Catering-Business gegen die Saisonabhängigkeit: Von 2,8 auf 8 Mio

0:00Unternehmer/Gast Hi, my name is Matthew. I sell premium catering experiences to private clients looking to celebrate milestone events in Sydney. >> Great. >> about 2.8 million this year with 40% net profit. I'd like to be at 8 million in 2 years. >> Let's go. >> The main constraint season- seasonally, so we do about 65% of our annual revenue in 6 months. And if I don't solve this, I either say no to demand in summer or I am supply constrained in uh sorry, or I am overstaffed in winter.

0:28>> Yeah. So, uh one thing right off the bat I'll say is that this is a feature not a bug of the industry that you're in, right? Same thing as lawn care guy, same thing as guys who do snow plowing. It's just a it's a super common thing. Swimming pools sometimes obviously in the summer. So, like there there are industries that are just going to be more smoothies if you summer versus Italian ice store. Like there's a lot, right? Um that are seasonal. Now, couple questions. So, catering, what is your what is your hot season again?

0:58>> Busy season. >> Yeah, what is the busy season? >> Pretty much September through February. >> Okay. And so, from now until September is when it's slow. >> Yes. >> So, what why are people not celebrating from now until September? Actually, I'm not even sure like why not. >> season. I think I think yeah, it's it's it's not it's not as much of a festive season. I think people don't spend as much money um going through winter.

1:29I don't know if any of that has to do with >> But you still have like >> general? >> You uh don't worry about economy. They whatever. I'll just remove economy from from Lexington. There's nothing you can do about it. So, okay. So, people don't do Easter, you don't do corporate events? >> We do do corporate. Yes, so we target corporate through winter more so. They have better last time value, but they have lower spend per per event, which lowers gross profit, so >> Okay.

1:54>> we do market more or less exclusively to to private. >> Okay. I'm just like it actually doesn't sound like you're actually in that season of a business. People have like I mean, I started with that, but like catering happens year round. I mean, shoot, I cater every single week. >> Yeah, so we we we do large events. So, typically going to 60 to 100 people. >> Mhm. >> And then you have birthday parties, engagements, weddings, they're all year round. Um but a lot of the corporate rush that comes through in summer for end of year staff parties.

2:25Um things of that nature, that's what it takes us like well beyond uh our capacity, which gives us our busy season. And then through winter, we just we lose a lot of that. >> You subsist in the not in the off season. Correct? You like lose money or break even in the off season? >> No, no, we're still profitable. We have a really good We have strong gross profit and strong margins, so we're still good. >> Okay.

2:50>> Um I just like to make more money. >> Yeah, yeah, okay. Got it. Um okay, so a couple things. So, currently, how are you getting customers? >> We have really strong organic SEO, and we also do a lot of uh Google Ads. >> Okay. >> That's the most That's That's the main channels. So, we have probably 50% organic, uh probably 40% organic, 40% ads, 20% referral.

3:16>> Okay. >> some topical on on meta, but it's less tracked. Um it's more more of a brand awareness. >> Got it. So, SEO and PPC kind of kind of rule rule the day. Um okay, so what stops you from spending more PPC? Are you maxed out? Like is it stopping profitable? Like what's what's stopping you there? >> Search volume in late quarterly drops through winter. >> Okay. >> So, uh back to LTV, still strong at a 12 to one, so we can just spend more.

3:43>> Uh-huh. >> Um I'm trying to find my my I guess my constraint or my my question My My question becomes I have considered popping up a corporate delivery like a pre-packaged like typical corporate catering setting through Y-Axis to be a kind of entity under Catered by Matt, which would be a year-round service cuz they have a very inverted seasonality to the event side. >> Yeah.

4:09>> They're like the corporate to order in more of that delivery, but it's it's I don't want to get distracted. Like I've watched one of your content. I don't want to chase the woman in the red dress. It's a whole new business. >> Yeah. Well, I guess the like the problem that we're trying to solve here like you are profitable. You're running 40% even in the fact that there's on and off cycle. So, to grow the business, we can ignore the fact that it's lumpy. I'll give you two examples of this. So, Harry and David's, it's a chocolate company here in the US, does like 100% of their annual profit in the month of December.

4:42And then the other 11 months of the year, they have their mall location and they just lose money. That's number one. Others, if you look at like insurance, right? Insurance makes money every year and then every eighth year there's a Hurricane Katrina and they lose a bunch of money. And so I think what we what we need to replace is the difference between volatility and risk. So, you can have something that is volatile but not risky. So, insurance is volatile but not risky. Same as this chocolate thing. It's volatile in the fact that it changes a lot month-to-month-to-month, but it's not risky because it's predictable. You know that every season this is going to happen. And so if we know it's going to happen, then we can predict it. If we can predict it, we can plan for it, right? So, all that to say, if we change nothing about the business but you simply did twice as much, what stops you from doing that?

5:33Alex >> Nothing. >> Okay. Uh >> Everything everything's quite efficient to to be frank. We can we can just spend more, hire more. >> Well, then then I think you have have that answer. I think what what feels annoying is you just wish that I would you know if you're Harry and David's you wish that the other 11 months of the year people celebrated chocolate as much, right? [laughter] Um but you're just going to have a slow season and a hot season and that's fine. Especially especially since you're not losing money in the off-season.

6:01So I don't think you actually have a big problem to solve here. I think we just need to do more what's working. I wish I could pull some magic uh uh business model out of a hat but if you're profitable all the months of the year and then some months you just make more money that just sounds like a business that has a predictable cycle. >> Right. >> I mean think about the alternative. It could be unpredictable. That would suck. >> [laughter]

6:25Alex >> Yeah. No, it's it's it's it's it's it's it's almost predictable to the to the percent to be honest it's pretty pretty consistent. Um I've I've been trying to contemplate like how to get around this without actually starting a new business and I was just I've been thinking about it for a couple of years. I thought may maybe Alex would figure something out but I I maybe it is just that a a feature. >> No, what I would like to do is just focus all of your time on not trying to solve that problem and solving the more important problem which is like how do we double PPC and probably get meta ads going?

6:53>> Mhm. >> Like if you did nothing else this year double PC PPC and just cracked meta ads, you'd hit your goal. >> Yeah. >> So it's like if you can double the business doing one thing, why do you four? >> Fair to say. >> Right? >> Yeah. >> That's it, man. I mean the whole point of of theory of constraints is focus and it's just being able to say all the things you say no to. Like there's such limited resources in a small business, the biggest one being your time, your effort, and your mental bandwidth. If you can just say like I'm not looking at this anymore because this is just a feature of my business and I'm so grateful because all my competitors will be distracted by the shiny object. Like let them worry about that while you just keep crushing it.

7:36End them. >> Okay. >> Cool. >> Yeah, cool. Thank you. >> Appreciate you, man. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thanks, brother. Talk soon. >> Bye-bye. >> If you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so, we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.