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Making the Best of It

When life gives you lemons, some foodservice directors choose to make lemonade. That is the case for Bill Whitcomb, Jr., director of catering for Andrews Catering, a division of Whitsons Culinary Group, at the United Nations Federal Credit Union.

We saw a lot of businesses drastically reduce their catering last year, anywhere from 40% to 50%. Today, we’ve changed our approach and now stick to what we do well. We once would offer Caribbean or Indian food for events, but it’s expensive to get the ingredients and spices and takes a lot of time, energy and special chefs. We tell our clients our menu is based on what we can obtain easily to save money, and if they don’t make any changes, it’s more economical for them.

We work with our clients to figure out how to do the job best for their budgets. We tell them to pick cheaper dates, like mid-week, when they ask us how to save money. We try to steer them to ways to do that, like having a cash bar or pot luck suppers or office mixers from 4 to 6 p.m.

The economy offers a great opportunity for us to work with our customers. It’s definitely a silver lining. We’re preparing for this year’s holiday season, looking at various rental companies’ costs for furnishings and different avenues that can save our clients money.

For example, we’re suggesting that instead of renting small LED lighting centerpieces, customers buy them for $3 apiece and they can use them again and again in different ways.

We’ve had to change how we do business the last two years. Now, it’s larger events but fewer of them. This is a very volatile and dynamic market, but we’ve found opportunities in it.

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