A Day In The Life Of The Hungry Plaice

Completing a booking might take us a couple of hours, we can take about ½ hour to an hour to setup and leave within 30 minutes regardless of how many people we serve so you would be forgiven for thinking we have an easy job and don’t work many hours but there is a lot of things going on behind the scenes that you don’t see.

Preparation for a typical event day starts a few days beforehand as there is so much that goes into getting ready for those couple of hours service.

One thing that takes up lots of our time is Admin, every single day we are doing some admin this includes answering phone calls from customers, queries on email, checking leads, contacting existing customers and venues.

We also need to keep on top of our Finances by managing our Receipts and Income and making sure we track everything on our bank accounts, we produce weekly P&Ls to check on our spend and costings and this feeds into our Company Accounts, Tax and VAT Returns.

Then there are our Websites to maintain and our Social Media, key aspects in ensuring we are continually marketing our business.

We regularly complete stock checks, planning ahead based on events and this covers all Food Stock, Packaging and Cleaning Materials. This includes making sure that stock is checked for quality purposes and management of the Food Safety elements around our Raw Materials. Stock planning will include visits or taking deliveries from our Suppliers and management of the paperwork that goes with this process.

Any Equipment we use in the course of work will need to be cleaned and checked to ensure things are working to the best standard, everything is key in running our mobile catering business as even a small hitch like forgetting a spoon on the van can stop you carrying out a task and make your serving time slower!

Our Fish is managed very specifically, as this is Individually Quick Frozen it needs to be taken through am exact thawing and handling process and if this not managed correctly this can be very costly for us.

The Vans are another hugely important factor at our business, they need to be regularly cleaned and as they are old they need lots of attention. We make sure the vans checked and maintained by our Mechanic on a regular basis so we can ensure they are roadworthy at all times.

On the day of an event we can sometimes work long hours, there is often an early morning start and a large list of jobs to fulfil, we have set up our processes so event days can run methodically but we are always prepared for the fact that things will and do go wrong but you have to learn to deal with problems as they arise so as to keep the disruption to your day minimal.

The travelling we do is takes up most of the time on an event day, we can take on bookings that are some distance from our base and often we are spending more time travelling in the vans than carrying out the booking. Travelling in the vans has drawbacks it is not as comfortable and certainly not as quiet as a car and we deal with all the road and traffic issues in an old vehicle which can be challenging at times.

Despite the hours and amount of hard work that goes into our business, we are very passionate about what we do and enjoy every part of the job……not that we think it feels like work! When we are working at an event, getting thanks from customers and making someone’s day more special it makes it all the effort worth it!