Writing Catering tenders pose challenging questions right from the offset. Which is the best direction of focus for your catering tender? should I concertrate on the low costs of the service or the high quality of the food?
It’s a question you should have answered when you first set up your catering services company. Your inital business model should map the future for the way your catering tenders are written.
Don’t even try to sell high quality food if your business model is an affordable low cost service. Equally if you only use the finest of locally sourced, organic, non-GM ingredients then competing on price in your catering tenders won’t work.
However, That is a lot easier said than done when you site down to write your catering tender. This decision can be helped by that of the catering tender you are looking to win.
previously Catering tenders for schools were based on cost and your tender would only have been succesful if you were amongst the cheapest.. Schools are now more aware that school dinners should be of a higher quality, largely thanks to TV Chef, Jamie Olivers Campaign.
That said, it is not as simple as that. Schools have to be seen to offer a healty good quality menu. However in most cases they can’t afford to pay the high cost of genuinely high quality catering services.
So what‘s the solution for your catering services company? How should you pitch your catering tenders?
look at both options, take low caost Cateting tenders for example. pricing you tender too high will only have one outcome, and that is not you winning the contract. Make sure your catering tenders acknowledge that they may not be the cheapest if your know thats not your angle.
Maybe you only use free range eggs. Perhaps you only use organic ingredients. Or your chocolate is fair trade. Make sure your higher prices are justified.
You may find it helps to back up your claims in your catering tenders. Are you registered as a distributor of Fairtrade products? Do you only use Soil Association certified ingredients? Then it needs to be in all your catering tenders.
So How would you write your catering tenders if you were offering low cost catering services? The answer lies in the jobs you are pitching for. Your suceess rate will be much higher if you only write catering tenders for businesses who are looking for a low budget service.
Getting the balance right for writing catering tenders is not the easiest. The potnetial client either way is going to be looking for value in the service when reading through the catering tenders submitted for consideration.