Client Success Story - The Vinegar Factory
The Vinegar Factory, located in New York City, is a business that lives on the edge. Domestic and international delicacies have been on its menu since 1994, and more recently it’s added unique cookware and housewares and fabulous gourmet gift baskets. But the fun doesn’t stop there. Eli Zabar’s Vinegar Factory is also home to a high-volume catering service, led by Helene Cisek and providing mostly custom orders for home delivery. This highly specialized, fast-paced service can be demanding, but Cisek is up for the challenge during the holidays and throughout the year with EventMaster® software from CBORD®.
In the high-stakes game of catering, Cisek knows she must be focused and well prepared. This means knowing the customer, and The Vinegar Factory knows a lot of customers. Its database is massive, but managing customer information is a snap with EventMaster. With the system's Customer Master feature, Cisek can easily keep track of patrons' stats: names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card information. She can recall purchase histories or create files for new customers, a capability that comes in especially handy around the action-packed holidays. "Thanksgiving is the biggest day for us; this past year we filled 650 orders. On Passover we usually do 400 to 500 orders," Cisek explains. "That's a lot of orders, and EventMaster helps us keep track of it all."
A Cross-Terrain Menu
While The Vinegar Factory's everyday fare is an à la carte adventure, special menus are needed for the year's main events. With EventMaster, Cisek can easily create cutting-edge menus to fit any season or holiday. The menus can then be placed under different categories for cross-terrain ease. For example, for Passover, Cisek created both an entrée menu and a dessert menu. "The system is very flexible," Cisek says. "I can choose to hide the holiday menus when the season ends, which I do." The special menus can be called up for an instant replay the following year, saving Cisek the time it would take to build a new menu.
Endurance—The Follow Through
Cisek wouldn't drop out of the race fifty feet short of the finish line—she uses EventMaster to see each order through to the end! Once an order is entered into the system, Cisek prints out event sheets. These sheets get processed to The Vinegar Factory's different teams to fill the order. "EventMaster is invaluable to us," explains Cisek. "I can do the production reports and item requirements reports. The system tells me everything I need for that day and keeps everything together." After each department does its part, the complete order goes back to the catering department where it's prepared for the last leg—delivery.
A Catering Nonconformist
Extreme catering breaks with tradition! Fortunately, EventMaster has the power and flexibility to support new approaches, so Cisek can creatively meet The Vinegar Factory's needs. The system has a feature that is used by conventional catering operations to assign salespeople to large banquettype events. Cisek uses this feature to group customer addresses in different zones of Manhattan, helping her staff make deliveries organized and speedy. "We needed a way to print out our delivery sheets by zones during large days, like holidays," she says. "EventMaster can do this, and that lets us deliver our goods more efficiently."
