose what you want to do and what makes sense for your business, while keeping in mind that these contacts should be treated as more than random reach-outs, due to the personal connection with someone at your restaurant.

Alternately, instead of offering a gift card, you could work with them to set up a time where they bring their family into your restaurant and you take care of them personally. We want to offer them something substantial in return for their help.

Later on in the reach out process, we're going to use reciprocity to our favor. By giving them a few free meals, you trigger their desire to help you. That's a huge motivator that will gain you a powerful brand ambassador at many local companies.

As an ex-food buyer, I can tell you that I bought lunches for 300 people at restaurants I otherwise wouldn't have thought of, because someone gave me a recommendation. This is powerful stuff.

Now, let's move on with the interaction and say a week or two passes. John brings his family in for food, and I served them. Maybe they've made the introduction to the food buyer at their office, or more likely they forgot.

Either way, as long as they've taken you up on your end of the bargain, there's nothing wrong with asking them to keep their end. It's time to ask for your introduction. Here's what I'd say.

John, my friend!

Hopefully you enjoyed your meal. It was great to catch up with you and see the family. What a good looking bunch!

As I mentioned in my earlier email, I really want your office to have the same great experience with my restaurant's food. Could I get your help connecting with the person or people at your office in charge of ordering food? In my experience, usually Office Managers, Receptionists, and Executive Assistants are in charge of this process.

An email or text message introduction works great - however you prefer to go.

I appreciate the help!

Aidan

This email sequence is simple and effective. There's almost zero chance they ignore you, as you helped them out with free food for their family, and they just had an affirming experience that reminded them how great your restaurant is.

Once they say yes that they'd be willing to make an introduction, you can do one of two things. You can let them make the introduction however they want. Or, you can give them a quick message to work with.

Again, with so much in this course, you just need to do what works best for every person and every different situation. Here's the message that I would send to John, with instructions for him to send to Cindy - the food buyer at his office.

No matter how we're getting the introduction - through text or email - we have the exact same message. We want to get our point across without word vomiting all over them. Just give them the basics, and an easy way to reach out to you.

Here's what my super simple message looks like:

Cindy,

I know you're the one who handles food and ordering lunch catering for the [Company name] office. I want to introduce you to my friend Aidan. He runs the best pizzeria in town and is trying to expand his catering program. He does food for hundreds of offices in the area and is a real professional. Aidan wants to bring in a few pizzas soon so we can give them a try before placing an order for the office.

[I've cc-ed Aidan in this email OR I've copied Aidan on this text message conversation] so that you can connect.

Thanks!

John

This is the main message we want John to send for us. By providing him with the key ideas, we can be sure that Cindy gets all the relevant information about our goal and how we are going to help the office out.

The chances of getting a response to this email are great, but if you for some reason don't get one after a week or two, then feel free to reach out to Cindy again. She could be out on vacation, or just super busy. We've all had emails and texts slip under our radar.

Listen really carefully to this, because this is important. Never say "hopefully you saw my earlier email" or "hopefully you saw my earlier text". This is a passive aggressive phrase and is going to put a bad taste in the food buyer's mouth. Cindy could become hostile if you reach out in this way, so avoid doing this.

Instead, immediately dive into what you're saying as if you didn't send the earlier communication.

Once you get a response from Cindy, let her know that you're willing to invest in her and her company to form a partner relationship. When you extend a hand, offering free food, almost everyone is going to take you up on the offer. No one who gets this treatment is going to order from your competitors. They're going to send you an order soon.

Now, as we know, email is effective. But actually hopping on a call with the office's food buyer is way better. If your introduction was made over text, then try reaching out to the food buyer personally. By this point in the course, you're pretty much a master of persuasion and effectively communicating your restaurant's unique selling proposition, so closing the deal should be simple.

You want to give Cindy the same deal you gave John. Send her a $50 gift card, or offer to feed her whole family. When you pull out all the stops, and provide them with a VIP experience, they're going to be sure that when you cater their office, everyone's going to get the same VIP treatment.

Invest in your potential customers, and they will become paying customers. It's a simple strategy that has made me hundreds of thousands of dollars, and will make you the same amount.

After doing this strategy, Cindy will almost certainly order catering from your restaurant. It might be a few hundred dollars of business every month, or it very well could be a few thousand dollars of business every month, totaling tens of thousands of dollars of business over the course of the next year.

Either way, you've leveraged a contact to make a significant sale to a customer with a high Lifetime Value.

Rinse and repeat this process for every person in the list. This is a powerful strategy to kickstart your Outbound Marketing. A popular business phrase comes to mind. "It's not what you know, it's who you know." With catering, our network is absolutely everything, and we need to use our connections one or two degrees of separation from food buyers across town.

In our section on Mass Marketing, I told you that flyers will typically have a 5% conversion rate. Reaching out to people on the "Who You Know" list is the most powerful strategy of all, with an over 90% conversion rate. You're going to be so glad you took the time to make this list, then followed up with everyone. This is an extremely powerful strategy.

Give this a try at your restaurant, then below let me know how it went. I know you're going to make a lot of connections and add to your catering network in an effective way. As always, to everyone out there, thanks for watching, and let's crush it with catering this week!