Since Normandy Catering Inc. opened its doors, the company has been on a continuous hunt for new areas of business it can break into. Not satisfied with simply filling its 500-person banquet facility on Friday and Saturday nights, the food service company has been growing in niche areas.
Ryan Baker, general manager, and James Carmigiano, vice president, have been expanding Normandy Catering’s niche business in both catering and in food service management.
“Normandy is a family-owned business that started in 1978,” Carmigiano says. “We started doing school food service in 1984, and from there, we started in delivery business and expanded our food service into other schools and higher education.”
It has been the food service side of the business that has really taken off.
“The focus that has caused our growth has been in the food service area versus the catering,” Baker says. “We’ll actually run your kitchen, manage the employees that are there, and we’ll manage the procurement procedures with all of the vendors and produce the food.”
Normandy has seen a lot of growth in this area with schools in Northeast Ohio.
“We can run a public school kitchen by delivering food cheaper than they can actually manage and run their own kitchen with their own people and realize substantial savings while increasing the participation rate that the children are purchasing,” Baker says. “It’s been a win-win and there’s been a lot of growth and a tremendous amount of activity in that section of our business.”
Normandy has also been expanding its service to schools that don’t have kitchens.
“What we’re doing is we’re actually catering the food,” Baker says. “We cook every morning and we deliver breakfast. We set up and have equipment there to serve it. Our people serve it, we clean up and we come back here, load up again and we head out and do lunch. We’re doing a couple thousand a day in those types of meals and there’s been a lot of growth in that area for us.”
The growth Normandy has seen has been due to the effort to find new niche areas that others can’t compete in.
“We decided that there’s only so many Friday’s and Saturday’s in a year for us to load people into our facility and so we’ve gone out and went after this section of the business,” Baker says. “We’ve been here for a long time, but we’re a young, progressive, forward-thinking and hardworking company that really sees a strong future.”
HOW TO REACH: Normandy Catering Inc., (440) 585-5850 or www.normandycatering.com
