Anyone can put together a catering offer

Genecand is a Geneva event caterer. Behind a wedding or a reception, there's sales, the kitchen and its portion weights, logistics, equipment, staff on site, stock and invoicing.

All of this was kept on a spreadsheet, instant messaging, text documents, and separate accounting software.

Who knows that a suckling pig needs a grill, gas bottles and serving staff? Who knows there's already an oven in a given venue, and no point loading one into the van? Those who had already prepared that particular event.

And each approved offer was printed and taken to the kitchen: at the slightest change from the client, it was crossed out, reprinted, re-copied.

From offer to invoice, everything goes through the same file: the proposal, sending to the kitchen, delivery, the event. The suckling pig now carries its grill, gas bottles and service, and the venue with an oven declares it: the equipment suggests itself.

You no longer need to have prepared an event before to sell it, deliver it and invoice it. The kitchen reads the offer on screen, changes included.

Off-the-shelf management software was evaluated, and ruled out for the core business: an event caterer's processes didn't fit without bending them.

Accounting and payroll do run on it, though, with a bridge we built: nobody needs custom accounting. The real question wasn't "custom or standard" but where the boundary lies.

The rest of the chain moved into the tool. The relationship with the client, beyond order-taking, stays human, and that's deliberate.

That's where a caterer's value lies: understanding what someone imagines for their wedding doesn't fit in a form.

Three attempts with other providers had come to nothing. A first four-hour workshop wasn't enough to map the processes: there were seven more, of three hours each, before the first mock-up.

A caterer is busy all day: these sessions took place two to three times a week, from six to nine in the morning. That's how the trade got into the tool.