Catering Consultants

Catering consultancy designed to streamline your business

Running a successful catering business requires efficient production, streamlined operations, a well-managed cashflow and an overarching strategy that seamlessly meshes these all together. Managing all of this on your own is often an impossible task.

As dedicated catering consultants, at The Engine Room we specialise in creating commercial management and financial strategy services that are not only tried and tested, but also moulded to your optimal business model.

By assessing and optimising your hospitality business from both a financial and operational standpoint, we help alleviate strategic stress, enabling you to take the helm of your hospitality business and steer it towards reaching its full potential.

Streamlining Production and Delivery

From what you are preparing to how it is prepared to the final delivery, there are multiple areas in a catering business that typically cost you, both in terms of time and funds. Our team of contract catering consultants work with you to help transform your production and delivery processes into a streamlined, watertight operation.

Looking into every detail of your service, we identify areas for optimisation and advise on the next steps for doing so in a manner that improves functionality on multiple fronts. For example, refining current food specs can help lead to not only less spend wastage but also a menu that doesn’t require highly skilled staff to execute.

In fact, we have our own recipe bank that is specifically designed for F&B companies.

Contact our team today

Get in touch to learn how our catering consultants can help improve your business

Types of Catering

Although there are some meaningful strategies that work for all caterers, the type of caterer you are dictates the primary focal points, introduces nuances and helps build the most relevant KPIs. For example, the distinction between event catering and contract catering is crucial to how our team of consultants approach strategising for your business. For example, the former should have a strong online marketing presence, while the latter should spend more energy on creating a meaningful brand and concept.

With this difference in business model comes a difference in strategic implementation. Through our experience, we know that event catering businesses wrestle with difficulties such as making the bottom line thanks to the many lines of variable expenditure related to their execution and stresses due to fluctuating cashflow situations. Meanwhile, through our contract catering consultancy expertise, we understand that the focus is on looking after partners’ needs, modelling your schedule around programmes and season trends.

The distinction in common complications based on the nature of your business and an understanding of their unique effects on your functionality is what informs our strategy. This is where you can be assured that our all-encompassing experience as catering consultants makes us a reliable partner.

An In-depth Insight Into the Financial and Operational

At The Engine Room, our approach to hospitality consultancy is different. Why? We not only consider and align all aspects of your catering company, but also integrate into the team to make sure that we know what really drives you. How do we do it? By bridging the gap between the financial and operational sides of your business.

Our team of catering consultants have extensive experience in advising on both the financial and operational aspects of your company. This enables us to provide overarching commercial advice that not only incorporates these two elements but also coherently ties them together through a robust business plan built with your individual needs in mind.

Optimising the Workforce

Efficient workforce following advice from contract catering consultants

Creating the right team to suit capacity, the jobs at hand and handle the plethora of activities that make up a catering company is a juggling act. It is hard to get right, and even harder to optimise and retain. However, by creating a meaningful business model and action plan that considers all levels of the workforce and the necessary skill sets, there are often a multitude of opportunities for staff refinement.

This begins with looking at the staff structure you have and considering the staff structure you need. Through our assessment of your catering business’ needs, we work with you to build a workforce structure that upholds your forecasts.

This ranges from necessary current positions to implementing effective staff retention and upskilling procedures. While spending a percentage of your cashflow on such changes can seem ominous to some, our team will help not only legitimise such expenditure but also ensure that you can afford it.

But why trust what we say about ourselves? Here’s what our clients had to say:

“TER offers a highly relatable service that is able to engineer a streamlined structure for effective communication about the full position of the business providing helpful data for forward planning. A must when it comes to start ups.”

Tom Daniels, Owner, The Green Bike Company

“Working with Andrew and The Engine Room has alleviated my worries and fears and taken away all the stuff I don’t want to do. It’s totally streamlined my business and my week. I’m confident in the kitchen and delivery, but the coming out and reporting to the board is all new. I needed to get the numbers to do this well, and I really do because of The Engine Room and having them in my business made me realise how well things are going and gives me the confidence to grow.”

Neil Tompkins, Owner, Nutrition Twenty 1