Expanding Relationship With Corporate Client

Earlier this year I started getting some nice lunch orders from a local manufacturing plant. Get a lot of them in the $75-$100 range, sometimes over $200. It’s great and they’re low maintenance as long as we’re on time and the order is correct.

I don’t know if they just started ordering in lunches and used us for pizza, or if there’s a new person in charge of it who likes us or if they were using someone else and had a bad experience. I’d like to start reaching out to their employees to try and generate some customers who will order when they’re home. I know these are busy people, so I’m a little uncomfortable walking in and saying “hey, I want you to help me make more money of your employees.”. Has anyone had any good experiences they can relay of how you’ve approached these types of situations, why kind of offers you’ve given, etc.?

I deal with it all the time. There are many reasons places like this stop ordering frome you

-bad experience with last order
-person in charge of ordering left the business and new person doesnt know about you yet
-a change- the business wanted to change to someone else/ever wonder who they were ordering from before they started these large orders from you? they needed achange
go in with menu in hands and over 2 orders with 30% off full menu price that week only- you will get at least one of these orders and have your foot in the door.

I spend more time talking to businesses and residental customers due to this main reason - it will never end. Just when your sales are bringing in tha cash and you get conplacent, the ship turns shouth

pt

When we have a business that is ordering at a good clip for us we go in and give them a $10.00 gift certificate for each employee. The company gets to hand them out to the employees as a “gift” from them (the managers/executives love that) and we get them in the door for dinner. I’d have to check some data, but I think the average ticket on those is usually around $24 - close to our normal - so they’re covering the cost of the certificate on their visit.

Make a donation of some sort for their “seasonal” party…

Or maybe some Thank You! coffee mugs (with your logo) with a candy insert…You can buy nice cello wrap and ribbon at Wally World…Include 1 or more with each delivery…Good clients are hard to come by and worth “greasing”…

i had the same thing with a factory that used to be in town. The first thing i did is found out what regular customers of mine also worked there. found out they had a break room and the employees were also allowed to order lunch/dinner in. Got one of my regulars to start putting the menus 20 or so at time in the break room and posted a magnet on the wall next to the phone. I also went in to the office and dropped off some menus and talked to the secretaries and the office staff including some floor managers and just flat out asked what their main concerns were for the orders(time restriants delivery etc) and also asked if they made a switch and if they did why so not to make the same mistake that i really appreciated them ordering. Worked out great found out why they stopped the other place(taking twice as long as told and they only have 25 minute lunch break) I then gave them some gift cards as Piper had stated. They not only continued to order but the orders totals doubled and with the cards the employees were ordering for the break too which add 3 times the amount. When they closed the plant I did almost $1500 off of 3 days they threw lunch and dinner parties for all the employees. Now this post has me wishing someone would move into it asap!!! lol

We have a large grocery distribution center near our store that is the size of a small city. I am pretty sure they oder pretty regularly from PJ’s. They have a guard gate & big fence around the place. I have tried calling up to the HR department, but to no avail. Any ideas as to how we could get some of the orders?