We Want To Hear From You

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Blog Admin

Our last blog post we pre-released an article from our customer newsletter, the TRAX Tribune. Our owners, Rich & Dan talked about some exciting projects that are scheduled to be released from our R&D team this quarter. Please take the poll on our FaceBook page to let us know which of these new enhancements will make the biggest impact to your business. While you are on our FaceBook page, like our page so you can keep connected on platform updates and other good information.

http://www.facebook.com/CaterTrax

 

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CaterTrax is Looking Forward to Releasing Platform and Catering Module Enhancements in Q1

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Rich.Rund

Online Catering Software for contract foodservice businesses- www.catertrax.com

Being caterers ourselves we understand that getting the CaterTrax platform implemented at your location is one of many steps in helping you run your business more effectively and efficiently on a daily basis. Our recent R&D projects are focused on providing additional functionality to help foodservice businesses focus on promotion, growth and management. As owners and managers you need to continually review and focus on your menu offerings to keep them fresh and exciting. Keeping your CaterTrax website also fresh and exciting can help your new menu or promotions appeal to loyal customers and new customers.

Our R&D team has been cranking out some exciting new code for our platform that supports the Catering, Take-Out, Floor Stock, Store and Web Starter modules. The team has developed an easy way for sites to promote their business with enhanced integration with social media channels and mediums. Sites will easily be able to create QR codes for individual menu items. Sites could run print or email campaigns for promotions using the QR codes. Being able to promote your business through social media channels that your customers are already using just got easier because now sites will also be able to integrate their café or business Twitter feed right to their CaterTrax site. Look for more information and how to documents later in Q1.

We also are excited to be creating new dashboard functionality for the Catering Module. When the functionality is released you will see a new icon in your administrator tool bar. When the new icon is selected you will be able to look at real time data in a great visual format in the following categories; sales, products, orders and customers. Each dashboard category can be further broken down and filtered by date range. What a great way to manage your business by informing your team with real time informative dashboard metrics that can easily provide meaningful data for the week, month, or year over year.
More to come on what has been cooking in the R&D department in the next issue of the TRAX Tribune.

Remember, everything we do is based on the core principals our company was founded on. CaterTrax has proven to promote, grow, manage and sustain profitable foodservice business. Do you have an idea that can help other non-commercial foodservice businesses? Write to us at mailto: rich.rund@catertrax.com or dan.welch@catertrax.com

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Training continues to be a focal point at CaterTrax

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Blog Admin

CaterTrax administrators were recently invited to participate in the inaugural TRAX Huddle Series. Each Huddle is thirty minutes with an opportunity for platform administrators to send in questions ahead of time to mailto: training@catertrax.com or ask their question at the end of the webinar. If you were unable to join the webinar last week, all sessions are recorded and available via the TRAX Learning Center. Will Phillips, CaterTrax Sr. Training Specialist has been busy with following up on questions that came in after the webinar and connecting support and sales with other inquires. Keep informed about new training videos each month by subscribing to our YouTube channel or by requesting a copy of our monthly newsletter, TRAX Tribune.

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Foodservice Trend Report 2012 Showcases Creative Uses of Social Media Marketing in Hospitality Industry

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Blog Admin

foodservice social media, twitter, facebook, youtube, flickr, foursquareSocial media as a marketing trend for small businesses in the foodservice industry continues to boom this year according to the 2012 Foodservice Trend Report. Most social media channels are free to sign up for and it is a smart move for anyone in the hospitality sector to take advantage of this growing medium to market their promotions and engage with their customer base. Using social media to interact with your customers is an incredibly concentrated and powerful way to spread brand awareness, gain new business and even conduct market research.

There are so many social media networks to choose from: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, YouTube, Foursquare, and blogging just to name a few. However, the important thing to remember is to tailor each channel to the specific audience you are trying to interact with and of course to share quality and engaging content! There is no point to even having a Facebook page if all you are going to do is pat yourself on the back. Provide value to your customers through the content you share and make the focus about them. Entice your customers with hot promotions and specials, share fun photos and videos, thank customers for giving their business to you, ask for feedback, and get creative about contests!

See what some notable foodservice operators in the industry are doing in their own social media channels that got them recognition in the 2012 Foodservice Trend Report:

Ryan Smolkin, owner and CEO of Smoke’s Poutinerie found a unique way to use Facebook and Twitter to host an attention grabbing annual competition:

“Our biggest push has been our World Poutine-Eating Championship. It’s our second annual competition and it’s been our hook on Facebook, Twitter and our website. Other than the physical event itself, and the PR we get from it, we wouldn’t get the public interest or the international exposure we do from the contest without Facebook or Twitter.”

Colin Moore, President of Starbucks Canada explores ways to poll customers for feedback, share photos and events and more:

“Facebook and Twitter are two channels we use to engage current and potential customers…. With Facebook, we created [a] global fan page in 2008, consolidating several unofficial existing fan pages. The page features photos, events, customer polls and a discussion forum covering hundreds of topics. In addition to the main page, there are 26 country-specific pages and a frappuccino Facebook page. In 2010, we launched a Facebook application for customers to access and manage their account, including registering cards, checking balances, reloading and editing their profile. The app also makes it possible to buy a friend a treat from Starbucks without ever leaving Facebook. Users load $5 to $500 directly onto a friend’s registered card as a gift.”

We want to hear from you! What unique ways are you using your social media channels to engage your customers? Send us a message at socialnews@catertrax.com.

If you are not currently using social media marketing to promote your foodservice business, you can subscribe to our blog for informative articles on effective techniques to promote your business and gain more customers through social media or sign up for our monthly webinars to get exclusive and detailed tips on how to promote, grow, manage and sustain your foodservice business!

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Exploring Hidden Talents for Increased Employee Retention Rates

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Blog Admin
catertrax employees, employee gathering

Our happy and hard working employees at CaterTrax

At Catertrax we value each and every employee both as a group and individually. We think it shows since in 2011 alone we experienced an impressive 32% rate of growth in the number of employees who became members of the CaterTrax family. Our employee turnover rate was also extremely low.

How do we maintain this you ask?

The way we do this is simple. We want both our employees and customers to thrive by exemplifying our core principles:

We aim to Promote, Grow, Manage, and Sustain.
Whenever possible, we have our own employees do the voice work for our videos. A former Training Specialist is now working on our online marketing and social media ventures. A member of our support team is now our graphic designer, and another former tech support specialist creates many of the videos you see on our fun and educational YouTube channel. Even the lyrics to our JingleTRAX song from our holiday video were written by someone in our Business Administration Department!

What this means is that while everyone working for you has their obvious talents for whatever position they hold, it doesn’t hurt to find out what their hidden talents and passions are. You may be able to PROMOTE those talents in the “long run”. Giving your employees the freedom to work on a side project on the clock will GROW employee loyalty across your organization. Learning how to MANAGE the influx of talent you will discover will be reassuring. And finally, since you are rewarding them with added responsibility and trust, the ability to SUSTAIN and retain your workforce will naturally increase.

How have you utilized your employees hidden talents? Leave a comment below or drop a note on our facebook page

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CaterTrax Support Team Hits Milestone

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Blog Admin
catertrax, technical support team, customer support

Our helpful, smiling technical support team here at CaterTrax

This week’s guest blog post comes from our very own Will Phillips, who is currently the Senior Training Specialist at CaterTrax and formerly a member of our Technical Support Team…

As a former support team member this caught my eye today. Our Support team has just received our 50,000th ticket! This is the type of milestone that makes you reminisce about where we started as an organization, and where we are now.

I did some research and talked to the first employee of CaterTrax, Brian Leavitt, who himself has closed quite a few tickets. He tells me that we launched our ticket system back on June 1, 2006. Back then we had a handful of sites and may not have received more than a couple of tickets per day. If you do the math we’ve gotten about 25 tickets a day on average since then.

In the meantime we have gone through a few internal CRM systems which has caused processes and tools to grow with our ever evolving company. As of January 2009 we had just over 6,300 tickets. Fast forward to today where we have over 1,600 live sites. We are now exponentially bigger, and we have a larger dedicated support team to prove it.

Yesterday, there were 60 new tickets created. Some might think that this many tickets every day is a bad thing. However, not every ticket represents a bug or issue that needs to be fixed, sometimes tickets are to change menus or configurations. The bottom line is that every one of those tickets is a chance for us to work with you and make your life better one caterer at a time.

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CaterTrax Volunteers to Deliver to Local Needy Families in 2011 Operation Food Basket Drive

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Blog Admin

Being at the heart of the foodservice industry makes it all the more upsetting to hear about members of our community who cannot even afford to put food on the table for their families, but unfortunately this is the sad reality for a staggering amount of individuals and families experiencing hardship across the globe.

CaterTrax CEO Rich Rund getting the pre-delivery itinerary at Operation Food Basket 2011

This week our CEO, Rich Rund and our Director of Marketing, Kim Hoffman teamed up to represent CaterTrax while participating in the 31st annual Operation Food Basket initiative. Operation Food Basket was launched back in 1981 by Tony Carlisi, a Xerox employee, and is an annual campaign to raise money to supply groceries to hungry families in Rochester, NY who are below the poverty level.

The families who receive donation baskets are put through a rigorous screening process that qualifies their level of need. Operation Food Basket has grown exponentially over the three decades that the program has been in effect. The kickoff in 1981 brought in a total of $195 in donations which provided 283 pounds of food to two large families in Rochester. In 2010, donations topped the charts at $55,000 and over 400 families received a whopping 65,081 pounds of food to keep them afloat during the holidays.  The fundraising campaign for this year’s Operation Food Basket program began back in October and the target goal was to raise $50,000 in donations which would provide 2,398 individuals with a week’s worth of groceries which were delivered to families in need on Tuesday, December 20th.

The turnout of volunteers for the 2011 campaign was incredible. Over 1,100 individuals and organizations donated funding and 400+ volunteers physically donated their time and energy to coordinating, packing and delivering the food baskets to needy families.

Some of the other sponsors involved in this year’s campaign include:

  • Xerox
  • Wegmans
  • Hope Ventures
  • The Pampered Chef
  • LiDestri Foods
  • Lisa’s Hallmark
  • Ralph Honda
  • Dunn & Rice Design
  • Wegman Companies Inc.
  • KPMG
  • ORCON
  • The Rotary Club
  • PJ and Sons Landscaping
  • NYLES Trailer Sales
  • XSI
  • New Beginnings Christian Fellowship
  • Wendy’s
  • Starbucks

Our CEO, Rich Rund returned to the office with the biggest smile on his face and said:

 “Being a part of this type of community service project and seeing the incredible force of volunteers from other local organizations is extremely humbling. Many people don’t stop to think about how good they have it compared to the overwhelming number of struggling families in our own back yard. It really gave us even more perspective on how blessed we are and how great it felt to brighten the holidays for our neighbors who need a helping hand. We hope that the inspiration is contagious and that others look for ways to give back not just in the holiday season, but year round.”

Did you donate or volunteer this holiday season? If so leave a comment below or send us a tweet and tell us about it! See some of our volunteers in action on our Facebook page.

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Proof is in the Pudding: The Data that Proves 15% YOY Revenue Increase for CaterTrax Users

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Blog Admin

Earlier this week we officially distributed a press release to highlight our customers who experienced an impressive 15% growth of revenue in their catering and foodservice businesses despite a weak economy.  It was very exciting to witness the positive buzz and reactions from the web community, in fact so far our website traffic has tripled in the period of just a few days!

Our CEO, Rich Rund, says:

“Not only have our customer’s experienced incredible growth in a shaky economy, with all the tools, support, and training that CaterTrax offers they are learning how to use data driven techniques to increase profitability. We practice what we preach and we use the same cornerstone methodology that our customers do to promote, grow, manage and sustain our own business. We are creating a new standard dashboard to teach our customers how to match up their data with their promote, grow, manage, and sustain business activities to allow them to exceed their goals. Through our blog, webinars and YouTube channel we are providing phenomenal resources to our customers on how to improve every aspect of what they do on a daily basis. You just can’t find that anywhere else in our industry. In the coming months you can expect to see even more detailed information on best practices and real world solutions for promotions and marketing, measuring and improving customer satisfaction and how to interpret and analyze data to increase profitability.”

Since we started the dialogue on how our hospitality management platform has helped over 1,600 foodservice businesses boost their sales revenue by an average of 15% YOY, we thought we would take this opportunity to show you the impressive results from the data we collected from a large sampling of CaterTrax sites.

After all, proof is in the pudding!

How CaterTrax Proves 15% YOY Growth for Customers

View more presentations from catertrax
 If you use CaterTrax and love it tweet at us or email us and tell us your before and after story of what has improved the most in your business!
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Good Tidings All Around the CaterTrax Office This Holiday!

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Blog Admin

We are fully immersed in the holiday season at CaterTrax and have been doing our best to spread holiday cheer to all. Lately, we have been unearthing musical talent within our office walls that we didn’t even know we had! Some of our talented employees put their creative noggins together to write and produce a CaterTrax spin on the classic tune Jingle Bells. Get a taste of what each day holds at CaterTrax as we continually find new ways to go above and beyond for our customers. Our version will have you ringing bells on bobtails as you sing along!

But… we don’t just spend all of our time here just laughing and singing! Just as we made an effort to give back to the underserved in our community this past Thanksgiving, we also have lots in store to make the holiday season brighter for many less fortunate families this December in Upstate New York. Although some of the items under the CaterTrax Christmas tree in our video might look out of place to some people, some families are not so lucky when it comes to being able to afford basic household goods and toiletries. Our Vice President of Operations, Nell Herman has organized a company wide initiative to collect a variety of household items for Daystar, CP Rochester, Hillside Special Santas, and the House of Mercy to pass on to families who have family members with disabilities and are below the poverty line.

Each of the Christmas Tree, Snowflake and Gingerbread ornaments on our tree have a donation item written on the back. As you can see, our generous employees have gotten in the spirit and surrounded the tree with toiletries, winter clothing, board games, paper towels and more! Since the holiday season can become so busy and chaotic, it is nice to take a moment to spread some cheer to those who need a helping hand.

Tis better to give than to receive. How do you and your family give back to those in need during the holiday season?

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The Positive Feedback for our New Website Launch is Overwhelming!

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Blog Admin
CaterTrax New Website

A screenshot of the new and improved CaterTrax website launched on December 7, 2011

Earlier this week we unveiled our new website which was a tremendous milestone for CaterTrax. So far the positive feedback from our customers has knocked our socks off!  Our very own CEO designed the heart and soul of the website (with help from the marketing team of course) and built it using the technology platform that our customers experience every day.  Many companies get behind their product, but not many can say they use it so proudly for their own business activities.

Our email inboxes have been filling up with messages and notes of encouragement sent in by our incredible customers. Below is a snippet from one of the emails from our enthusiastic customers about their thoughts on our new website and the level of quality information it provides:

 Joseph L. writes:

Cool site! I like the way the product pages are set up. I am looking forward to my demo next week – I can see the potential your system will have for my customers and kitchen.

Re-live the exciting reveal with us in our CaterTrax Countdown video on our YouTube Channel and feel free to leave a comment about what you think of our new website!

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