Catering companies keep going by offering takeout fare
This time of year, Bernie and Charlotte Dombowsky would typically be gearing up for a very busy summer ahead.
As owners of Charlotte’s Catering in Moose Jaw, the couple normally employs 40 people, both full time and part time. Those people would be kept busy preparing meals, driving food and other items out to various locations in Saskatchewan and serving people at events from graduations to weddings to reunions.
COVID -19 changed that.
All catering functions had to be cancelled, with most customers rebooking a year down the road. The Dombowskys now only have two full time and two part-time staff working. They wish they could employ more.
Not just because they want to give people the work. They’re also busy.
“We still have the items that we served with the catering ...," says Bernie. “It’s just a lot more work. It’s just something to hold us over until catering starts again.”
Where once caterers went to the people, they are now asking people to come to them. Charlotte’s Catering
is just one of the businesses offering a pickup option to customers as a means to keep themselves going while social distancing remains in effect.
Mike Rybchuk with Regina-based Rybchuk’s Catering Company is also providing an option for customers to pick up food.
Rybchuk says he and his wife run the business and typically have family to help them with numerous events they cater. Since COVID-19 changed the catering landscape, they’ve had to focus entirely on a to-go service they had operated just once a week in the past.
“That turned out to be a little money generator that was actually pretty good for us,” he says. “So, in turn, that is what is saving us right now.”
Rybchuk’s doesn’t have an actual storefront, so to ensure social distancing for pickups, they created a makeshift drive-thru.
“People would come in, they would pull up to the front door, we’d have this door blocked open and my wife would take the order from a very safe distance, and then we would get everything ready back here and run it out to them, to their car,” Rybchuk says. “And that worked out very, very well.”
So well, they’ve kept it up. Along with regular meal pickups, they do special events like Easter and Mother’s Day.
They’re also delivering to a personal care home.
Charlotte’s Catering has changed the way they operate as well, offering pickup and a handful of deliveries in Moose Jaw as well as a drive-thru service in Regina.
“We’re just basically serving the clientele that we served kind of on a monthly basis before,” Bernie says.
Despite the successes they’ve seen with this new creative approach to catering, neither Rybchuk nor Bernie are anywhere as busy as they’d ordinarily be right now. Both worry what will happen if social distancing measures were to continue long-term.
“The volume of people that we’re serving is way down,” Bernie says. “It’s a lot more work to feed a lot less people.”
“My worry is June, July and August ...," Rybchuk says, explaining in terms of weddings alone, he’s lost between 20 and 25. “The catering revenue is dried up and the only thing keeping us (going) right now is our meals ... I just don’t want to see it go into the fall because I couldn’t lose a Christmas season over this. That’s for sure.”