At Cafe Evoke Catering, we are about more than just coffee. We are about the journey, about life, and about pursuing a vivid impression of reality. We are about community, we are about freedom to choose, we are about artistry and imagination.
When Cafe Evoke Catering comes to your event, our goal is to serve you and your guests the finest Certified Fair Trade and Organic coffee and espresso drinks that you have ever enjoyed. While we understand that the Fair Trade movement may have holes, it is what we have and we strive to begin to help make it a program that is more than a trend.
Please contact us today for booking and package information. You can email us through our website or call 405-517-0517.
Thank you for choosing a Fair Trade coffee catering company. We look forward to a long friendship.
When I started working on Cafe Evoke several years ago, I set many benchmarks that would help us measure our success. I did it again with Cafe Evoke Catering only a year and a few months ago as well. When you set these long term goals, they feel like a light at the end of a tunnel that can never be reached. I hope that is about to change.
Today is the last day of July - one day before my 25th birthday - and another day closer to the end of the year. The good news?
We are on the verge of having our very first break even month!
The numbers are not all in yet but it looks like incoming invoices will finally overpass our expenditures - even with the purchase of our granita machine. We have a long way to go but having this past month go so well is a great feeling.
These benchmarks are important and if the numbers come in correctly, we will have reached one - finally.
This past weekend, Cafe Evoke - Montana's premier specialty coffee catering company - headed up the hill and worked with The Yellowstone Club - Montana's premier club and resort - at thier yearly Camp YC. We had a great time and wanted to thank the Club and all of it's members, guests, and staff for a great event.
I love this time of year. Why? The Tour De France, Wimbledon, and summer nights. Summer days I hate - espically in Bozeman in a place with no AC, etc. Now, I left coffee and espresso out of that list for a reason - we have already established that the bean is one of my favorite past times, hobbies, lifestyles, whatever.
Ok, cycling is something I love to watch - every minute of every race is what I would prefer but I normally have to settle for a lot of the Tour and an hour or two on Sunday afternoons. I have not been able to ride as much as I would like to but I hope to begin nightly rides as soon as the Tour de France comes to a close.
Why am I talking about all of this on A Though Over Coffee? Well, I wanted to let you know that my Austin friends, Progress Coffee, have started a new race team - Progress Cycling.
I think this is a great move for a community minded coffee company. I had that in my first business plan as a marketing idea for Cafe Evoke as well and I have always thought watching Jittery Joes Pro Cycling in GA was great - espically climbing next to US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team (now Discovery Channel Pro Cycling) in the Tour of Geogia. This shop has done very well with it's team and I hope the same success towards Progress Coffee.
They are looking for sponsors but I am not sure what their criteria is. You can contact them through their website for more information. You can even by their new kit........which looks very cool. Have a great day.
You can now vote and let your opinions of what the best things in Bozeman are this year. The Bozeman Tributary each year and has everything from best burger to the best thing about bozeman. While I started this campaign late, I am asking that at the bottom of the ballot, you write in Cafe Evoke Catering in the "best things we left out" section.
I have always said that if Cafe Evoke (the coffee house) ever opened it's doors in Bozeman, we would with this voting often. Because we are not opening any time soon, I want Cafe Evoke Catering to win. So, if you are in the Bozeman area, stop by and vote!.
Next year is my goal. I want Evoke to be voted Best in Bozeman in 2008.
Thanks for asking. We have been busy the past month trying to grow Cafe Evoke Catering. June turned out to be a great one for us and July has started off with a bang as well. We are still not as busy as I had hoped but calls and questions have been coming in which is a good start for us.
We have three parties we are trying to nail down. That will get us closer to our goal of 8 events per month but we will still be shy of that number. So, in an effort to really flood the Bozeman market, we have done the following...
1. Dropped our prices. No competition is hurting us I think. I know that we have the best quality coffee in Bozeman and that people like it but they have nothing to compare to. I like being the only coffee catering company around but it makes it hard to get your pricing correct. We still have good margins which is nice so we will see how it goes.
2. Taking leads. We are jumping on every sales lead like a bicycle rider jumping on an attack. We are going after anything that we can get and making sure to follow up. We are happy with what we have done so far but we are going to go after it even more. The only way to get Cafe Evoke Catering to the top of the coffee catering market is to sell sell sell.
So far, June and July will be our biggest invoiced months. This is the time when we have to really go after it even more. With the addition of the Granita Machine (I talked about last time), we think we can increase our sales quite a bit.
In an effort to help leverage our services, Cafe Evoke Catering has introduced Granita to it's line of services. Our goal with this addition is to create another option for the hot summers and also for those that may not be interested in having a coffee bar but want to have something unique and original at their event.
We think it will be a good move because we found out there is only one company in Bozeman that does anything close to this type of service and they are a bit out of town and hard to work with. We should take delivery soon and be able to begin getting marketing material ready for it. Our plan is to drop this information at all of the party rental companies in Bozeman (these companies just tell customers about it because they do not rent them to people) and start plugging away.
Our first event will be at Montana's premier club, The Yellowstone Club, at the end of the month. We are excited to see how it all works and to begin making the trek to break event - my goal by January. We have been really watching our spending, our additions, and how we are advertising. Our goals are to make Cafe Evoke Catering the premier beverage catering service in the United States - not only the best specialty coffee caterer, but best beverage caterer.
This is going to help us make our way in that direction.
We had a great event to wrap up our busiest catering month to date. Great setting, excellent atmosphere, fun party, and nice folks. All was great but I had a very off night. While I sat around and tried to lay blame to all sorts of things - uneven ground that our cart was sitting on, a machine that was not keeping heat correctly, milk that was not quite cold enough, etc - it seems mostly I was just having an off night.
I guess that is to be expected at times but it makes me very frustrated. That aside, however, we could not have asked for a better way to end the month.
Below are some pictures from the event. Not a bad place to have your "office" if you ask me....
We served brewed coffee at the recent Black Gold screening here in Bozeman. Eric, Lisa and the rest of the crew at the Bozeman Film Festival did a great job with the event and pulled it off without a hitch. The audience of about 100 got to see the film, learn some about coffee, and hear from a panel of local coffee people and a few others. We were asked to join this panel but declined because of schedule conflicts.
It is good to hear from others in Bozeman about Fair Trade issues but while I feel the community is off to a good start, I would like to see more. it would be great to see some of the panelists use their business to really promote Fair Trade and it's issues - both good and bad. Yes, many of them have the cute little signs in their stores but what does that really do? I would like to see people bring in speakers, show films, and somehow get their customers more invovled with the issues at hand. I'm not really sure what that looks like but I do not think it has to be the same for each shop.
I am challenging all shop owners to figure out the best way to reach their clients and get the word out.
Thanks again to the Bozeman Film Festival for their efforts here in Bozeman. Great job.
