Give your senior staffers more per hour than first-timers to encourage them to help you train the new staffers. You must make a commitment to train new staff and invest time, effort, and money. Untrained staffers leave because they feel you didn't care enough about them, and high turnover will waste even more of your resources. Nothing makes a catering company run smoothly more than trained and motivated staff.

You need to have a scheduled training session along with onthe-job training. Use videos, live demonstrations, and role-playing. All staff must be trained in the Heimlich maneuver and in responsible alcohol serving. Teach new staff how to lift a tray and pour wine, water, and coffee. Show them how to carve, open a wine bottle, and fold a napkin. Create contests where the winners receive free movie tickets or a gift certificate to a local coffee shop or ice cream parlor.

Motivating Staff and Minimizing Turnover

Motivation, of course, starts with fair pay, fair benefits, a wellorganized workplace, and open lines of communication. You should always treat your staff members at least as well as you treat your clients. Put yourself in your staff members' shoes. Reward them quickly and promptly. A little cash goes a long way toward motivating a staffer who just went beyond the call of duty to make a guest happy.

Quick and fair discipline is mandatory. Rapid correction of poor behavior is a must. You must be prepared to fire people when they show no improvement. Terminating or not calling back poor performers goes a long way toward retaining your best workers, since good people want to work with firms that have high standards.

There are several things you can do as a business owner to create a positive and stable work environment. Hire enough staff. While catering staff need to work hard, avoid being understaffed. Your staff will feel like you are taking advantage of them if you consistently expect them to do more than their job. Make sure you work harder than every other staffer. Always give a staffer who earns it a raise or a promotion.

Allow your staff to solve problems for you. Empower them to make some decisions so that they can keep guests happy. Happy guests make a happy host, and it allows you to focus on the big picture and not on minute details.

Create the Right Structure

In larger catering businesses, there's a classic struggle between the kitchen and the sales staff. Some catering businesses are sales driven, and the sales team dictates to the kitchen what goes on the menu and what they should cook and serve. Other catering firms are kitchen-driven, where the kitchen tells the sales staff what to sell.

A well-functioning catering organization works best when the kitchen, sales, and marketing work together as one team to reach a common goal. Cooperation won't happen any other way, no matter how much you try to instill it. If you reward your cooking staff for hitting a food-cost goal, your sales staff for hitting a certain dollar amount of sales, and the marketing team for hitting a certain increase in sales, then the groups will not work together as a team.

Instead, pick one goal; for example, sales figures. Come up with a plan of action yourself, and get input from the kitchen, sales, and marketing to implement it. Even though the kitchen does not work directly with sales, your kitchen staff will see that there are measures they can take on their own to help meet your vision.