We were lucky to catch up with Serge Krikorian recently and have shared our conversation below.
Serge, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?
When my wife and I started our catering business, it was just the two of us. We would cook the food, deliver the food, go back and break down the deliveries, and then come back, prep and then everything started over again the next day. We quickly grew enough that it was necessary for me to spend all my time in the kitchen prepping and cooking so we hired friends of mine to work for us delivering and setting up caterings. That was back in 2004.
Spring forward to today, when we employ approximately 70 staff, including 23 full-time staff. My staff recruits most of our new hires, reaching out to family and friends and friends of friends when we need new employees. This method has been very successful for us because we have found that family and friends of our staff share the same values and work ethic as our staff and therefore are better employees and happier working for our company.
Currently, we have several sets of parents/children who work for us, several sets of brother/sisters, cousins, spouses, and other familial relationships. At a recent training event where over 50 staff members participated, when asked to raise their hands if they were related to a fellow employee, over 85% of our staff raised their hands.
We feel that our success with our staff has come through a concerted effort to implement a “heart leadership culture”. All senior management have gone through heart leadership training and actively teach heart leadership to their team. What does heart leadership mean? It means treating people the way we would want to be treated. Realizing that our staff are human and that they have good days and bad days and being there for them whatever kind of day they are having and encouraging them in not just their professional lives but in their personal lives. We have a Culture Club that plans weekly lunches for any staff members that want to attend. The Culture Club also plans activities for the staff like picnics and trips to the lake and holiday parties. We feel like if our staff get to know each other on a personal level, they will be more willing to help each other out and “have each other’s back” when one of them needs help. The Culture Club also organizes team building events on a regular basis like scavenger hunts, coloring contests, and trivia games. All aimed at improving company morale and keeping it high.
Serge, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Our company, Vibrant Occasions Catering, is a full-service catering company. We cater weddings, large fundraisers, civic events, company picnics, and all types of other events. Our services range from a formal plated dinner to a self-service buffet and everything in between. The one type of service that our guests and our staff seem to enjoy the most are our action stations, where our staff prepare the food for the guests right in front of the guests. Guests get such a kick out of watching their food get cooked before their eyes (thank you tv cooking shows!) and my staff love the one-on-one interaction with the guests. The Street Taco Action Station is probably our most popular menu item right now served with our Shredded Brisket Tacos, Pork Carnitas and Pollo Asado.
I am often asked why I became a caterer. I never intended to become a caterer — it was completely by accident. My wife and I went to grad school with the idea that when we graduated, we would purchase our own business. Once we graduated and started looking around for a business to run, the only one we could afford to buy was a carry out and delivery pizza restaurant, which scraped every penny we could scrape together to purchase. Within three years, took that restaurant to the top 1% in the nation for independent pizza restaurants.
One day while sitting in a baseball field watching our oldest son play T-Ball, one of the moms asked my wife if we could cater a lunch to a doctor’s office the following day. Even though we had zero experience in catering, we agreed to do it and overnight our catering business exploded. Eventually, catering overtook everything and we became exclusively caterers.
When asked what I am most proud of in our business and I always have the same answer. We are so completely blessed to have surrounded ourselves with the best staff anyone, anyplace, anytime has ever had. They are smart, hard working, and loyal. This is by far the biggest asset we will ever have and we owe the success of our business to these wonderful people! Without them, my wife and I would be a whole lot of great ideas with no way to execute them.
To all of our potential clients, I want to say that we embody the very essence of a family-run business, from myself, to my wife, to our sons, to the families that work for us. We strive to bring the very best of what we can offer to each and every event that we produce.
How’d you meet your business partner?
I met my wife, Mary, while we were in college back in the 1980s. She was in my cost accounting class and we were acquaintances — that is until I decided to go to a Monsters of Rock Concert the day before the cost accounting final. I knocked on her door at about 8:30 in the morning and asked her to teach me enough cost accounting to pass the final I’m still not sure why she agreed to do it but thank goodness she did — I made a C on the test which, given the circumstances, was a real win for me.
To say thank you to her, I took her to a Mexican restaurant in a local mall (high class, I know) and then invited her to a fraternity party the following night. A week later, we went to Florida together on spring break and have been together ever since.
We both attended grad school with the plan of opening our own business upon graduation. I got my MBA and Mary got her law degree (yes, she’s an attorney who would rather cater). We have worked together since we opened our first restaurant in 1994, usually sharing the same table as a work space. We have raised three amazing young men while building our business and are blessed to have such a supportive family surrounding us.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
By far, our biggest source for new clients is referrals from former clients and vendors we have worked with in the past. We have found that potential clients are more willing to trust that you know what you are doing when they have been told by someone they know about you and your history of providing excellent service (this includes great online reviews).
Of these two forms of customer acquisition, vendor referrals are by far the most important to us. Good event vendors, those who are professional and want the best for the clients, want to surround themselves with other good vendors who are professional and customer-oriented. All of our staff know that if a co-vendor is struggling at a catered event, if there is any assistance that our staff can provide we make it happen. We train our staff to go above and beyond, not just with our clients but with their guests and our co-vendors. This creates a positive vibe that they remember and talk to other potential clients about over and over.
Finally, social media also plays a role, although a less significant roll, in our client acquisition. But it is very important for new businesses who have not yet built their reputation to put themselves out there on social media in an energetic, positive way to catch the attention of potential clients. It’s also important for new businesses to become involved in their community because people are more willing to purchase from someone they know than a stranger.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.VibrantOccasions.com
- Instagram: @VibrantOccasionsCatering
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VibrantOccasionsCatering
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CookingwiththeKriks
Image Credits
Sydney Rasch, Leah Seale, Mariah Dykes