Pinterest for Caterers

In our last blog post, we discussed how Pinterest can help with your internal event planning by generating ideas and giving you an organized space to visualize them.  But besides the internal ways that Pinterest can help your business, there are a number of other great ways Pinterest can give your catering business a boost.

First and foremost, the same Pinterest boards you create for your internal planning can be made public so that prospective catering customers can view your vision.  The boards work double duty, organizing your event while promoting your services at the same time.   Pinning events you’ve catered or items and services your company offers can quickly go viral on Pinterest as others are looking for ideas themselves, and re-pinning to their boards and projects.  When people view one of your original pins, and want more information, they click to get the full content, which takes them away from Pinterest to wherever the content is stored.  This will ultimately drive traffic to your website, and potentially generate new business.

In addition to pinning for a party that you have coming up, you can create boards of industry specific topics that you feel might be of interest to your audience.  Perhaps these could include tips for brides who are starting the wedding planning process or ideas for the office manager booking the company luncheons.  You could also share recipes for popular items.  Even if it isn’t your own original content, it will still help get your name out there, and your client’s will appreciate the tips and ideas you have to offer.  A quick search on Pinterest for “catering” returns a vast array of pins. Some are shown in the image below:

Pinterest offers a range of tools to help your business reach more people.  A great tool is the “Pin It” button, which you can add to your website to allow visitors to pin items from your site, to their Pinterest boards.  If you can include some stunning visuals on your website, this is an excellent way to have your content go viral.  The same pictures that you include on your site or on Pinterest of your items can also be used in your catering software; you can add them to your Total Party Planner account for display on your proposals.

Pinterest also offers businesses analytics, so you can see just how effective your Pinterest efforts are in driving traffic to your website, or which of your pins are most popular.

To mention, while Pinterest can be a fantastic marketing tool for your business, there are some potential drawbacks to its popularity for caterers to be aware of.   Now more than ever, you are probably finding clients coming to you with ideas and requests for their events that they found through the site.  These can be difficult to accommodate – especially when they request certain menu items that are not something you regularly offer or are familiar with.   If custom menus are not something you typically provide, having to create these new items can ultimately increase costs.  Food costs may increase due to the need to purchase special ingredients for a single recipe, and then an increase in labor might accompany it due to the need to familiarize and perfect this new recipe.  These recipes may also include ingredients that are out of season, again increasing the costs.   In this new Pinterest (and social media) friendly world, it is best to be prepared for these special requests and consider suggestions from your own companies offerings that are comparable.  You may also wish to enter the recipes into your Total Party Planner account to have a better idea of what the costs might be.

For more information on starting a business Pinterest account, visit their website at http://business.pinterest.com.

Happy Pinning!