Picture to the left is Short Bread Cookies made to look like makeup in a mirrored box on display at Neimans in Coply Mall. Made right here at Above and Beyond Catering.


People are always asking me how business is. It is true, as a caterer we feel the effects of the economy first hand. Before explaining what is happening right now with our business, you have to understand where we are in the scale to other Catering businesses. Above and Beyond Catering is on the higher end in range. The reason is the quality of our product is superior to most others. We have our own Pastry Chef on location who takes a lot of pride in making items the day of the event. God bless her heart for sometimes starting at 3 am or even earlier. Same with our Chef; other establishments will be buying premade frozen product, thawing it out and throwing it in the oven. Not here. Chef Steele will put in long hours making items like our mango summer rolls. So now that you know a little back ground, I can fill you in. Starting last March the corporate drop off breakfasts and lunches were no more. I saw this coming and was able to go after other business which carried us through. Even with the decline in the corporate business, last year was our best year yet. The 4th quarter we saw a drop when the doom started coming over the airwaves. Layoffs were happening everywhere, so companies had to save face and scale back or even cancel their Holiday Parties. We lost some events, but we managed to pick some up as well. How you may ask? Well the ones in the food industry that were hurt the most were the ones on top. Some companies cancelled their events at such places as the Weston Waterfront or the Four Seasons. They scaled back to an office party, and that lead to our phones ringing. Hint, using a caterer can save you tons of money, especially doing an open bar compared with doing an open bar at a 4 or 5 star hotel located on prime real-estate.

At the beginning of the new year is when everyone was seeing the effects of the economy. At this time everyone saw their numbers drop except a few. Before I tell you the few, I will tell you what happened here. It seemed like after 9/11 when things came to a screeching halt. This lasted from January to February. The truth is we had business the year before, but it had been all the corporate small jobs. We knew this business would not be returning the way the economy was forecasted so we had been prepared for this. Now the few I mentioned that actually saw an increase in their business were efficient small businesses. I know a small marketing firm who was going gang busters. Why, well some firms cut out the bigger expensive firms and moved their work to small firms to save money. My mechanic was busy. People stopped buying new cars so they needed the cars they had maintained and fixed. My take on the economy is the mortgage industry really messed it up for all of us. Since they were giving bad loans, they created this spiral effect which made the banks stop loaning and even cutting lines of credit to good strong credit worthy customers. Now that I feel the bubble has been corrected a bit, we are on the rise again. There were a lot of people hurt, but the truth is, most money that was lost was peoples savings and not their day to day spending money. I have a good feeling that by this summer we will be a-okay. I just hope the Federal Government does not spend too much of our money hurting us down the line. This all happened for a reason, we should take it as a wakeup call. Bailing out inefficient businesses is not going to help anyone. Honestly I can say there is a chance I could even grow my business this year due to our efficiency and quality.