Adjusting Your Restaurant’s Catering Business Plans During COVID-19

By Brianna Hilton, Contributor

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that restaurants with a catering side to their business have needed to adapt quickly, incorporating new ways of operating into their business plan. From organizing staff to deciding on what you are going to serve, there are some changes that you will need to make to your daily way of working. This is so that you can keep both your employees and your customers safe, and make sure that there is an extremely low risk of COVID-19 transmissions at an event that you are catering for. 

Design Your Restaurant’s Catering Menus Carefully 

The way that your food is served and how it is eaten could be intrinsic to the success of your business. The sharing platter is definitely out, as is anything that the customer will have cut off a piece themselves, such as roasted meats on the bone or a wheel of cheese. Instead opt for menu choices that come individually portioned and that are easy to serve.

Ultimately you will need to eliminate the possibility that people will touch somebody else’s food. If you are catering for events where you have a sit down meal, such as a wedding, then you need to also consider if the food will be served at the table by staff, or whether the plates are brought straight out prepared. It would not be advisable to have customers serve themselves from big platters as that can increase the risk of transmission. 

Sourcing Your Ingredients

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a lot of unnecessary panic in grocery stores as people were buying more food than they could consume. This led to difficulties with the supply chain and it took a little while for everything to settle down.

One thing this has shown us is how important it is that we eat seasonally, cooking with the fresh food that is available. Not only will these ingredients be in more abundance but buying in-season ingredients will also keep your costs down. The restaurant & catering business is tough enough in the best of time, forget a pandemic. Saving cash where you can while not sacrificing quality is a win-win. When purchasing food, be it season or otherwise -- it is also important to shop locally and support other local businesses.

Serving & Staff Logistics

When you are serving your food to customers, you need to make sure that you have a viable system in place to adhere to any social distancing rules. 

If you are organizing a buffet, consider in advance of this event how customers would queue to get their food. You may need to arrange a one-way system so that everyone can get their food quickly and easily without being in contact with lots of people. You should also consider how your employees and waiting staff are working together in the kitchen. You might want to arrange different prep stations so that you can keep employees separated and safe, for example.

Your restaurant and catering business operations will be different in a COVID-19 world. With some good preparations though, you can still run a successful enterprise, serving happy customers. 

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About the Author
Briana worked in the food industry for almost a decade before retreating to her own kitchen to focus on her young family. Today, she enjoys contributing to a range of online publications on the topics that are important to her, particularly in areas relating to food, ecommerce or how to combine the two. 

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