Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

I would take small samplings of your food (like paper-plate size) with creative promotional cards to area businesses. People love free food, and if it tastes great, you'll be on their radar. You might want to throw in a "special offer" with their first booking.

First, hit the chamber and host a business after hours. Next go to the local city and talk to them about hosting their meetings at your office. When I owned my restaurant I found they regularly have visitors from other cities and those meetings include working lunches.

Many professions, like architects, host vendor meetings that offer CEU's. A very busy firm will have a backlog of these weekly meetings for months ahead. They are all catered. The "stick luncheon" coordinator schedules these meetings. The presenters want to impress the firm and will go with that coordinators suggestion for lunch. That coordinator has a list of preferred caterers, make sure your menu is with her.

Most companies do working lunches which are catered. I started my catering from scratch by simply calling them, and asking what they like about their current supplier and what they do not. Just a simple honest dialog got the ball rolling.

Get the "book of lists" for your area and you'll have a hunting list of firms to target.

Elizabeth,

If you're based in the UK (which I suspect you are), the points you raised that probably don't translate include:

CEU = Continuing Education Unit.

Business after hours = an event after normal business hours.

Local city = The largest major city closest to you.

Book of lists = check with your local library on business listings, OR get imaginative with Google.

Your ideal client needs to SEE his or her event in your space. You can do this by taking photographs of the space as it's fitted out for a full event. The more your client can see themselves in this space, the more inclined they'll be to sign up with you.

The secret is in establishing long term relationships, so it might be worth offering significant reductions or value laden "freebies" to sweeten the deal. These need to be low cost (to you), but of high perceived value to potential sign ups. These can include free soft drinks; a minibus to collect people from their offices; free snacks, or inclusive rates for extras.

Permissions wise, simply photograph the room as it's set up before the event in question ... and request a sign off as part of the initial contract in which the client gives advanced permission for photography, either for records or for commercial use. CYA.

The book of lists is put out by Business Journals with the top 100 of businesses in many sectors. For example, top 100 employers in your city, top architectural firms, top law firms.

As Gary pointed out, CEU's are continuing education credits. Professions that require licensing and certifications are required to keep their status current by a certain # of CEU's a year. As in my example of architects, they do not offer CEU's -- but are required to take them. Other companies provide them to the firm. They are suppliers with an approved non commercial "class" to keep it simple. Rather than take time during normal working hours, they'll have working luncheons where the presenter buys lunch for the group. Large firms do have waiting lists for presenters who wnat to get the message across.

As in another poster's response, sampling is a great way to get the message across. I can tell you by being a presenter of approved CEU courses, the coordinator and the audience wants something "different"-- not over the top but since these guys sit in a lunch week after week it gets too routine. The presenters have funds, but not bottomless pockets.

The coordinator will let you know what appeals to their staff. For example, I did a lot of breakfast meetings. One firm told me when booking "don't bring us donuts". Another when I thought I was being creative with fresh fruit and healther snacks said "are you crazy, where are the donuts".



The Book of Lists will give you a list of targets.