Helping Foodservice Businesses Enhance Front-of-House Presence
while Improving their Operations, Brand, and Profits

As a seasoned sales rep helping restaurant operators put their best tabletop forward, you’ve likely heard the same excuses time and again from restaurant clients reluctant to upgrade their tableware. Many operators mistakenly think doing so is either too expensive or nota critical factor to their overall success.

We get it. Battle-wounded chain operators are fighting through the toughest year for restaurant sales since the recession, which doesn’t exactly make your job as a sales rep a walk down Easy Street.

But there you are, staring at dingy, chipped, cracked, or just plain tired tableware and you know it’s time for an upgrade – or even to simply replenish existing dinnerware with clean, bright plates from the same collection your clients are already using. 

So how do you move the conversation forward when you know it’s time for an upgrade but your client doesn’t see the light?

We’ve put together a few tips to help you guide your clients through the decision-making process and gain an understanding of how their tabletop is a fundamental component of their operation’s success.

After working the nightclub scene in Houston for decades, I moved to sunny San Diego to follow my dream of owning a business. I filled my days with running and growing my own catering company.     

By the time I sold it 9 years later, I had learned a lot about what to do, what not to do, and how to save as much time and money as I could because, well, that’s how you run and grow a successful business. Change is always a daily event - embrace it and make it part of your growth plan.

I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that my catering business had healthy margins and happy clients. I pride myself on that. It’s how my business matured into one of the top catering companies in this great city.

Now that I’ve moved on to a new chapter in my life (one that’s a bit easier on the back and knees), I want to share my insight with you, fellow caterer.

I’m sharing because I want your events to be the talk of the town, your companies healthy, and your employees happy and dedicated.

Here’s some Catering 101 tailored from what I’ve learned:     

Savvy hotel operators are always on the lookout for the newest trends because it’s a smart way to differentiate themselves from the competition. When they're successful, whether their property appearance is modern and fashionable or traditional and faux-authentic, guests will:

• Be comforted by their investment decision
• Feel smart about their wise choice
• Tell their friends and support your marketing awareness
• Return again and again!

The smartest, trend-minded hotel operators (that’s you!) look for small changes that offer just the right touch of panache to upgrade their overall look. And if you have your eye on improving food and beverage (F&B) displays and serveware, you’re gazing in the right direction:

“As it turns out, when done properly, F&B offerings can significantly elevate a hotel’s profitability and long-term success.”
- Hotelier Magazine

We’re going to help you stay trend-forward in 2018 with a sneak peek at tomorrow’s styles within a frame of affordable, incremental upgrades you can easily apply to your F&B displays and serveware throughout your property.

If you operate a bar, sports bar, or casual restaurant, game days offer excellent opportunities to pull in a crowd. And with football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, and more, you’ve got these opportunities throughout the year, so it’s smart to take full advantage.

Your guests have their pick of where to watch the game (now more than ever, according to Nation’s Restaurant News), so, why will they choose you over the guy down the street? If your tabletops are on-trend and you’re serving up presentations that no one else can touch, the question becomes why wouldn’t they choose you?

Whether you’re counting touchdowns, goals, or baskets, we’ve assembled a quick list to help you hit a home run every game day of the year. We’re keeping the focus on small, affordable changes you can apply right away to: 

• Differentiate yourself from the competition
• Create inviting, unexpected, and trend-forward presentations your guests will love
• Save money by using alternative, perfect-for-rowdy-crowds materials to reduce broken plates and glasses

Ready to play ball?

As a professional caterer, you know that speed is the key to success. The faster you can serve, the more parties you can book, the healthier your company gets. That’s why nearly any professional catering service uses speed racks: you tray up your food on aluminum sheet pans, put it on the speed rack, and out the door you go.

However, once you get on-site, it’s fairly typical for operations to slow down because often caterers have to take their food off the sheet pans, re-plate it, and then serve. This step not only slows down your service but you also loose food temperature in the process.

If you opt for melamine serving trays instead of aluminum sheet pans, you set yourself up to bypass this slow part altogether, allowing you to go from speed rack to service in seconds. 

We’ll tell you why.

No doubt, as a foodservice operator, you’ve likely witnessed the uptrend of using real wood boards to serve food. You’ve surely seen this practice regardless of which segment you work or eat in, whether it’s a restaurant, catering service, hotel, or bar: Wood is everywhere.

Grasping the reason why doesn’t pose much of a challenge: Wood creates beautiful, warm presentations with an authentic vintage aesthetic. Who wouldn’t want to offer their guests these cozy emotional connections?

But there’s a problem with real wood – five, to be specific. They range from expense-related constraints to sobering sanitary issues that every foodservice operator should be aware of.

Let’s take a peek at what happens when food is served on wood boards. We’ll also show you what you, as a foodservice operator, can do about it while still achieving your desired presentation style.

When you first got into foodservice as a junior manager some ten or so years ago, the world was a different place. The Great Recession was just beginning to peak at us, smartphones were nascent, and full-service casual restaurants like yours still had the lion’s share of the restaurant market.

Now, as a GM, you’re living and working during one of the most rapidly changing times in foodservice history. Today, you’re facing complexities and disruptions like:

• Fighting delivery proliferation, lower grocery prices, and the rising popularity of meal kits
• Preparing for, or, depending on which markets you serve feeling the brunt of substantial minimum wage increases, low unemployment challenges, and constantly rising health care costs
• Losing market share to an ever-growing, overcrowded competitive landscape

Nation's Restaurant News recently reported on the seriously crammed restaurant market:

"[The increase in the number of restaurants] is making the industry vastly more competitive, giving consumers more choice than they've ever had. They don't tolerate restaurants that are too expensive, too tired, too old or just plain out of favor." 

We know it’s hard out there. Every penny counts. That’s why we’ve put together this short list of the top 5 ways you can easily set yourself apart from the competition by making small, affordable changes to your tabletop. Simply by upgrading a single piece of dinnerware, you can:

• Save the money and headaches inherent with replacing your entire plateware inventory
• Increase the value perceived by your guests and possibly charge a bit more by doing so
• Earn new and repeat business, cementing your place in the market
• Create picture-ready plates for social media and be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor when your online presence gets a boost

Let’s get to upgrading!

If you’re in the foodservice business, especially as an operator of a casual or full-service restaurant, bar, lounge, or hotel, you know that the marketplace is as crowded as ever, making it a challenge to stand out from competitors.

A great way to stay relevant, earn new customers, and retain existing ones is to make sure you don’t fall behind the current trends. Here at G.E.T., we’re here to help you set the standard with insight on the 2018 trends for barware so you can:

• Differentiate yourself from your competitors, strengthening your brand equity
• Increase perceived value from your guests’ point of view with beautiful presentations
• Even be able to charge a bit more for the same beverages, padding your bottom line

Let’s see what the future has in store for your barware style. 

Part of being a savvy salesperson is keeping an eye on trends. If you sell in the foodservice space, you have undoubtedly noticed a recent surge in the popularity of wooden boards used as serving trays. Here at G.E.T., we’ve even seen charcuterie suspended from wooden clothespins.

We get it. Wood is beautiful yet edgy and seemingly everybody wants in on the action, from family buffet restaurants to James Beard winners. But wood has a lot of problems. Especially in foodservice settings.

From being tremendously difficult to sanitize to having the shortest service life of almost any other material in foodservice, using wood as dinnerware can present some serious challenges for your foodservice clients.

By recommending faux wood, you can help your clients achieve the look they want while smartly avoiding the difficulties that come along with the real deal. And in doing so, you get to be the hero in your clients’ eyes.

Onion rings: Most folks in America can’t imagine a life without them. These crunchy, sweet, and salty delights are enjoyed by diners at all kinds of restaurants from greasy spoon mom and pops to fast food, fast casual, and casual chains all over the country.

We’ve taken it upon ourselves to orchestrate some creative ways to plate onion rings that fit a variety of styles, themes, and levels of formality.