New Year’s Reflections for Your Catering Business

It’s the last few days before the new year begins. Everywhere you look right now you see articles on how to better yourself or hear hosts on the Today Show tell you how to re-center yourself and achieve your goals for 2017. While most people talk about re-centering and bettering themselves as individuals, it is also important to do these things for your catering business.

After the recent weeks spent, perhaps, on some of your busiest times of the year, you can now start to give yourself time to unwind, take a breath, and recharge your batteries. Take time to consider what you’ll do in 2017 to better your business. Reflecting on what your business brought this year, ask yourself these questions:

• Was my year what I expected it to be?
• What would I have done differently?
• What were the highlights of the year?
• How can I bring more of the good stuff from 2016 into 2017?

How you answer these questions will determine your business resolutions for the upcoming year. Didn’t really love the answers you gave? That’s okay. This part of the year is about reflecting and creating positive change. We’re sure we aren’t the only ones who wish they’d spent a little more time at the gym this year and are vowing to get to know the names of the trainers at Gold’s Gym in 2017. We’re also pretty sure business goals like “gain more clients” and “bring in a healthy income” are on your business resolution list, like many others. The difference between you and that other business (and us and our treadmill neighbor) is who sets achievable goals under the overarching resolution. Breaking down your overall goal into smaller chunks can help you be more successful.

These goals should be thought of as mile markers in your year long run. Creating an action plan with mini-goals throughout the year can help you stay on track. For example, if your overall resolution for the year is to gain more customers, set a numerical goal. Generic goals like, “I’d like to grow my business,” can be hard to achieve because you won’t necessarily know if you’ve achieved it. Defining what growth is will help you create smaller, achievable goals spread throughout the year. “I’d like to increase business by 20%” defines your growth rate, can give you a total number of events you’re working to book, and can be broken down into monthly and quarterly goals. This allows you to set more frequent finish lines to cross and little wins to celebrate throughout the year; keeping you feeling motivated and helping you quantify your progress.

Once you’ve defined these smaller goals, you should create action plans for each goal. Define the elements that will help you reach these goals, which in turn will help you reach your big goal for the year. These actions might be as simple as “sign up for booth at Richmond Wedding Expo” or as complex as developing an engaging social media marketing plan; whatever you need to do to make 2017 the most successful year your business has had to date.