It’s been a minute since I have written a blog. We opened back up and the business of being open and operating during COVID-19 took over. That is another blog entirely and I will get to it, but that is not what I want to talk about today. I read yet another fantastic MIBE (Make It Better Everyday) message from my friend and mentor, Anthony Lambatos, from Footers Catering in Denver, Colorado. Seriously – sign up for his weekly MIBE message, his words are gold and always thought-provoking. I read his MIBE message from last week (the inspiration for this post) and knew that I needed to do this same activity with our team. We brought our sales team back into the office this week on an alternating A/B schedule. This is the first time any of them have been at their desks or inside our doors since March 16^th. I have a few tears in my eyes just thinking about the journey we have been on thus far.

Read More…

My name is Lisa Ware and I am the Director of Business Development & Special Projects at Catering by Michaels. I have been writing about our journey through COVID-19. If you have not yet read the previous episodes – be sure to start from the beginning!

The Great Pause

I have been staring at this screen for hours trying to find the words to describe the roller coaster of emotions we have been through in the past three months. My last blog post was all about the abrupt shutdown so forgive me that I am going to fast forward a little bit. The weeks that followed the abrupt shutdown have all blurred together, but the emotions throughout remain the same. In my head, I have dubbed this weird time as the great pause. When we held our all-team meeting in mid-March, never did we ever imagine we would still be in this position in mid-June.

Read More…

My name is Lisa Ware and I am the Director of Business Development & Special Projects at Catering by Michaels. I have been writing each week about our journey through COVID-19. If you have not yet read the previous episodes – be sure to start from the beginning!

The Abrupt Shutdown

We all arrived to work the Monday after our all-team meeting and the day started out like usual – for about an hour until we realized that we actually have to figure out how to abruptly shut down our business. The scramble began. We close our business for a few days every January to give our team a much-deserved break after the insane hustle of the month of December, but we do not actually fully shut down, more like a deep clean. This was a true shut down – of everything. Let’s talk about the first layer – events needed to be rescheduled, deliveries needed to be canceled, 200+ employees needed help filing for unemployment, all the questions from our team needed to be answered, our initial policy for how we were going to handle what would be hundreds of rescheduled events needed to be made, the templates for our sales team needed to be written so we were sending out universal messaging to all clients, our offices and kitchen needed to be deep cleaned, signs needed to be made for all the doors saying we were closed, vendors needed to be notified, deliveries needed to be canceled and the kitchen needed to be shut down. More on the kitchen soon. That could be an entire blog.

Read More…

My name is Lisa Ware and I am the Director of Business Development & Special Projects at Catering by Michaels.  I have been writing each week about our journey through COVID-19. This is about my personal experience as we have been living through COVID-19 in our business. If you have not yet read the previous episodes – be sure to start from the beginning!

Read More…

March Madness is here! Are you ready to get crazy?

The next four weeks will have you running through all of your emotions in short succession: screaming, laughing, and crying.

It’s all part of the process of determining who will be the next NCAA basketball champions. And if you are going to make it through the championship game, you’ll need to provide fuel for your viewing party guests.

The best way to do that is to have a fantastic line-up — of treats! Doing this will keep everyone energized, focused, and sharp throughout the game.

Here are our picks for five easy-to-make snacks that everyone will love. You’ll have a big win with these refreshments, even if your team loses.Read More…