How’s it been for you guys the last couple of months? I mean, we all got kind of blindsided by everything, but how have you guys gotten through to this point where now things are starting to reopen?
We’ve been creative. It’s challenged us to think outside the box, but fortunately we have a nimble crew and we’ve adjusted very quickly to doing take out meals. We’ve been able to keep our team working. The bulk of our business is weddings and larger events, but, you know, we started out doing small events, and we’re happy for those as well. So we’re adjusting, and now that some larger gatherings are possible, we’re starting to see calls from people to kind of get their lives back to somewhat of a normal life.
That’s wonderful! The question I guess I have is, what people don’t realize is that the whole catering industry, you know, the catering is about events, and when there are no events because people can’t gather, then your business is gone. You lost what percentage of your business in two weeks?
100% for the last three months. Factor back in the take out business we’ve been able to recreate, but when you look at it compared to last year at this time and what we had on the books, we’re 90-95% down. This April would’ve been probably our biggest month maybe ever in a 21 year span, and it went to 5-10% of what we would’ve had.
Yeah, I’ve said that a few times, I mean, there’s no good time for a global pandemic, but springtime in Savannah, it was the absolute worst time. If it had happened in January or February, okay, business would’ve gone away, but you guys are kind of built for that.
Right, those are normally our slow times. Strangely, this January happened to be our busiest January ever, so it was really fortunate, setting up for this, that we did have some fat to live off of, so to speak.
Normally this is the time we’re getting ready, right now for June, July, August, which are slower; July and August are just about as slow as January and February, sometimes slower. So now is the time I’m actually really getting worried about how do we keep going because we’ve been into our savings to get through the last few months. So we’ve got plans, and we’re actually going to open up for a socially distant dinner next week. We’re excited about that, and we’ve already had a strong response from our wonderful supporters and customers and fans and we’re so blessed our community really did support us well with the take out meal program, and that’s been great. As I said, we wanted to keep our team working. And we did.
Very cool. So tell me about the phone calls; they have started trickling in. Are they a spattering here and there, or are you getting a feel that people are ready to get back to planning and doing and enjoying?
I think we’re on the cusp of that, of starting to see people really coming back and wanting to have things to celebrate. Normally we have a lot of graduation parties and we’ve had some people interested but nothing has ever really come to fruition. We did get an email this morning about a wedding coming up at the end of June so we’re excited about that. We’re taking some steps to offer some cost effective solutions to people who have been impacted. I think we are going to see maybe a slightly busier summer with people wanting to celebrate, that’s my hope, and we’re certainly going to try to create opportunities and events to bring people in and to create some interest and buzz where, you know, other years we might not have.
Everybody’s playing catch-up on getting their partying in, right?
Exactly. You know, fortunately, in all the events that went away, I think all except for one rescheduled for the fall, so fall will be extremely robust. We have had a couple postponements for the fall already for people getting worried; the ones that we have had have been connected with people traveling internationally, so I can understand that. You have to make plans fairly far out to organize something like that and they just don’t want to have to redo it again, but I think fall is going to be pretty strong, God willing, and we don’t have a big resurgence of the pandemic.
Yeah, knock on wood, let’s hope that that is certainly the case. So tell us about the beautiful venue, the beautiful compound that you have there in Guyton. Tell us what it is that you announced you’re offering to people who want to throw a party out there?
So, with weddings being a large part of our business, probably 80-85%, and as I said, we’ve had a lot of weddings rescheduled, some people can’t for various reasons, but they’re still prevented from finding the venue that they wanted to use, or the number of people that they were going to plan on, so our venue is suited for the 30-70 person, up to 150 outside if people wanna do inside/outside, so we actually decided to offer to people who were impacted by what we’ve just been through, to offer a discounted rate.
We’ve reduced our rental fee for the venue to what it was last year. We had increased it this year because interest has been growing, and we’ve also found out there’s a lot more involved, so we were trying to slowly grow the business of the venue, but we thought it would be the responsible thing to do to reduce the cost to try to help people taking hits from salaries, or their venues, as I said, aren’t available, or what have you. So we want to be a part of everyone coming back and still having the celebrations they want to have.
Listen to our entire podcast with Nick here.
Since you posted it to social media, have you gotten phone calls?
Absolutely, that’s the contact we had this morning. Referrals from other professionals who are aware of what we’re doing… we’re excited. We want to help our community. We’ve been very very blessed and fortunate; as I said earlier, we’re in our 21st year of business, and we haven’t gotten this far without being flexible and open to change, and tried to do our part to help others.
Speaking of community, you’ve been here your entire life, as we mentioned; what have you noticed that’s impressed you most with how this community has rallied during all of this?
Well, I think people have very much tried to support. They’ve tried to hold onto their lives, but they’ve been thoughtful in how they’ve supported, and where they’ve spent their dollars. I think it’s become even more apparent how a dollar spent locally can impact everyone. I think that’s extremely important, and needs to be emphasized often; try to spend local, buy local, look out for those people who are sourcing things locally, you know, it all helps.
The supply chains and how they were impacted. You know, we had plenty of food, it was out there, but it was in the wrong places. It was all packed in SYSCO warehouses. And I think a lot of people responded even more nimbly than us, offering groceries, and pantry items that you could buy that were just gone from the grocery stores, but I never had a problem getting in flour from SYSCO or US Foods. So I think teaching that when our government may not be as able to respond, that those of us individuals and small business owners can help patch until our government is able to turn and address things more robustly.
We all have to do our part, and I think our community did that very well. To me, my dad was a WWII veteran, and hearing what they went through and how the community came together, I think this, of course, not on that scale and not of that magnitude, but I think this gave us an indication of how tough that was and how we can try to rise to the occasion, and hopefully we’ll be even better when the next challenge comes.
You can find Nick Mueller and his catering company by clicking here.
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