We recently connected with Monique Essel-Paige and have shared our conversation below.
Monique, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?
Starting out I really loved cooking and a lot of people with contact me for events to cook for them so after a couple of years of cooking for family and friends, I decided that I wanted to start a catering business. Starting out my business, it was just me and my husband. I started the business by reading, and researching what it required for me to be a licensed caterer. I found a commercial, and I create a business plan, and got my LLC. Starting , the business was hard just because I really didn’t know or have anyone that I could ask model after, so I had to do a lot of research. Now I have two part-time cooks and two part-time servers, which makes the process a lot easier because I don’t have to be so hands-on. if I had to start all over again today, I would’ve created a team sooner with the same hard work and ethics that I have
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
So I am a nurse working in the state of Maryland and Anne Arundel county. Been a nurse for 10 years and three years ago decided to start a catering business. Going into the catering industry I knew I wanted to be set apart so I catered my dishes to Caribbean American dishes. As far as I’m getting clients I knew once the client taste my dish that I could win the client over so my biggest thing was advertisement I created social media account for my business Facebook, Twitter Instagram TikTok to promote my business More by doing this, we increased ourselves and was able to market to more people. One of the challenging parts of owning your own business is that everything falls on you if someone calls out if the food wasn’t delivered hot if a client is being difficult, you have to figure out and manage it all.. I’ve always had a strong work ethic, and I’m very big on customer service so in this next chapter, and that was Kitchen catering, I want to be able to invest more financially, into my business and continue to reinvent my business
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One lesson I had to unlearn is decreasing your value and your prices to get a client. With running a business you have to make sure that you are getting paid for the quality of work that you are giving the client that includes your time, the food, staff ,the supplies ,all that has to add up to the total cost of the catering event. Don’t short change yourself. Every client is not going to book you don’t take it personal. Sometimes God brings you certain situations to learn from them so you know how to handle the situation in the future. Learned to always stay true to myself if something doesn’t seem right, go with your gut instant always.
Being a business owner is amazing being able to make your own money being able to employee people that you know would not be employed if it wasn’t for you being able to provide for my family being able to show my children that anything is possible even being the first African-American business owner of my family it just makes me very proud to know that I’m making a difference And showing my children that you can do it you can start your own business from the ground up
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Social media can be a huge blessing for your business. It’s a way customer customers could take a quick glance at what you sell and you’re able to market your business. I would say percent of all of ourselves from customer, referrals, or social media at Thelmas Catering. we aim to give 100%, satisfied customer experience Because we know that that customer war for another customer and that customer will refer another customer. Last year we started asking all of our customers that book with us after they receive our service to make a Google review by them sharing their experience with Thelma’s Kitchen catering I’m able to market to new customers. We have a five out of five star rating which is amazing and I’m very proud of.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thelmaskitchencatering.com
- Instagram: @thelmaskitchencatering
- Facebook: TkitchenCatering1