5. Catering, Café, and Meal Prep Updates: Operations, New Strategies, and Big Growth!

Krystal (00:00):

All right. So this podcast is a little bit of a recap of all things business that we've come about in the last four to six weeks, everything Vintage Chef Co, and Nibble and Splash. We've finished our personal podcast and moving on to this, what do we talk about?

Teagan (00:13):

Well, we go through all the motions of catering, cafe, meal prep, nibble and splash, the podcast, nibble and splash the retreat. Just literally what we've been up to lately and trying to pivot and we get chucked in the deep end and have a listen. So in this little recap, we're gonna talk about where we're at with catering, meal prep, cafe, nand, splash, all the things we do in between everything else that we just chatted about in the last podcast. But what are some highlights of the last four weeks? Krystal?

Krystal (00:46):
Oh, highlights. Hiring new staff. We've had a few new team members jump on board.

Teagan (00:52):

Yeah, because we, we lost mum and Jenna to the Jenna's Cafe, which was like you said before, very bittersweet. But they were big shoes to fill. Jenna was our events manager and mum was pretty much running the cafe kitchen. So we've had lots of new team members in and when you get new team members in, that means lots of new

Krystal (01:11): Training.

Teagan (01:12):

Training and then audits and keeping everybody on the same page. Consistency is something we really strive for, especially in the cafe. Well everywhere, but you know. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. There's a lot of customers at the cafe, whereas meal prep's more behind the scenes stuff. Um, yeah. A lot of people have been off you trying to, roster is a logistical nightmare. <laugh>,

Krystal (01:35):
But then you have to throw in people going on maternity leave. A couple of our staff have gone to have some operations. We've riddled with illness because it's the middle of winter. Yeah.

Teagan (01:47):
Who hasn't <laugh>? It's

Krystal (01:49):

Just been a nightmare. So it's actually even left you, me and even Ethan filling gaps. Ethan's been down there packing orders in the kitchen. I know. I went and chef at a job the other week. You've jumped in the cafe kitchen a few times. It's just been crazy at the moment.

Teagan (02:05):

Yep. And that's the beauty of us knowing how to do everything as well. So when we do, when the chips are down and we've got staff off, Ethan, you or myself can pretty much jump in anywhere. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, we love it too, you know, even though your job's well and truly over full-time with rostering and invoicing and all of the things like just trying to get, get all 50 employees on the same page.

Krystal (02:29):
I still love doing a few deliveries. Yeah. Cooking weddings. My all time favorite thing is just putting dishes through at the cafe. I must say though, <laugh>.

Teagan (02:38):
Oh, just imagine just having

Krystal (02:40): To do dishes full

Teagan (02:41):
Time. Yeah. It's so satisfying. It really is. I always tell everybody like, you just wanna get that bench clear. Yeah. Just get it clear and then bubble it down.

Krystal (02:48): Sparkling and yeah.

Teagan (02:50):

Catering season is about to commence. We've had a nice little off season, although I must say it doesn't feel like it's been quiet because we took on all the corporate catering at Trinity, which manages to fill those gaps perfectly. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. We've got Chelsea now on board that deals with all the um, Trinity inquiries and we've got house dinners about to start. The platter box Catering is huge. The PD days, it just seems like every day somebody across one of the Trinity's in SA needs something. Mm- Hmm. <affirmative>. And we are here to provide.

Krystal (03:26):

Absolutely. We've even stayed quite busy with just some smaller corporate jobs this winter. Just from word of mouth. We pretty much don't ever advertise or market our catering business much. I don't think we really ever have.

Teagan (03:40): No, it's

Krystal (03:41):
Pretty much all word of mouth.

Teagan (03:42):

Last year though, we went from three events, a lot of weekends. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like some even on the same night. And it was our goal this year 'cause we were still dealing with Covid bookings, really weren't we? Essentially,

Krystal (03:54):

Yeah. Everything got pushed back. We had so many double and triple booked days. Not even just weekends, days, where we would have our team sort of spread so thin. And we've learned quality over quantity when it comes to catering.

Teagan (04:08):

Hell yes. So our goal was to do one to two events a weekend now hopefully on different days. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> obviously that's not always gonna happen, but you know, we've had a lot of inquiries now where we've said we are booked out just because we didn't wanna over commit this time. So yeah, that's a learning curve that we had last year that everybody got quite frazzled during event season. So that's something we've worked on to make it a little bit more streamlined as well. You can really focus on what you're doing and the staff enjoy their job a lot more when they can focus and execute it without too much pressure. So what's next? Krystal staff meetings and restructures.

Krystal (04:48):

Yes. So if you are a business owner, I can highly recommend doing a bit of an internal audit before you go and have any staff meetings or restructures. It just gives you a whole outlay of your meeting. Just a little bit more, um, strategy behind it. So with today's digital society that we live in, it's a lot easier to track things like Google reviews, social media reviews, square reports. We use Square as our point of sale at our cafe. We use Deputy for rostering and time sheets. So you can report a lot on what your wages have been like in the last four to six weeks. Just try to always refine things. We're always looking for ways to do things better. Not necessarily change what we do, but just always seeking that constant improvement gets boring if you just sort of go through the motions all the time.

Teagan (05:37):

Yep. So, and there's so many things that have come out that weren't around when we started as well. Mm- Hmm. <affirmative>. Like even just changing your rostering to deputy and from doing, I don't know what we had before Square, but there's just all sort Oh we had three different type of events. Yeah. Calendars and now we're even looking into something again.

Krystal (05:54):
Yeah. CRMs, all those behind the scene processes.

Teagan (05:59):

But I do want to touch on reviews because you know, this is the bane of my existence. I'm the kind of person that is a perfectionist. And when you have all of these companies running, most of the time you can't be at all of them, let alone one of them. Yeah. All the time. So some reason a Google review popped up the other day. Yes. And it was of a loaded hotdog of all things, a loaded hotdog and they gave us a one star Google review. I'm still trying to, I actually need to write back to this particular person because I want to reach out and say, you know, what day did you come so we can work out who it was and who did it because it is not okay. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and everybody knows better. And this is the kind of stuff I have to worry about because we don't very often get one star reviews. Most of our reviews are five star. Yeah. We've had two one star reviews in the last four to eight weeks, I think it is. Both of them at the cafe, both outta my control, both probably from inexperienced staff that needed that little bit more training and

Krystal (07:05):
Both causing Tegan to not sleep for about a week straight <laugh>. Yes.

Teagan (07:07):

Because I can't handle it. Yeah. I'm like, we all know what the loaded hot dogs look like. We everybody should know. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> And the fact that these people remember us from our vintage chef co cafe in Lyndoch, where it was a bit more upper market, that was where we started. Mm-Hmm.

<affirmative>. But people don't realize that that cafe, the whole reason behind it was just to have a shop front for our meal prep.

Krystal (07:30): Yes.

Teagan (07:31):

So just being the location it is in at a winery, that kind of style of menu and stuff just flowed. You wouldn't have a loaded hot dog there because you don't have people walking in off the street wanting, wanting a quick bite. Whereas where we are at Plex, you know, winning that contract, they did say that there is certain non-negotiables that have to stay on the menu for the demographic demographic of people we have. So of course, if I'm having a loaded hot dog, I'm using the best bakery rolls, I'm using Barossa Bacon, I'm using the best hot dogs you can have. And I'm making them as bougie as I can <laugh> and for someone to not do my hot dogs justice <laugh>. Yes. You know, like when you cater high-end weddings and events and start luxury retreats, being associated with the hot dog is very hard.

Teagan (08:13):

I, I find that hard to deal with. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But also as a business decision, it was a no- brainer. Yeah. And I'm an entrepreneur and I follow what's right for the business and if I can keep my brand aligned in all of it and still do all of those things, I will. And that's what I try to do. So yeah. They're the little things that I struggle with. Yes. I think I remember my bad, my five bad reviews over my lifetime, more than the thousands and thousands of good reviews <laugh>. But I think that's the reason why I am where I am too. Because I actually do care so much. But you always tell me how many people did we serve that day, Krystal,

Krystal (08:48):
On the day of this Google review? Well, we think, uh, 903 customers we served

Teagan (08:54):

And that's not including the meal prep customers. It would've eaten no food that day. No, not at all. So to get one review and the fact that they were trying, well they thought they were going to a mini Lyndoch, VCC and gosh, it just would've probably just freaked them out a bit. Yeah.

Krystal (09:09):
In, in comparison from our old cafe, a week's worth of customers in our old cafe, we serve in about two

and a half hours at Star Plex. Yeah.

Teagan (09:20): It's

Krystal (09:20):
No word of a lie. It is. We serve more than one to two customers a minute average.

Teagan (09:25):
And we're open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Yep.

Krystal (09:27):

It's hard work to try and get that consistency there, but I think we're doing our best and we have a really, really good, um, team.

Teagan (09:35):
And I think it's just, and we've created new management roles now. Yeah. Where where they more it's on

overseeing and making sure that there's gonna be consistency and

Krystal (09:46):
We want the McDonald's effect. Yeah,

Teagan (09:49):
No, the McDonald's effect is when you make look good. <laugh> No, what is it? What's

Krystal (09:52): It called?

Teagan (09:53):
Uh, the, you know the movie The founder? Yes. The founder. Where it's like you wanna get, I want the

Krystal (09:57):
McDonald's business structure <laugh>. Yeah.

Teagan (09:59):
You literally, they've made their kitchens so it is the most functional way where you turn, turn, turn, you

put chips down and you push the button. And the reason they did this is to franchise

Krystal (10:10):
Franchise <laugh> get consistency in

Teagan (10:13):

Franchise and then they started to buy their properties underneath the McDonald's. Yes. Which is where they actually make their money. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So yeah. If you haven't watched the movie, the Founder and you're a business owner, get on it. It is so inspiring. It's

Krystal (10:24): Good.

Teagan (10:25):

Um, so that is how we are going with the cafe at the moment. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's always going to be a work in progress. We quite often have staff meetings and everybody, when I sat them down, showed them the Google reviews, we appointed somebody else for basically quality control. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> making sure all my front fridges are looking amazingly stocked and fresh. I'm the kind of person that there is a little bit of icing hanging off the donut and it's touched the bottom. You need to wipe that. Yes. If there is a dead leaf on a plant, you will chop that off. <laugh> like come on it. People first impressions they eat with their eyes. And that is my philosophy and it will always be. And until

everybody is doing exactly that, I will never stop. But yeah. So that's cafe meal prep. What is happening with meal prep? Krystal

Krystal (11:10):

Meal prep. Meal prep. Meal prep. So where we've done our audits and stuff like that on the cafe and we've had our staff meetings and restructures. We've also been using some of those guys and a lot of our meal prep guys, we've been doing a lot of training. So we all did our first aid training.

Teagan (11:26):
Yep. And that was two weeks ago. If you need first aid training Plex do it. And they're amazing at it.

Krystal (11:31):
So. Good. Maria is the bomb.

Teagan (11:33): She's great, isn't she?

Krystal (11:34):

Yeah. Uh, so we all did some first aid training and then those of us who have not had our chef qualifications or finished any apprentices within the last five years, all had to undergo some food safety supervisor training, which our awesome TAFE instructor, Nigel, who has pretty much been around from Day dot even. He was your TAFE instructor, wasn't he?

Teagan (11:57):
Yep. Mine, Fabians, Becks Ryan's, Josh Danika, Luke Cooper, Jacob. It's crazy. Tanya. Yeah. That's how

many apprentices we've had. Guys <laugh>.

Krystal (12:07):

Um, so yeah, he came down to our production kitchen. He did a big training session, um, along with food safety and food supervisor staff so that we can implement that throughout Cafe, meal prep. Catering just moves all in Line Health, uh, SA Health and the Food Standards Australia have brought in a whole heap of new laws and legislations over the last sort of 12 to 24 months. So we're slowly getting in line with all of them. And we also will be introducing and implementing a has plan to our meal prep business and with

Teagan (12:39):

Critical control points. Yeah. And we've always had this stuff, but it's all been updated now. So it's a lot of paperwork for you and Ethan. Yeah. And a lot of, you know, working out and you just have to sign everything off all the time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, you had to do it before, but now it's next level. Yeah. The Dutch, which I understand

Krystal (12:55):
You have to keep now, is just

Teagan (12:57):

Insane. And you just do have to, because if someone, if something had to happen, you know, we feed over seven, 7,000 meals a week with meal prep. Like if something happened, you need to be able to draw it

back to where it was and to know that it is out of our hands. Because when we had that food Yeah. It was all at its perfect control point.

Krystal (13:15):

We get, we get our stock in from reputable suppliers, we Oh yeah. Fun fact. So we found this out when Jenna got the cafe, uh, before December last year. Any Joe Blow could go and buy a food business or open a food business with absolutely zero food training and knowledge and record or documentation or anything like that. They could be buying eggs from like, you know, the market down the road or getting meat from their neighbors, a trade off for, you know, fixing their car. And you don't know where that's come from.

Teagan (13:48):
Oh my gosh. And it's very scary. Yes. 'cause of the, the state of some of the kitchens I've seen and worked

in is out of this world. Mm. Like I know that

Krystal (13:57): We

Teagan (13:57):

Are, we don't have, we don't have anything to worry about, but it's true that is part of the last month. We're being very transparent with everyone and this is where a lot of our time goes. You wouldn't think when you see us on socials and stuff like that, that we're implementing hasset plans and critical control points. And that brings me to the point where when people think we can just pop out a new meal prep meal, like it's much harder than that. We have to test it. We have to send it to our nutritionist. We now have to get critical control points for everything. We have to send it off to food test. It's just full on now, isn't it? So, oh

Krystal (14:30):

It is. It's a lot of hard work that goes into introducing new menus. And a, a big part of it as well is because we want to stay a fresh meal prep delivery service. We could go and be a, you know, I shouldn't name names with the other people out there, but we could go and be a frozen meal service or vacuum seal we can.

Teagan (14:48):

And then you don't even have to worry about this SA health because No, not. Sorry. This very important stuff because the reason why ours is so much more important to this is because we do deliver fresh. So we have that bit of oxygen left in the box. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you might see other meal prep companies that are vacuum sealed and it looks like there's no food in there, but when you unseal it, it goes. Yep. Um, or alternatively frozen, which sure much easier to get along the health standards and everything like that, but the quality of quality just goes down. Yeah, I know. So that's the stuff that we have to deal with being a fresh boutique food company. I can't tell you the amount of supermarkets I've been approached by, but I'm sticking to my guns with the way that we have our business model and Mm- Hmm. <affirmative>,

Teagan (15:34):

It's worked for us so far and we are just constantly growing. And I think the facts that we are only gonna grow to a certain point that our infrastructure will let us go to. We're gonna get to a point where we will just sell our online. Yeah. 'cause it's never gonna be, oh, we've got 10,000 meals, let's go to 20,000 to do

that, we would have to go buy a Fullblown product well factory. Yeah. It'd be factory. And then you need to start cooking things in different ways using big mm-Hmm. <affirmative> machines and stuff like that. And it takes the love out of it. Like I've still got people in that kitchen cooking rice in pots, cooking sauces in pots, grilling chicken breasts. Even if there's a thousand of 'em, they still grill them to get the flavor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Like we're not just Yeah. It's insane. Anyway, we'll talk about that another day. But meal prep marketing strategies is something we've been working on hugely in the past year. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and even more so in the past four weeks. So we use Lorraine Virtual and our marketing strategies are getting so bloody good. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we are changing all of our little ads that pop up. We've chucked a little bit more money in ads, which if you have a business and you have the budget to do so, it works. Yeah.

Krystal (16:43):
A hundred percent.

Teagan (16:44):
A hundred percent works. And having a website that is so user friendly that Jess and Kenneth have been

working on behind the scenes for us, it's just amazing, isn't it?

Krystal (16:54):

Oh, I love it. And they're also customers of ours too, so they really understand the customer experience and they're always working on ways to streamline it, making it mobile friendly, computer friendly, iPad friendly. Yeah. It's just a never ending

Teagan (17:10):

Job. And it's so funny too because she still forgets to order <laugh>. Yeah. <laugh>. She's like, oh, I was doing the emails like, don't forget your order. And then I realized mine wasn't in <laugh>. So it is crazy. Right. So we have a week to order with our meal prep. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and probably, I would say 80% of our orders come in six hours on a Sunday night, would you say?

Krystal (17:30): Oh, easily. Yep.

Teagan (17:31):
Like you might get 300 orders over the whole week until Sunday morning. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> or

200 and then, well this week we got 734. Like is that not blow your fricking mind? No,

Krystal (17:44):

It's insane. We've even had to start slitting out email and SMS marketing across different blocks of hours across the Sunday because our website was just crashing because we would send out a reminder and that much traffic would go to the website that

Teagan (17:58):
She break down. And it doesn't mean we have a bad website. No. It's just that heavy traffic,

Krystal (18:01):
The share amount of traffic. So crazy.

Teagan (18:04):

Um, we've also started doing some giveaways, so we're trying, it's kind of like our little way of doing gorilla marketing, isn't it? Mm-Hmm. Because we've spoken to a couple of people in our lives that have said, you know, to get out there lights, like you have those little popups in the middle of Rundel Mall and you just hand out meals or whatever. But yeah, that's a bit hard for us with something that needs to be refrigerated and all of that kind of stuff. So we are doing, um, feed Your Workplace Fridays where we pick a business and we take 20 meals out and discount codes out to their business. And I introduce myself and what we do and it's been so well received. We've done it twice now. And the amount of people that have never heard of us that are reordering and just are so inspired about what we do, like that was the whole goal for it, wasn't it? Yeah,

Krystal (18:46): Absolutely. So

Teagan (18:47):
That was your idea, Crile. Yep.

Krystal (18:48):
I loved that one. Feed the team Fridays,

Teagan (18:50):
Feed the team and then I'm like, fry. Yay. Yeah. <laugh>.

Krystal (18:54):
So yeah, no, it's, it's been good. We've been doing lots of PR lately. You've been nominated for a few

more awards. Um, it's coming into awards season again. And

Teagan (19:03):

Well after we wrap this up, we gotta get cute really quickly and we're going to meet with Nova 9 1 9 about radio advertising. Yeah. There's a little thing down the road, so we're gonna go there and, 'cause Ethan is my husband and he is always trying to find ways to grow meal prep, but we also don't wanna grow it too quickly. <laugh> <laugh>. But you know, he's always spoke about radio advertising or ads on tv, so we're just gonna go test the waters. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. See if it's gonna work for us because ultimately we're nearly at our goal, which is 10,000 meals. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And with meal prep, it's one of those things where yes, we're at 7,000, but those um, 700 people that have ordered aren't gonna wanna order every week. No. So you need to get your customer database up. You need to keep reaching out to new people and being only essay wide, we just gotta keep at it for a while. Yeah. Until we get to the point where we're selling out. That's

Krystal (19:56): Right. And it's

Teagan (19:57):
Coming that out of stock, that out of stock is just like, oh, it does things for me. It

Krystal (20:02):
Really does, doesn't it? Yeah.

Teagan (20:03):
But I also don't want our OG customers to miss out, so there's gonna be that Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

you know, get your orders in early if you wanna be guaranteed

Krystal (20:10): Yeah. Order

Teagan (20:12):
Once you receive your delivery basically. But yeah. So we've kind of touched on, we've covered haven't

Krystal (20:19):

We? I think everything, yeah, that's just been a brief little update of the last four to six weeks. Lots of new stuff, lots of training, lots of implementing new processes and procedures, new ways of doing marketing. It's been a really busy six weeks actually when you look back.

Teagan (20:34):

I know. And it just always seems like we're chasing our tail with trying to get ahead on um, you know, content and marketing and stuff like that. Like I still haven't even thought about marketing the retreat yet. Like I've launched it, but I've got so many angles I want to go out because our demographic for the retreat are probably people that aren't my followers, you know? Yeah. Like a lot of them. I'm hoping that a few followers, followers would jump on board when they know a bit more about it. But you know, like we are very, all of our followers and our socials are from sa Yeah. So this retreat, it's the whole of the world that can come. Yeah. So that's exciting times for us. But yeah, so thanks for listening once again. Thanks for listening to our ramble and you know, all of these little things we touch on, we're hoping to do separate podcasts on over the time. Like, you know, we've got so much to share on marketing and how we've grown literally from the ground up using social media alone. Yeah. Which is crazy. And word of mouth.

Krystal (21:31):
Um, we've actually started dot pointing a few things that people ask us to talk about along the way. So we

might even pop some question boxes up on socials and see what else you want us to talk about. But yeah.

Teagan (21:42):

Awesome. Well, we better go get cute and go to this meeting. Hey, sounds good. Bye. Thank you so much for listening everybody. If you like what you heard, please head down below, subscribe, check the show notes, follow us on socials. We'd love to hear from you and can't wait for next time.

Krystal (22:05):
She is the baddest of them all. Ooh, that's all I know.