A La Carte Catering

03/09/2016

Today's soup: chicken tortilla

03/08/2016

Today's soup: chili

03/07/2016

Monday. Hot meat sandwiches
Tuesday turkey and noodles over biscuits
Wednesday taco bar
Thursday. Lasagna
Friday. Pierogie casserole

03/01/2016

The last menu post was a test to see if anyone could find what was wrong. We had Tuesday and Wednesday reversed (although the menu for each day was correct!). Today we are testing out chicken piccata to see what everyone thinks! Give us your feedback!

02/28/2016

02/25/2016

We apologize that we could not provide a menu in advance this week. The floor in the roadway cafe is being stripped this week and we did not know in advance if we would even be in the cafeteria to plug in the soup or if we would be out in the tunnel and have to serve all pre-wrapped cold food.

Today we are having hot turkey sandwiches and mashed potatoes along with hot sausage subs and pierogies. Tomorrow is meat or cheese stuffed shells, breadsticks, caesar salad, philly cheesesteak subs and french onion soup.

02/17/2016

Hope everyone has had an opportunity to dig out of the snow and will be back to work tomorrow! The menu for the rest of the week is as follows. Bringing back some traditional favorites and testing out a loaded baked potato bar with chili, cheese, bacon and all the "fixins!"

Wednesday: Baked potato bar, chili & cornbread. (Also chicken noodle soup at Roadway)
Thursday: Swedish meatballs and noodles, broccoli cheddar soup
Friday: Ham loaf, mac & cheese, load baked potato soup

What are you guys thinking about our "bars" on Wednesday? This is the third one, having done the hot dogs, tacos, and now the baked potatoes. We're also thinking about a burger slider bar in the near future. What else would you like to see?

02/09/2016

Sorry for the last minute change. We had to change our menu to a different soup today - chicken pot pie. We know everyone loves our loaded baked potato soup and will be adding it to next week's menu.

02/08/2016

Monday's quickly approaching and our apologies for not getting the menu up sooner! As we continue to search for trends in volume each week, we want to again request that everyone communicates with us to let us know if there are certain days that people will not be eating with us due to snack days, parties, etc. Helping us predict volume will ensure we don't run out. it also prevents us from having huge losses due to overestimating the volume. Now that everyone is getting used to (we hope!) our self-serve line, we're providing a little bit more flexibility this week.

Tuesday we are going to be serving our Hot Pierogies. This is a very popular dish amongst our customers, but does have a bit of a "KICK" to it. The dish includes kielbasa, peppers and onions with the pierogies and it's all smothered in hot sauce. Because it's a bit different than what some are accustomed to, we'll be providing it as both an entree or a side, depending on the portion you want. (recommend 4-5 pierogies as an entree and 2 as a side). That same option is available on Friday for the haluski. Those of you who aren't familiar, haluski is a polish dish made with onions, cabbage, homemade noodles and a little bit of butter (ok...LOTS of butter!)

Wednesday we'll be testing out a taco bar. Again, we're going to give everyone a bit of flexibility here with the side, which is nachos. We'll have cheese sauce and various toppings available if you want nachos as your side. If you want to opt for loaded nachos as your entree on its own, you can do that and add the meat to them.

Thursday, we'll be serving baked ziti. It's not simply ziti with sauce. We add in mounds of ricotta and mozzarella cheese, hamburger and sausage, then cover it all with our homemade sauce. It's one everyone should try!

Please share this out so that we can start extending our reach on Facebook. This will help us communicate better with our customers and provide us an opportunity to get more feedback!

02/05/2016

Good morning Facebook friends! We're rounding out our second week in Boyers. We continue to appreciate everyone being so patient with us. The volume of customers has still been a little bit unpredictable from day to day and week to week. We continue to adjust in order to make sure we don't run out of food for those of you who eat a later lunch. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don't. We had rave reviews over the chicken alfredo yesterday. Unfortunately, some of you didn't get an opportunity to test it out. We will be bringing it back to the menu soon!

We are adding a few "extras" onto the menu today for Fish Friday. In addition to mac & cheese we'll be bringing baked potatoes. And on the salad bar, we'll be adding coleslaw. We will continue to add "extras" on occasion to figure out what people like. When those things are a hit, we'll include them as part of the regular menu.

Speaking of hits, what did you all think of the caesar salad yesterday? For you salad eaters, would you like to see a specialty salad on occasion such as chicken caesar or spinach?

We'll be working later today and over the weekend on next week's menu. What did everyone think of the hot dog bar? Would you like to see a similar bar with burger sliders or tacos & nachos? Share out this post and let us know what you want to see or what you DON'T want to see on the menu next week!

01/31/2016

Boyers staff: We're going to test out a few different things this week, based on feedback, including a hot dog bar. We'll have a variety of toppings, including kraut, homemade chili sauce, and cheese sauce. We had a few disappointed Roadway customers who wanted to see the lasagna and ham loaf that we only served at ROC last week. Both of these will be at the Roadway this week. We'll be testing our stuffed shells out at ROC tomorrow and look for it to be at the Roadway if we get positive feedback. We had rave reviews on the pulled pork and are bringing it back this week.

We will continue to "tweak" our menus and volumes until we get it right. We want to be certain we're always offering you a good variety of items to choose from each lunch service. Last week we brought two soups to Roadway every day, which may have been more options than necessary. This week we are going to move to one soup a day. If we get a lot of feedback wanting two, we'll switch back. What do you guys think?

Pasta is on the menu this week! Our chicken alfredo pasta is one of our customers' favorites and always gets rave reviews. We'll be adding caesar salad to the salad bar that day to accompany it. As we start introducing more pasta, you'll see some clarification on our pricing for these dishes. Our entree combos typically include both a side and a salad. However, our pasta entree combos will include a roll and a salad for the combo price. In addition, we will not offer these entrees under the a la carte pricing. Why? Mainly because we are trying to keep our pricing as simple as possible. The a la carte pricing for a typical entree on its own is $3.50. Appropriate pricing for many of our pasta dishes, based on the cost to make them, would be priced at a higher rate. Rather than create more confusion with a la carte prices, we will be offering the pastas only as part of the combo meal.

We attempted some dessert items early last week. Although we didn't sell a high volume of them, we had quite a few people asking for desserts near the end of the week. Do you all want dessert with your lunch? What types of items would you like to see?

01/30/2016

Wow! What a week this has been for us in Boyers! And boy have we learned a lot!! We can't begin to express our appreciation to all of the new customers we gained and the positive responses you have given us about our food. We are also grateful for your patience with us as we are trying to figure out how to get things flowing smoothly. Our week started out in ROC with WAY more food than we needed! By Friday, we scaled back the food because of the feedback we received (lower volume of people in the office and pizza orders) and despite that, we ran out of food! We apologize to those of you who did not get what you wanted. As you can imagine, there's no exact science to predicting who is in the office on any given day, who is eating in the cafeteria, and what food they select. It may take us a couple weeks to get it right. In the meantime, we would love to get any feedback you have that will help us predict the volume we need. Our goal is to strike the balance of having enough food for everyone who is eating without making so much that we take home tons of leftovers that are wasted.

We observed and heard suggestions on additional checkout lines in the roadway as well as consideration for a different setup for the tables. The confusion on the self-serve concept is dwindling as people have gone through the line a couple times. We have learned that you all like the salad bar and love macaroni salad! Look for us to improve this in the near future with more options and an easier setup! All of you seem to love the soup, but two different soups each day may be more options than necessary. Our iced tea has increased in popularity as the week has gone by as well. We will be keeping this moving forward and looking for other options to provide you.

What other observations do you have for our first week? What can we do to improve next week? We look forward to hearing your feedback.

Stay tuned for next week's menu! It will be posted this weekend. What do you want to see?

01/27/2016

Great to see so many new faces today at the Roadway cafe! We appreciate all the positive comments from everyone. We take pride in the way we prepare our food and always hope our customers appreciate that. We also recognize there are some things that need to be adjusted. There is still some confusion over how our lines and pricing work. We assume this will work itself out after everyone goes through the line a couple times. In the meantime, please share yesterday's post with your coworkers or refer them to our page.

if you had our lunch today, what did you think? What can we do to improve your experience?

It's only Wednesday, but our planning is already in the works for next week's menu. What would you like to see?

01/27/2016

Good evening Boyers staff! It's Tuesday and we've got a couple days under our belt serving lunch at the ROC cafeteria. Tomorrow's a big day for us opening at the Roadway Cafe for all our new customers! We're bringing out a lot of our fan favorites, so we hope everyone likes what we offer - Pecan Chicken, red potatoes, pulled pork sandwiches, loaded baked potato soup and Italian wedding soup. As always, we'll have our salad bar and the make-your-own sandwich bar.

For those of you who will be visiting us for the first time, we realize this concept is new. We will be there ready to help you through our line and answer any questions. To eliminate a little bit of confusion, here is some additional information:

• Don't forget this is all self-serve, but not all-you-can-eat. We request that everyone takes what they feel is reasonable for the price and what they are able to eat. And since it is self-serve, please use hand sanitizer before going through the line.
• Our most cost effective lunch is our full entree or hot sandwich meal. You can snag each of these at the same price ($5.50). This comes with the side dish and a salad. It’s easiest to fix this in our divided containers. Once you fix your entrée or hot sandwich with the side, move on down to the salad bar and fill your last section with a tossed salad or any other items on the salad bar such as macaroni or pasta salad. We will have a variety of offerings each day.
• SALADS: We have two options, a small salad or an entrée salad. You can get any item or combination of items from the salad bar in your container. As an example, you can get a tossed salad, macaroni or potato salad, or a combination of both. The small is either a bowl or a small takeout container. The large container can be used at the entree salad price. Those who want to add chicken can do so on the entrée salad. These are packaged separately in foil wrappers to be kept warm.
• SOUPS: This should be relatively self-explanatory for everyone. There are both small (8 oz) and large (12 oz) bowls with lids. There will always be crackers available. Depending on the soup, we will offer additional toppings. As an example, we may have shredded cheese for your chili, or sour cream for a chicken tortilla soup.
• MAKE-YOUR-OWN SANDWICH: Pick your container for this one. If you’re having your sandwich with a side dish, you can grab one of the to-go containers. Otherwise, there will be wrapping available for your sandwich. We will always have a variety of rolls and breads to select from, along with several fresh sliced meat and cheese options. There will be a selection of the traditional sandwich toppings such as lettuce, tomato and onion available with the sandwiches, as well as condiments. Fix it how you want!
• A La Carte Items: Any of our items can be purchased on their own. Our pricing has been developed to make our “combos” the most cost efficient. However, we recognize some people don’t eat a full meal for their lunch and may want something a little bit smaller.
• Iced Tea: To start, we’re offering an unsweetened tea by the checkout. Cups, lids, and straws will be there to fill your own, along with sweetener. If this becomes popular for our customers, we may expand to include flavored teas or other non-carbonated drinks in the future. Tell us what you’d like to see!
• Napkins and utensils will always be at the check-out so you don’t have to carry them with you while you’re fixing your food.
• We accept cash as well as debit cards.

We look forward to seeing all of you tomorrow and welcome your feedback after you’ve been through the line. We plan to continually try new things and “tweak” some of our processes along the way to be certain we’re meeting everyone’s expectations. We appreciate everyone’s patience and suggestions in the meantime!

01/24/2016

Happy Sunday everyone! Tomorrow is our first day serving you at the Boyers ROC Cafeteria and we're busy prepping and organizing everything to provide you a great lunch! We are getting a lot of feedback and questions about our "self-serve" concept. We wanted to take a few minutes to clarify what that means.

Through many years of experience, we have learned customers are most satisfied with their catering experience when they can serve themselves and determine their own portion sizes. How can we afford to do that? From a financial perspective, it is more cost efficient. For every customer who fixes their plate with extra large portions, another customer selects smaller portions than we would typically serve. The end result is the portions tend to offset each other to create a reasonable average. By using this approach, we do not have to pay dedicated staff to portion out the food for each person. Customers never leave an A La Carte line feeling like we have “nickel-and-dimed” them with stringent portion control for the sake of profit. They always perceive that they get their money’s worth of whatever they purchase.

All that said, THE SELF-SERVE LINE IS NOT THE SAME AS AN ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT BUFFET. It simply means, you fix your own plate. We believe everyone in Boyers will love this concept and will feel like they are getting a good value for their money. We can continue to provide this method of service as long as everyone takes reasonable portions and only what they are able to eat at one sitting.

With this self-serve concept, we are aware of concerns with hygiene. We are at the height of cold and flu season, after all. We can’t require, but will politely ask that everyone use the provided hand sanitizer before they go through the line. (We will rely on all of you to shame your fellow coworkers if you catch them going through the line without using the sanitizer!) Additionally, we will be using sneeze guards on the chafer dishes for the purposes of protection.

What other questions can we address about our self-serve concept?

01/21/2016

For those of you who haven't heard, we will be starting in Boyers next week with the ROC Cafeteria on Monday and adding the rest of you at the Roadway Cafe on Wednesday. Read our post from December 31st to see a list of our all of our offerings, including, soup, salad, and sandwich bars. We look forward to meeting many of you next week!

01/16/2016

Congratulations Chrystal Kriebel Hemphill, Friday's winner! Show us this post during our first week to get your free soup!