Welcome back to another blog post from Enck’s Plus Catering. The holiday season gets mighty busy at Enck’s Plus Catering because of how popular our catered holiday meals have become. We offer plated meals and catered platters for Thanksgiving and Christmas. When the orders start coming in the kitchen requires all hands-on deck, and that means me too! Anyway, in this week’s blog post I will be discussing the various digital catering apps now on the market and how the service compares to the traditional catering model companies like Enck’s Plus Catering offer.
The Catering App concept seems to have evolved from apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats. They really started to take off somewhere around late 2019 to mid 2020. While companies like Grub Hub, Uber Eats and DoorDash were offering delivery services for a few a la carte meals from your favorite restaurants and fast-food chains, companies like ezCater took it a step further and enabled restaurants to sell and distribute bulk batches of their customers favorite dishes for special events or any ordinary larger group gathering.
Over the course of the past ten years many more catering app companies have come along. Below is a list of the top 9 agencies along with details about what makes their services unique.
Major Catering Apps as of 2023:
ezCater: Specializing in connecting restaurants with other businesses, providing food for work from over 100,000 restaurant options. https://www.ezcater.com
EAT Club: offers premier individual meal delivery for companies without onsite cafes while eliminating the headache of managing menus, choosing restaurants, or trying to order just the right amount of food. https://www.EatClub.com
Caviar/DoorDash: Partners with select “Coolest” restaurants in each city to provide pick-up or delivery options. Caviar Food Delivery & Takeout - From Restaurants Near You (trycaviar.com)
ZeroCater: Corporate catering and cafeteria solutions customized to employees’ unique tastes while delivering the flexibility and consistency companies expect. The Best Corporate Catering, Cafeteria, & Office Meal Provider | Zerocater
Forkable: Corporate Catering, Custom, individually-packaged team lunches from your favorite restaurants. The highest rated corporate catering & office lunch delivery service. Scalable to 1000s of employees. Forkable | Corporate Catering & Office Lunch Delivery Service
Hoppier: Create remote lunch programs, send a coffee, happy hour drinks, personal gifts, charity donations, learning allowances, and more. Hoppier works in over 60+ countries! Hoppier | The Best Virtual Reward You'll Ever Send
Cater2.me: Customized catering solutions for companies and distributed teams Corporate Catering Services | Local Caterers | Cater2.me
Foodee: Experts in individual meals. Choose meals from the best local restaurants based on your team’s personal food preferences. Get Corporate Catering Delivered To Your Office From Local Restaurants (food.ee)
CaterCow: believes that finding reliable, quality catering should be easy. They partner with awesome caterers to curate options that groups will love. Thoughtfully Curated Catering Your Group Will Love | CaterCow
It is undeniable that Catering Apps all have tremendous value in certain circumstances. They all scream variety, convenience, and collaboration, and the food is of course outrageous.
But how do these catering apps stack up against a traditional custom catering company?
Depending on the capabilities of a catering company’s culinary team, variety could be a tie. While you may not be eating food from Olive Garden, Panera Bread, or Taco Bell the chefs at Enck’s Plus Catering create cuisine that would put them all to shame. There is however a nostalgia or tradition factor with those favorites that cannot be shaken.
Convenience could lean in favor of the catering apps if the event or occasion you need catering for lies beyond the service area of a traditional catering company’s delivery capabilities.
Quality of service will always be won by the traditional catering organizations. The iconic well-dressed, white gloved professional caterers serving hot fresh food from polished silver chafing dishes will never be replaced no matter how fancy the packaging is from one of the catering apps.
Lastly, cost and affordability will more often than not go in favor of the traditional catering companies. Catering apps charge commissions on food sold through their platforms in amounts ranging 18-37% above the retail cost of the food. Additionally, they typically charge a 2-3% app service fee.
You, the consumer, are the final judge. Most people find a place for both catering apps and traditional catering companies when the need arises for a caterer. The occasional Chic-fil-a catered office lunch through ezCater is fun and convenient, but when it comes time for the wow factor from good quality and presentation, only a company like Enck’s Plus Catering can provide such an experience.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog post. Stay tuned for more tasty topics and delicious details in our future posts. Thank you for reading and have a happy Thanksgiving!