A new conception of catering

Catering is getting “a new lease of life”: in fact, the food sector is facing this situation with less negative results than predicted.

This is certainly due to the initiative and business acumen of many operators, both small and large, which have found alternative solutions and new ways to deal with an unexpected period of great uncertainty. But according to the statistics, it is most of all customers and their new eating habits that have stimulated and supported the reopening of the sector.

Among these habits is the rediscovery of services such as food delivery and takeaway, which today is one of the fastest growing ways to buy food. Convenient, practical, fast, and, until a few months ago, necessary, it seems to be a safe bet that customers will continue ordering for pick up at the restaurant or home delivery, and this could change – at least in part – the work of restaurateurs and their relationship with customers.

Why choose food delivery for your business?

Things have changed, and for the better: take away and delivery has become almost an everyday practice, and is gaining the favour of Michelin-starred restaurants, small trattorias and restaurant chains. This change is particularly connected to the relatively new phenomenon of “hometainment”, or the “pleasure of staying at home”, and people’s choice to use their own living room as a place for socialising and sharing.

How convenient is it for the restaurateur, then, to provide these services for customers? Today, it seems to be a positive choice, which is able to guarantee a more profitable and reliable business. But because of this, and in order to be competitive, it is important to do it well. How? We will try to give you some advice.

Apps or internal management?

The success of a delivery or takeaway service depends most of all on its organisation. It is important to decide if you would prefer to manage the orders and deliveries yourself, taking care of every stage of the process (from receiving orders, to preparing them, all the way to delivering them to the customers) or if you want to entrust the process to companies that have been operating in this market for some time, such as delivery giants like Just Eat, Deliveroo, MyMenu and so on.

There is a substantial difference: in the first case, you pay no fees to partners, but you have to deal with the promotion of the service and the staff (including delivery riders), which complicates the management of the operation considerably. Instead, in the second case, the promotion and delivery will be provided directly through the resources of the selected operator, but they will charge a percentage on the orders and earnings.

What to do, then? Our advice is to evaluate the situation case by case, depending on your potential and current client base, and to consider the case history: many Michelin-starred restaurants, for example, have started up home delivery operations that they manage themselves. Other restaurateurs with a less select client base have instead entrusted the operation to the large-scale platforms that are already active. What is certain is that providing delivery services has been the right solution in both cases.

The right ingredients

Kitchen staff and kitchen management, menus and ingredients will have to (at least in part) adapt to your new delivery and take away operations. This is the only way possible, in fact, to handle many orders at speed (especially in certain periods, such as lunchtime and dinnertime) and prepare the right dishes correctly. You will need to improve and optimise the management of the restaurant. For this, Surgital products are an excellent solution, for many reasons.

As they don’t need to be prepared, they drastically reduce the time taken to select and process ingredients, and require a smaller number of dedicated staff. The management of staff and timing in the kitchen improves, and dishes are delivered almost immediately.

They can also be prepared in advance and used only in the amounts needed, avoiding overlap of orders and the delays this can cause; they guarantee a permanently stocked store cupboard, giving the restaurateur the ability to satisfy a wide range of orders at all times, and they take up very little space thanks to ergonomic packaging in practical, space-saving sizes: all they require is adequate refrigeration.

The sensory properties of our deep-frozen products are identical to those of fresh products. This means that they guarantee excellent quality in every dish, and allow you to create, in very little time, even recipes involving complicated preparation. Considering the hugely wide range of samples and availability, our products are suitable for any catering business – from the most exclusive to the most simple – and they guarantee excellent value for money.

Attention to detail

It is not easy to prepare a dish for home delivery or for customer collection, as it has to be done correctly: it must arrive intact at its destination, as if it has just been served. That is why it is important to choose the right containers and packaging: sealed bags for liquids such as sauces; rigid, covered containers for first and second courses; dispensers for spices; thermal tubs that keep the temperature as stable as possible.

Some restaurants also like to include serving instructions inside the box for the mise en place of the dish, so that it is as close as possible to the service that they would offer for customers dining in.

Even the menu should be redesigned, especially when the delivery is not carried out personally. First and second courses that are mostly dry are a good solution: they offer a great variety of choice, and involve no broths or liquids that could complicate delivery. Cold dishes, too – salads, made with pasta, rice or vegetables and meat – complete the menu: they are ideal for kitchen logistics, as they can be prepared in advance and are immediately ready for delivery.