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[EO Nashville] How To Transform Catering Chaos Into Calm With Michael Attias

Michael AttiasMichael Attias is the Founder and CEO of CaterZen, the first web-based catering software for restaurants. Michael has a four-decade journey as a highly successful entrepreneur, restaurateur, and software innovator. Starting as a dishwasher at 16, he progressed to owning a barbecue franchise, where he honed his skills in catering sales using direct marketing. Michael transitioned to teaching other restaurant owners to double their catering profits and then bootstrapped CaterZen to provide comprehensive ERP software to the catering industry.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [3:30] Michael Attias talks about the full range of functionalities offered by CaterZen’s ERP system for catering
  • [5:13] Direct response marketing tools integrated within CaterZen
  • [9:54] The power of saying a proper “thank you” in business relationships
  • [12:21] Critical elements that make a catering proposal stand out from the competition
  • [24:24] How Michael revolutionized catering bookings by using direct mail creatively
  • [33:11] What made Michael create a software solution dedicated to catering needs?
  • [43:00] Michael shares the foundation behind his business approach and catering software concept
  • [48:14] CaterZen features tailored to enterprise-level clients

In this episode…

In the fast-paced world of catering, how do successful businesses turn the chaos of daily operations into a well-oiled machine? Managing orders, streamlining operations, and ensuring customer satisfaction can be overwhelming without the right tools. What’s the secret to maintaining calm amidst catering chaos?

According to Michael Attias, a seasoned entrepreneur and expert in the catering industry, the key to transforming chaos into calm lies in leveraging specialized software that addresses the unique challenges of catering. He highlights the importance of efficiency, noting that having an intuitive system in place not only saves time but also significantly boosts sales and profits. By automating repetitive tasks and offering tailored solutions, businesses can focus on delivering quality service and growing their customer base instead of being bogged down by logistical nightmares. Michael’s approach is rooted in years of hands-on experience and a deep understanding of what catering businesses truly need to thrive.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Michael Attias, Founder and CEO of CaterZen, to discuss how to transform catering chaos into calm. They explore the impact of using software to streamline operations, the importance of direct marketing in boosting sales, and the lessons Michael learned from his journey from dishwasher to successful entrepreneur.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mentions

Related Episodes

Quotable Moments

  • “The fortune is in the follow-up. It’s really true. How often have we called somebody to get a price or do something, and they never follow up with us?”
  • “How do you guarantee a catering? We’ll come out and feed your crew. If we run out of food, you don’t owe us, and we’ll give you a 20% credit on your next event.”
  • “I don’t have goals; I have directions. My goal was not to make money but not to lose his investment.”
  • “I’ve always been looking to solve problems. My whole life, I’ve been a problem solver.”
  • “Money has a conscience, and it goes where it knows it’s going to do the most good.”

Action Steps

  1. Implement a well-crafted “thank you” system: Showing appreciation can build stronger relationships and boost repeat business.
  2. Use direct response marketing techniques: Strategies like targeting niche markets and crafting compelling proposals can increase your catering sales.
  3. Embrace a customer management system: This enables you to follow up effectively and rebook events without hassle.
  4. Leverage technology: Systems such as online ordering can streamline your operations and improve the customer experience.
  5. Adopt or build a software solution that consolidates various business functions into one platform: Catering businesses will save time, translating into higher efficiency and increased profits.

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

Jeremy Weisz 0:13

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Michael Attias of CaterZen and Michael, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out, since this is a great SaaS company. It’s this part of top SaaS series and EO series. We have a mutual friend who’s amazing, Robert Hartline. He founded Call Proof. He’s also an EO Nashville. He talked about, in the episode, growing his company, absolute wireless, from 10 million to over 100 million in sales, and all of the great things and all the challenges too. So that was a great episode. Sujan Patel, founder of Mailshake, talked about how he grew to over 70,000 users. That was a great episode. Uh, Gavin Zuchlinski talked about building Acuity Scheduling. Um, it’s interesting. Michael, he was a kind of a split testing master, so he really walked through kind of the customer journey and how he helped so people wouldn’t go off of his software. He eventually then went on to sell to Squarespace. Was interesting. Eugene Levin of SEMrush talked about their SaaS product being used by over 4 million marketers. That was also a great episode as well. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. And Michael, you know this, we’re kind of like the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host and the company, so they can create amazing relationships, amazing content, but most importantly, run their business. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I have found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you have questions about podcasting, go to rise25.com and let us know if you need anything. I’m excited to introduce Michael Attias after 40 years, Michael, I know you were an overnight success, but really it started back when you were a dishwasher, and at 16, you worked your way up to owning a barbecue franchise, and you learned how to grow catering sales with direct marketing. I geek out on direct marketing, so I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts, and also you’ve built in some as direct marketing into caterers end so people can use that to grow their business. He actually went on to teach other restaurants how to double their profits from catering, and then bootstrap the catering software company, which we’re talking about cater zen.com, with only $30,000 Michael is CEO and Founder of CaterZen. It turns restaurants catering chaos into calm, right? And so basically, I’ll talk a little bit about the catering software can handle your drop off, your full service event space business. It helps with everything from the sales to the marketing operations, and helps restaurants save time, grow sales and increase profits. What else do they want? Right? So, Michael, thanks for joining me.

Michael Attias 3:30

Hey, thanks for having me. Jeremy.

Jeremy Weisz 3:32

So just start off and and this is a little bit video version as well for people. So I’m gonna share the CaterZen website here as we’re talking but just talk about CaterZen and what you do to start off.

Michael Attias 3:46

Like you mentioned, first of all, the research you do is like 1000 times better than most people who interview me. You actually looked at my stuff and know a little bit more, probably more than my family knows about me. So basically, we are an ERP for catering companies. So we handle everything that you could need to run your business. We have online ordering. We have order taking in the back end if someone calls up. We have proposal creation, electronic contracts. We have BeOS, which is like the game plan for a big event, like a wedding of Bar Mitzvah, a big event, we have a delivery router manager, we have kitchen production planning, and that’s paper as well as dynamic real time, updated tablets. We’ve done some really cool stuff in that space, email marketing, full CRM, accounts, receivable, light accounting, so literally, it runs your whole business. And I built it that it had to be simple yet robust, because you’re not dealing with a bunch of techie guys. You’re dealing with rest. On people. They need to focus on making food, not learning how to, you know, deal with complex software. So we try to make everything very intuitive, very easy to work with, and simple.

Jeremy Weisz 5:13

You know, I mentioned really, it helps save time, grow sales and increase profits. And I know you have a strong direct response background, and I’m wondering what is built into CaterZen that helps people grow sales that is kind of direct response related.

Michael Attias 5:13

So we have a we actually have direct mail letters that you can send through our software, so you can send out a thank you letter. You can send out birthday letters with the certificate. We have loyalty programs, referral programs. We have reactivation letters. We have also loyalty, loyalty through a third party, through eCards. Because you know, if you do a lot of business as a medical rep, you don’t want $1,000 a year in barbecue. You might want to use those gift cards to pay for your kids Christmas presents or what have you. We have a database CRM that you can look up. Well, I’ll give you a perfect example. You place an order. This the easiest order is a repeat order. And when I had my restaurant, let’s say I did a big event, you know, 500 person event for a company picnic, most people are like, Okay, that was great. Maybe they’ll call back next year. I would make a xerox copy. I’d put it in a file folder that was January through December, and when the month came that I was supposed to call them back, just had that piece of paper and I’d call them now, when you place an order in caters in it says, Do you want to schedule a rebooking reminder? When you do a proposal, do you want to schedule a follow up on the proposal? Because a lot of people send you proposals, they never follow up, right? Somebody told me once that their boyfriend, who was in sales, says the fortunes and the follow up love that line needs to be a bumper sticker a t shirt, because it’s really true. How often have we called somebody to get a price or do something and then never fall follow up with us. We have catering inquiry forms that you can or forms you can build in your website, email marketing. We do have a lead gen system that we don’t really sell anymore, but it’s it’s there because we found people don’t want to work honestly. They want you to do the work for them. I mean, even our proposals, they’re not regular proposals. They’re beautiful proposals that look like, you know, they were graphically done, not just excel spreadsheet online ordering. We have the ability to build up cells into the menu items, as well as when someone’s taking order on the phone, we call them force upsells. Force, so you’re online. I mean, you order a package, let’s say it’s a taco bar. Do you want to order drinks? You have to answer the question, no, thank you, or Yes, dollar 95 a person, right? And the same thing, if you’re if you’ve got people taking phone orders, you’ve got to assume that they’re not going to ask those questions. So now they have to at least force check the box.

Jeremy Weisz 8:31

Filling it out on CaterZen, so they’re forced to actually be prompted for the upsells.

Michael Attias 8:37

Yeah, believe it or not, everything that touches the customer is marketing. So for instance, we have the ability to do billing like, how’s that? How’s that marketing? Well, if you’re any admin and you order in lunch from a lot of people, it’s a lot easier to have somebody who’s gonna send you a bill, and accounting can deal with it. Then get, get a credit card, cut a check, what have you when I had my restaurant, we had $25,000 in outstanding receivables, on average, in 14 years of owning the restaurant, maybe wrote off a couple of $1,000 and so now we even have collection systems. So there’s just, there’s probably more than I even remember, honestly.

Jeremy Weisz 9:21

Michael, you know, I know you have a book and you talk about catering multipliers. And what’s interesting is, obviously, you know, when I research you and what you implement and help restaurants implement with caters in this applies to any business, right? So if you’re listening like, Well, I’m not a restaurant. It doesn’t matter, like, if you have, like, those follow up systems. So can you talk a little bit about the 17 multipliers? You don’t have to talk about all of them, but what are a few of the ones that help these companies increase sales that anyone can use.

Michael Attias 9:54

Saying thank you. I learned this from a college professor, and he taught me the value of a handwritten. Thank you note, and it’s amazing the people who will invite you back or do more things for you when you just say thank you. And you know, thank you has a lot of different meanings. It could be thank you with a card. It could be a thank you gift. You know, you go to stay at someone’s house, you bring them a gift, and that’s a big one, rewarding people for their business. We talked about follow up, whether it’s rebooking an event, calling people before their event to confirm so you don’t lose the sale that you can upsell. Hey, I noticed, Jeremy, you got lunch coming in tomorrow and there are no desserts. Did you want to order dessert? Oh, yeah. So there’s just, there’s a million things that you can do to to increase those sales, right? Like, if you, if you go to, I don’t know, maybe it’s under marketing our proposals, our proposals don’t look like regular proposals. Our designers do something, go under solutions and look under sales, sales, see those proposals that doesn’t look like the typical catering proposal you get. So we’ll do a cover we’ll do a cover page. Yeah, just go to the graphics right there. We’ll do a cover page. We’ll do a frequently asked questions. We’ll do testimonials to put in there. So all good things in direct marketing you should have in your proposal, as well as pictures of things you do, because you might get the proposal and go, Oh, you got a chocolate fountain. I didn’t know y’all do chocolate fountains. What does that cost? And what we recommend is you create a set of proposal documents based on the niche you’re catering in, right? So we have, we only do one set for people. We can do other sets, or they can have their own designers do it. It’s pretty simple. But you know, what better way to sell a holiday catering than to have something that looks branded for a holiday catering or branded for a company picnic or just a generic proposal? This looks way better than anybody is going to give you out in the marketplace.

Jeremy Weisz 12:21

I want to stick on proposals for a second. I have a lot of different companies on whether you’re a restaurant, whether someone’s a digital agency, and people are setting up proposals, and I want to, I don’t want to gloss over this, because maybe it comes second nature to you, but what it should be in a proposal. So you mentioned testimonials is a key element for a proposal, pictures, maybe multimedia, videos, anything else that I guarantee you know.

Michael Attias 12:46

So I started studying direct mail and direct marketing under Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy. And how do you guarantee a catering right? So we, we did the 120% guarantee. We’re going to come out and we’re going to feed your your crew if we run out of food, you don’t know us, and we’ll give you 20% credit on your next event. That helped me close a lot of business.

Jeremy Weisz 12:47

And bring, like a professional hot dog eater or something.

Michael Attias 12:52

Or they can bring those 100 of them. I mean, that’s one, and then they’re gonna have a granny that eats nothing. I mean, you know your crowd. I mean, if we’re gonna do a factory, we’ll bring extra food, and it’s only based on the number of people. You guarantee. You can’t say, oh, we need a catering for 50 and 100 show up. We’re not paying. We also did an ON TIMER. It’s free guarantee, and we had our clients do that that we coach, because people aren’t buying food from you, they’re buying lack of embarrassment, so your admin isn’t getting a raise if today’s lunch for the team meeting shows up on time, but if it’s 30 minutes late, then she looks like you can’t do something as simple as order lunch for the team, so they don’t want to be embarrassed, so they’d rather have food that, on a scale of one to 10 is an eight, but they show up on time. They’re easy to do with. Deal with than food that’s a 10, and it’s like that temperamental chef, right? Remember the soup Nazi, and you don’t want some pain in the ass caterer who’s late, yeah? But our food is great, and you don’t understand. It’s like, yeah, I understand. My boss has an important clients, you know, and lunch needs to be there so we can start serving at 12. I don’t want to hear your your stuff, so I guarantee is probably the biggest. And then I think the way the proposals look, like our graphics, like our actual where it has a breakdown. Actually, you can color code the background to fit your your company, and put your logo in there and personalize a little bit. The other thing is, it doesn’t take long to crank out a proposal, because the biggest problem is. People need to go back and put together a proposal, and it takes forever. Literally, I could be on the phone with you right now, and I can get your information and say, Okay, what did you want? Oh, you want the taco bar. What meats Do you want? Okay, I want the ground beef, and I want the the fish. You know, do you want black beans or regular beans? Do you want corn tortillas, flour tortillas. Do you want drinks, desserts? Boom, boom, boom. And I hit a button and it goes out like literally, it’s all formatted out the door because you don’t have time. You don’t make money making proposals. You make money selling food.

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