I know. I know. Graduation parties happen primarily in May. You’re probably wondering what the heck I’m doing telling you to start booking graduation parties in September.
Well tonight my daughter Jordyn’s school is hosting an open house for seniors and their parents to discuss colleges. Everything from applications to financial aid will be discussed.
The most important part of any marketing initiative is the list. There is one company I know that sells list of parents of high school seniors, but that may not be the best list for marketing your catering services to this niche.
When I owned my restaurant, May was our biggest catering sales month. Graduation parties were a nice chunk of that business. Catering graduation parties is what I call an evergreen niche. It never dies. Each year there is a new class of graduating seniors whose parents will be celebrating unless they ended up taking the GED or going to juvie.
In one of my newsletters, I taught my members how to assemble their own highly qualified list of parents of high school seniors.
Step one is to make a list out of all the high schools in your city. Now eliminate the ones you don’t feel the parents would be a good fit for your services.
Now you may be able to get the schools or PTA’s to promote you to their parent body, but I always prefer to have my own list of qualified catering prospects.
Call each school’s high school guidance department and offer to cater in desserts for their high school senior open house night; like the one I’ll be attending tonight.
You can set out business cards, catering menus and hold a drawing for a free graduation party catering. Make sure your entry forms have qualifying questions. This way you will only build a target list of parents you want to do business with.
You’ll need to start in fall, so you have this list in the spring to aggressively market graduation parties.
I have created a special report and uploaded sample sales letters to help our members profit from this lucrative evergreen catering niche. Just go to:
http://www.restaurantprofitpoint.com/members/login.cfm?hpage=department92.cfm
