The niche enterprise software industry is going through a re-birth. Moreover, technological advances are rapidly changing the food industry. Therefore, The Tech Times is reviewing the best food an event catering software currently available in the market and how they can positively impact your catering business.
Operating a catering business in this fast-paced and technologically advanced environment requires wit and strategy. For this, any catering company seeking to manage a successful business definitely has to embrace technology. A good start is getting a solid catering software solution and taking full advantage of its capabilities.
Pen and paper won't work anymore, especially for the intricate catering operations. Competition has gone top-notch such that even the once useful Microsoft Excel and Office suite are virtually obsolete for the catering industry. Many successful catering businesses have managed to remain highly competitive thanks to the limitless advantages that catering software can offer.
Using any of the catering software reviewed here you will not have to waste time researching and comparing companies, or hustling with spreadsheets to create orders, manage kitchen production or even track your costs. Most of them offer all these features for your catering business, so you have time to focus on growing your business.
Here we go, the top five best catering software of 2019 reviewed:
1.Flex Catering
Flex Catering is a professional easy-to-use catering software that is helping catering businesses manage their operations seamlessly, from order management through to production, reports, and integrations. It started its operations in Australia and it is now expanding to New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the USA. It runs on the web, meaning caterers can easily manage their business on the go! Once your business is on the platform, you can perform functions anytime and anywhere via a web browser.
Flex Catering is a great choice of catering software for catering businesses that are especially focused on offering corporate and events catering. In comparison to other software, Flex Catering incorporates a more streamlined approach when dealing with operations including ordering, billing, invoicing, event management tools as well as menu and customer management. It also offers a vast array of reports such as Production, Dispatch, Ingredients, Run Sheet, Sales, forecast reports and Dashboard.
In addition to the comprehensive set of features built for caterers, we were also especially impressed with how easy it is to use. The interface looks great, modern and thought through to bring efficiency for its users.
Key Features of Flex Catering:
- eCommerce module: unlike all other catering software, Flex Catering has an e-commerce module that allows your customers to view menus, place orders online and manage their accounts on the website. Interestingly enough, if you opt for the e-commerce module it dispenses the need for a third party website. Flex Catering becomes your website too and you can run it on your domain name and optimize it for SEO.
- Order management: the platform allows the catering company to easily enter, track, and manage orders with just the click of a button. Orders are then easy allocated to specific production locations and events. The software intuitively manages the event and order workflow from quotation, client acceptance, production and delivery to invoicing.
- Product management: this software not only manages dishes and new products but it is unique in its ability to show costing of each ingredient and display the products in the ecommerce website.
- CRM: Flex Catering has an in-built customer relationship management module. With this, catering businesses on the platform can easily view and manage their customers' information, dietary requirements and add notes. The CRM component is fully integrated into orders and products thus providing an end-to-end solution for caterers.
2.Total Party Planner
Second on this list of the top five best catering software is Total Party Planner. Its process is designed by the owners who have an actual history in running a catering business in Buffalo NY. It is designed to help the users achieve accuracy and efficiency to allow them to grow their catering businesses. With this software, catering businesses can now streamline their catering operations for easy staffing, organizing events, recipe scaling, tracking of communication and create reports.
Key Features of Total Party Planner:
- Robust platform to manage a business: catering businesses on the platform have the advantage of accessing an integrated calendar featuring seamless reports and an online catering software that tracks everything from the kitchen to the books. This gives the user confidence that each of their details will just remain where you've left them!
- Tasks and notes feature: this feature readily offers the user a list of tasks that they need to accomplish from the inquiry stage to closing an event. This comes in handy when the catering business owner is busy working on other areas of the business. From the handy dashboard, the user has the advantage of taking a sneak peek at the most immediate tasks and prioritize them.
- Tracking communication: this feature enables the user to be able to keep track of past communication with customers. It makes it easy for the user to check on past emails sent to customers. The user can store notes of every conversation with clients thus eliminating the problem of forgetting details.
3.Better Cater
Third on this list of the top five best catering software in 2019 is Better Cater. It is a very easy-to-use online catering app. With it, catering businesses are easily organized and streamlined. It is important to note that users have the opportunity to try it free through its 30-day free trial. Better Cater is well suited for the following catering businesses; restaurant & franchise food chains, corporate catering, function & event caterers and food trucks.
Key features of the Better Cater:
- Seamless generation of tons of reports: catering businesses working on the Better Cater platform are able to generate many different reports that track their overall sales, inventory and even staff. This allows the business to realize quick growth due to its organized nature and data presentation. The app features ordering and prep sheets that greatly help to streamline the user's kitchen.
- Integrated calendar: this helps to keep the users in the loop of any upcoming events. The calendar can be synced with Google calendar, Apple and Outlook calendar. With the integrated calendar, bookings can be added and reschedule easily and quickly.
- Event Management tool: the software allows caterers to schedule, produce, and manage a large number of events with ease. The tools available help seamlessly keep track of your clients and their previous events. There is also a contact management tools and task organizer to help caterers stay on top of every event.
4.Triple Seat
This is the fourth catering software in this list of the top five best catering software 2019. It is designed to help mostly restaurants and party venues manage their events digitally. Just like the first three other catering app in this list, it is easy to use. Most of the brains behind the development of the app have industry knowledge. They are people who have served in some of the best restaurants and hotels in Europe and America.
Key Features of Triple Seat:
- SmartSuite: this tool enables the users to manage their events differently. With the SmartSuite feature, caterers can deliver professional looking proposals and event orders fast. The feature also makes it easy for them to get leads and respond to them in a quick manner. It is a complete suit for event management and ordering.
- Create gorgeous proposals and event orders: Tripleseat's SmartDocs is a customizable, easy-to-use, event order, contract, proposal and invoice generator. Caterers can build branded documents and customize fonts, colors, and more. Your professional-looking documents will look great on every device or web browser.
- Centralized cloud documents: with Triple Seat caterers can keep all of their documents in one place. Every document created stays with the booking it relates to, hence giving users an organized and centralized view of their event documents. With this feature, caterers will no longer have to search through endless files or long email chains just to find a contract. All documents can be shared and viewed online by your staff and clients.
5.CaterZen
This is the fifth caterer online platform in this list that also packs some good catering features for catering businesses. It is designed to help catering businesses put their sales and marketing operations in a single platform that is easy for them to access in an instant. With this online catering app, businesses can manage their operations digitally and avoid the tedious work of spreadsheets, databases, and paperwork.
Key features of CaterZen:
- Delivery manager: this feature allows users to route their deliveries and assign drivers. The feature virtually gives the user the power to exceed client expectations in a mobile device.
- Proposals and quotes: With this feature, the user can invariably turn prospects into customers. All these thanks to the many customizable proposal templates that attract prospects into booking.
- Punctual reminder system: this feature enables the user to keep tabs on any possible future sales leads. It comes with a built-in proposal and anniversary re-booking reminder system.
You are now in the loop of the top five best catering software 2019. You can choose any software from the list above to help do for you the work of catering management. This way you will save yourself the headache doing all these by yourself and help your catering business withstand the competition.
