About Cafe Evoke Catering

    Café Evoke Catering is Oklahoma's premier specialty coffee catering company.

    Complete menus and information kits are available for download at CafeEvoke.com. Please feel free to email us through our website or call 405-606-2200 if you have any questions about incorporating a full service specialty coffee bar for your next special event or for your office.

    Thank you for choosing a Fair Trade coffee catering company. We look forward to a long friendship.

    ..be bold (Oh, and tell your friends!)

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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Can we turn it away?

We have had a great start to September and I am excited about our position in this market. We are setting ourselves up to have a great rest of the month if we keep going in this direction. I had a call today from a potential customer with a great opportunity for us and Cafe Evoke *Coffee* Catering. As we talked about the details -- which include a possibility of another large event in March -- I began to realize that the date we were talking about is not good for us.

This event is the same weekend as CoffeeFEST -- a large trade show that we will be attending in Seattle. Can we afford to turn this event down? Do I try to hire a team to run this event? Do I cancel my trip to Seattle?

This is the first of this type of decision I have to make and I am not really sure what the best decision is. As of now, I am trying to secure the event and I think the best thing for us to do is to hire a team to run our equipment so that we do not lose the opportunity for the event in March.

It is hard to say no to work when you are trying to get started. At the same time, these trade shows are very important as they give us insight into what is going on in the industry and what new things are coming to the market. It is also a chance for us to meet with old friends and learn more about our business.

I know there will be more and more of this type of thing that we will have to deal with so here we go...

..be bold

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...a thought by Cafe Evoke Catering at 9/12/2006 08:45:00 PM

Comments on "Can we turn it away?"

 

Anonymous Ken King | King Marketing said ... (9/13/2006 05:57:00 PM) : 

Hi Jason,

I couldn't disagree more about the choice between a client engagement and a trade show. I remember reading about your experience at CoffeeFest last November and how beneficial it was to you. However, at this stage in your business you have less to gain from learning about new trends in your industry (which will be well-covered in news releases and blog posts from the conference anyway) than from actually running your business. Not to mention the advantages of bringing cash into the business vs the cash outflow related to attending the conference.

Should you choose to go to Seattle, though, I believe even more strongly that it would be a mistake to hire a team to take your place just as you're starting to establish your reputation. A poor performance by your hired hands could squander the goodwill you've built up (and that led to this opportunity).

Even an adequate performance by your stand-ins would be a bad result - locking down the bigger event in March depends on showing the client that you want their business and the only person who truly cares about that is you. You might even retain the opportunity to serve the client in March if you suggest a reasonable alternative for the one you can't cater.

I'm not saying that you're forever locked into "working in the business, not on it", but I do think it would be a mistake to step out from behind the bar at this point.

Yours,

Ken

 

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