CRM & sales
From CRM to kitchen: eliminating the most expensive catering handoff
Why commercial context gets lost between sales and production, and how a shared event lifecycle prevents it.
The costliest catering errors often begin before production: a promise changes, a detail stays in an email, or the signed quotation never becomes structured work. The solution is not another handoff checklist. It is one lifecycle shared by commercial and operational teams.
Make qualification operationally aware
Sales teams should capture the constraints that influence delivery: event type, venue, service window, dietary requirements, equipment and access. Qualification is stronger when feasibility is visible before the quote is final.
Preserve the accepted version
Production must know which menu, quantities and terms the customer accepted. A signed quotation should remain linked to the event and any later amendment should have a visible owner and timestamp.
Create work from confirmed demand
Kitchen job cards, material requirements and dispatch plans should be derived from confirmed scope. Teams can still refine the plan, but they begin from the same source rather than re-entering demand.
Measure the handoff
Useful indicators include unassigned work, unresolved shortages, late changes, readiness by event and variance between quoted and consumed quantities. These signals expose workflow weakness without blaming individual teams.