Catering Sector

Tasty Tips: Applying Marketing Principles to Catering Sector

I managed the marketing for over a 100+ schools with retail outlets, coffee shops and dining halls. Pabulum Catering also owned a second company Citrea Catering for the Private Schools market. A large part of working with contract catering is winning bids in the most cost effective way. I introduced new 3D walkthroughs, and 3D models of the new sites, as well as creating 2D CAD style drawings to showcase what the new retail space could look like with these new 3D walkthroughs we saw an increase in success rate and customer satisfaction as they could really visualise the space. Pabulum Catering also rekindled my passion for cooking, whilst University I worked part-time as a chef and it was fun getting back in the kitchen even occasionally cooking, but more often than not behind a camera, shooting a video or food photography. I also worked with photographers such as Sophie Smith who has setup a photography agency called Indigo Portraits. 

%

74% open rate of emails

Over 30 schools mobilised

Comms emails sent

Over 100+ sites with a retail presence

 Recruitment Videos

Retention and recruitment is key within catering. Paired with email comms and bonus initiatives I brought the retention campaigns alive through animated videos explaining the new bonus schemes. Recruiting videos like the Join The Team were useful tools to show chef’s outside of the school catering industry niche that they could work within a school environment and the benefits, without having to stop creating stunning dishes. 

Animations – Adobe After Effects

With our retail coffee outlets I created various animations for the screens available to us. Creating offers using Adobe After Effects, and Premiere to capture the attention of the students when entering the retail space.

Videos

Showing the food offer, introducing a bit of personality and making the videos a little less ‘corporate’ as we were predominantly aiming at the teenage market. Utlilising upbeat music, speed ramps in Adobe Premiere and engaging the students when we did the videos, and free food for those involved in the video shoots! This was shot using a Canon R6 and a gimbal, the shoot was less than 20 mins and had to be done just before lunch and with over 20 students involved in the shoot!

CAD Video Walkthroughs

Created 2D CAD drawings to enable 3D walkthroughs for our tenders. These helped secure new business and stepped up our game in terms of visually showcasing what our sites could look like and create more aspirational visuals as well as make it clearer what clients could expect from working with Pabulum Catering.

Communications

With over 120 sites, and thousands of customers at each site, communication is key. I introduced the people behind the scenes to create more connection with the content. Photography and a more magazine style layout to communications led to higher engagement, more understanding of the types of food available at our sites. Communications were often linked with menu changes or tariff changes and I used that opportunity to highlight the positive changes.