Ok, let's unravel this out a bit.

- From what I gather you are 3 guys (who cook ethnic food) who get hired through a catering agency.

- For Zeus knows why, your biggest client (the catering agency) dropped you.

- You mention not marketing properly and now seem to not have a good customer list to cater to (pun intended).

In your situation the best option would be:

Print out some flyers and cook some samples. Go door to door to every fucking office park in a 5 mile radius and take some sales. Do this before lunch! Now, about those samples. You have to prepare plenty of samples. Put out your best stuff. The way you display them is very, very important. Make sure that everything looks and is clean and tidy. Wear some nice clothes that don't smell like you came out of a kitchen. Smile.

Do this for 3 times a week for 3 months, then once a week forever. You will not have to worry about this happening again.

Remember: Every person that tries and likes your food is a customer. Take an order right there. Close the sale while they are enjoying the sample. Don't hesitate.

Also, raise your prices by one dollar in the entire menu, and give a $1 discount to those who order right there. People can't turn down tasty discounted food.

Disclaimer: My sister in law has a business like yours and I grew it to a very nice size with that same tactic.

Thank you so much for all your suggestions, I am definitely going to hit the streets hard and will look into doing some of the things you suggested. I appreciate it greatly.

Get busy and report back to my email (click on my username).

Some office buildings wont let you in to some floors. Bribe the security guards with samples. A good way to do this is to just hand out a sample before even talking. Hand it out, and tell them about what you do. Don't forget that these guys are also customers.

You ideas (your parent comment) are excellent I've made the same recommendations over the years to people in similar situations. Put feet (and free product) on the street. Most recently with a local cupcake bakery. "Go out and give your cupcakes to all the offices in the area". (Free sweets? What's the chance that the office workers won't stop by for more if they are good?)

One thing though that I've found is when you give good ideas to people you'd be surprised at the amount of excuses they have for not following up on suggestions. The lack of "oomph".

What I'm saying is this. It's easy for someone to write a plea (as was done here) for help on HN (or anywhere). That takes almost no effort at all (like a magic "diet pill" when you want to lose weight). Let's see if the entrepreneur actually follows through on the advice that you gave.

(If you do a follow up post or anything on what happens here please email me in case I miss it because I'd like to know the outcome positive or negative to the outbound sales effort).

In the age of online marketing, those who master the offline variant are kings. A sales message delivered by a real person outsells the same message delivered by a gadget.

I totally agree Larry. I am definitely taking the intiative. My plan of attack right now, unsure if this is the right idea, is to take a large sample to upcoming meetups for people to try my food, hit up companies via email, twitter, etc... past clients that are willing to go direct, and lastly hitting up nearby startups for sure. I am totally committed to doing whatever I can right now. My whole business is at stake. Going to spend all night tonight to strategize and make a list of companies to reach out actually. Appreciate the comments. This is incredibly hard for me to admit public. I will hustle.

Have you seen any of the Kitchen Nightmares UK episodes? They're all on YouTube. (Not the U.S. version, it's terrible.) A lot of the episodes have at least one part where Ramsay gets out and puts samples in front of people ... I'm not even in the food business and I find these things helpful to watch from time to time for learning customer engagement.

I have only watched a few US version. I am definitely going to put more samples out there, starting by hitting up meetups and getting people to try my food. Thanks a lot for the suggestion.

Hitting meetups is a really good idea, but can I say that orangethirty said get out now, today, before lunch.

Hitting meetups - well it might be a good excuse to wait. You know, that meetup tonight is not so big, I will do Thursdays. Plus Thursdays, well the venue does its own catering and won't let me in till ....

Get outside the nearest two pre made sandwich places - and success is selling twenty lunch packs to people who otherwise would have bought a sandwich - this lunchtime.

Get out if the office and get out now.

Good luck :-).

I definitely appreciate the feedback. I am planning to work day and night at the moment on reaching out to people online in many different sources from email, twitter, facebook, etc. As it is the weekend and many business are closed, I wanted to maximize my time in this way and also make a list of things to prepare for next week, so I can hit the ground running on Monday.

The publicity will help. In fact, go and open up a free blog and write about it. People tend to eat this off and it will be you sales. Realize that people love underdogs and want to be part of happy endings. By sharing the process with them they will become emotionally invested and then be obliged to root for you (which means more sales). All startups go through scramble mode. It's normal.

I disagree.

Stop focusing on building your brand and start focusing on distributing your product. You need to accept the fact that for whatever reason, people choose to label you as a foreigner because you cook ethnic food, so you lose branding credibility. Therefore, you need to outsource your branding. You can leverage your distribution channels to increase distribution and build your brand simultaneously. Your distribution channels are a) your restaurant, and b) a catering business. Why not sell your food to other catering companies? There is no reason for it to be exclusive to your own. When more catering companies sell your food, you control more distribution channels and move more product. Your product is your food, and that is what differentiates you.

Reduce the cost of preparing your food [1] and outsource distribution. Allow catering businesses to serve your food. Tell them you will give them a discount if they call it "<Your Last Name> Food." [2] From the sounds of it, customers love your food (demand is high) and few people know how to cook it (supply is low). So price can be high. Just show catering companies how much they can charge for your food, and they will jump at the opportunity to buy your food at seems like a large discount. Not only will they distribute your food, but they will build your brand because a positive brand for your food increases their sales.

[1] Start by reducing cost of labor (chefs, sous chefs, dishwashers, waitstaff) and inventory (make more efficient shopping trips).

[2] The name of your food is your only branding decision. Choose a good one.

Your post does not make sense. I tell him to go out and get sales (cash flow) now by going directly to his market. The samples are not for branding. The samples are necessary because nobody is going to order food without trying it first. The biggest issue with selling food is overcoming the fact that people are picky about food. Thus giving samples allows him to convert people into customers immediately. It's the best sales technique he can use at the moment.

Plus racism is going to help the business in this case. This is ethnic food. If some white dude went around selling his stuff people wouldn't buy it because it would not be authentic.

> people choose to label you as a foreigner because you cook ethnic food, so you lose branding credibility.

This part makes no sense.

It does in general. Racism is still alive and well in the US, although if most white racists knew how many non-whites handled their food on a day to day basis, they'd starve to death.

That said, there is a lot less racism going on in the Bay Area. This shouldn't really be an issue as long as you speak clearly and enunciate your words (the hallmark of any good salesman, really).

Disclosure: I'm white.

In many ways though being a 'different'/'ethnic'/'cultural', whatever you want to call it, brand and marketing as such can be brilliant for a business. I come from an arab/white american background and everyone within that culture will stay loyal to anyone with a good business that is also arab(to some degrees of cultural diversity). With that comes your base market to keep your business going, then because of that loyalty you have people hear about it and come regardless of their backgrounds. If you're running a good business those people become loyal to your brand even if you don't sell hotdogs and hamburgers per se (the typical 'white american' food :P).

No, what I meant is that white people selling ethnic food are actually in disadvantage. Curries are Indian, yakitories are Japanese, croissants are French. If they say satays are Indonesian, then, an Asian looking chef automatically scores extra points for being of a related origin.

> That said, there is a lot less racism going on in the Bay Area.

I don't agree with that. I think it's just more hidden or wrapped up sarcastic "hipster" jokes. Something similar to http://jezebel.com/5905291/a-complete-guide-to-hipster-racis...

Disclosure: I'm black.

I found it hilarious that the author of this piece feels that calling a non-black person a "thug" is racist.

Um, the word thug is actually of Indian origin. It's borrowed into English. So based on this logic the original thugs who were Indian are now racist.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=thug

I think what you're debating is similar to how someone could tell me "gay" means happy. Yes, we all know that's the origin of the word - but in 2013, if you hear someone describe someone else(or something else) as "gay" you can probably assume they don't mean "happy".

Disclosure: I'm white.

I never thought of "thug" as conveying an implication of the subject being black. "Thug" to me is more of a attitude / mindset / way of life, not something that corresponds to race. IOW, it's as easy to be a white "thug" as a black "thug". In fact, now that I think about it, the context in which I usually think of the word "thug" is the phrase "jack booted thug" which has connotations of Nazis, who were - as far as I know - mostly white. The other thing the word "thug" brings to mind for me, is the stereotyped image of a big white (Italian, probably) guy in an expensive suit, working as an "enforcer" for some mafioso type or something.

Maybe it varies by region, age or other factors, but I would not think of myself as being racist towards blacks by using the word "thug".

Maybe in the US, but I am sure in India "thug" does not mean a black person.

"You need to accept the fact that for whatever reason, people choose to label you as a foreigner because you cook ethnic food, so you lose branding credibility. "

The comment lost its value with that one statement. Was there even info stated by the OP that this was the case? I know a few very high priced restaurants in NY that serve high priced "ethnic" food and the owners are both foreign but NOT from the region the food is from. They're branding is pretty strong.

This. Especially "Take an order right there." Also, have nice cards to hand out that mention your website, and ASK EVERYONE FOR REFERRALS of SEVERAL kinds.

Role-play asking for referrals. Ask for more than one. Ask for business, restaurant, catering company, friend, co-worker referrals. Get together and review how asking for referrals has been working. Brainstorm. Get better and better at it.

A few people will give you DOZENS of leads to follow up. Most will give you at least one. Get phone numbers AND email addresses AND business names where you can. Be prepared.

Also, begin connecting to everyone you think could give you a referral or new business on LinkedIn and export contact to get their email when the accept your connection request. Send an email to thank them for accepting (this is not spam, this is a transactional "thanks" if you write shortly after they accept your connection), and give them a short, compelling pitch that you plan and modify and improve.

That is a fascinating response. I was wondering how you would reply if someone asked the same question about selling a software.

I like this idea, but aren't there laws against distributing food like this?

orangethirty always gives great advice

This is exactly how i marketed my first ONLINE STORE when i was 16 (that's 6 years ago now). I Made about 2000 Pounds doing that alone that summer.

Wow, at 16 you were hustling way more than me at your age. Nice. I agree that orangethirty sales tactic is very good and that it has worked for you. So it's all about executing on it on my end. Which is definitely not an easy task for me, but clearly it needs to get done to get this business afloat and survive.

Shoot me an email.

I know these guys. Their food really is delicious and they were one of my favorite meals. I wish there were something I could do to help, guys.

But no kidding around, they're doing good work and definitely merit a place in a startup's food rotation. I give them a full endorsement, and I'm a picky child with regard to catered food.

Food is a very difficult business. I'm heartbroken for your setback. I hope you find a way back out of the hole. Good luck.

Thanks man, you don't know how much this means to me right now.

Hi Feldo, sounds like a really tough spot to be in.

Can you share with us what mistake led you to being dropped by your biggest source of revenue? In these sorts of things often an 'after action' report works out pretty well, it goes "Oh we blew it, we did X, this caused Y, we've changed P, Q, and R so that X can't happen again." Startups do that all the time, one of the more common ones is "we didn't secure our servers and gave out everyones login information" or something along those lines.

Restaurants are particularly hard places to succeed because not only are they regulation rich (so there is a lot of energy expended in dealing with the health department) they are abused by fickle tastes. (Ask anyone who has tried to run a Greek restaurant in the south bay for a while now, not sure why but they are darn hard to find)

Your web site talks about attending food festivals, do you have a truck? The Curryupnow folks gave a pretty textbook example of how to build a following by driving to specific spots, tweeting about it, and introducing their cuisine to folks outside their building. That skipped the whole 'get us a catering gig' problem which is, as you've experienced, a challenge.

The mistake I made that made me lose the catering agency was a startup had ordered food with instructions that basically said something like "please leave fish sauce out, someone is allergic". I took that as only one person was and brought a side of fish sauce for the other employees. I did specifically mention that I understood that someone was allergic when I delivered the food but that the side of fish sauce was for anyone else that might have wanted it. The customer told the agency and I was canned. To be fair, in hindsight that was a stupid mistake that could have been pretty bad. The agency has been great and I don't fault them at all. In the past I've had other minor mistakes like being a little late on delivery.

I talked to the CEO of the catering company but he didn't want to over step and I understood. At this point I don't believe it is something salvageable.

How is this a mistake? If the side of fish sauce was clearly marked that's what I'd expect, it's not because one employee has a food allergy that everyone should go without.

Either:

Must have been more than that or the culmination of many errors.

-or-

These catering agencies are so mercurial that that's just not an effective channel of distribution

-or-

That particular catering agency perhaps has other issues and satayco would have lost them anyway. Hence the "can't rescue the relationships" (realizes it's an abusive relationship so to speak).

Honestly, I don't fault the agency. Although I did not mention their name, if anything was wrong, it was probably my fault. I relayed as much and as honestly of the story from my point of view as I can. At this point, I'm putting everything on the table. It may not seem like it but this is an insanely difficult thing for me to even write or admit publicly with my name out there. I don't want to place blame on anyone. At the end of the day, the mistakes were mine and any big or small mistakes along the way (serious or not) does not change the situation. I can only learn and hope to move forward.

>It may not seem like it but this is

Trust me, we know. Most of us here have our own thing going on, and we know that terrible sinking feeling. The feeling that you've disappointed your friends, family, the whole world even. I also know how terrible of a place it is to be. And putting your name to it is much harder. I don't really have any advice because I don't think I'm qualified enough on this topic. But I will say this, stay strong. This is not the end of the world. Your family and friends will not stop talking to you, they will not estrange you, insult you, humiliate you or anything like that. What ever thoughts arise, they are all in your head. Make sure you have enough personal savings to tide you over, and please stay strong.

Thank you for the kind words. I am definitely going through a stressful time right now and yes you are right that I have an aching feeling of huge disappointment of the people that has supported me along the way and customers that lover our food. I know the biggest way to solve that is getting out there and connecting with people about our food and our story. I already got a tremendous amount of advice on this thread. so its really about taking massive action. I'll do my best to turn things around, be strong and have the faith to keep going.

the person in charge of ordering must really hate fish sauce and made the final decision.

The agency fired you so they'd keep the account.

What you did was perfectly fine. If someone has enough of an allergy that the closed side of fish sauce would hurt someone, they have to say that, and ask for special prep.

I love your food. I've had it a few times between I think Off the Grid (?) and when you've catered at GREE. Its definitely a long shot, but please feel free to e-mail me (email is in my profile) the best way to contact you and I can put you in touch with some people at GREE who handle our food. Maybe we can extend a lifeline. I'm sure many who work at GREE would be more than happy to have your food more often :)

Thank you so much. I will do so right now. I truly appreciate this.

I don't live in the valley, so maybe the answer is obvious, but I'm having trouble understanding how or why it would be important to specialize in startups. I would naively expect that to be limiting your market for no particular reason, but I doubt you'd do it if there were no reason. What's the deal?

We don't. We have catered to all sorts of companies including big corps like Apple. Startups has just been easier for us to reach as its hard to make sales with big companies but we are open to any all clients.

Oh, that makes sense. Thanks!

Hey, are you open to feeding a startup with 10 people next week (Tue and Thurs)? Email bryn@herelabs.com and tell her I sent you.

Just say when and where. I will email tonight. Thank you so much.

Please cc me (siqi@herelabs.com) as well. Thanks!

Some might not see this as on-topic because it is not a startup but a business that sells food to startups. That may be why there are no answers to it yet.

First see if you can apologize to the catering agencies and get back in good graces with them. You did not give us any details why they dropped you. Speak to a manager there and see if it is possible for them to take your account back.

Failing that try to find other catering agencies in your area.

If you cannot find work by catering agencies try changing your business to one that drives trucks around. This is a company in my area that does well with Korean Tacos http://www.seoultacostl.com/

You might try to find areas you can get permission to park your truck at and cater to the crowds there. I would suggest startups and startup events, and try things like Korean Tacos where you mix one food item with another. A lot of people who work at startups like Asian food.

Consider doing a Kickstarter so you can raise money to do your own food catering agency to serve your business and other catering companies. Maybe build on your web site so it can be marketed better. Put in a program where a startup can request that you cater their events.

Make sure you create accounts for your catering service on as many social networking sites as possible to help promote it. Find web sites on food reviews on businesses in your area and email them to do a review on your business. Advertise in the local yellow pages as well.

I hope this advice helps,

Sorry, on iPhone so can't type everything out easily. Please see my reply to another commentator on background story on losing the catering agency.

As for the food truck route, unfortunately that is a very high cost (truck and all) and a huge deviation from our business model. I do have plans for a kickstarter like campaign.

I genuinely appreciate your advice.

For what it's worth, my office gets food catered from you guys and its fantastic. I always look forward to it. It's a huge bummer to hear things aren't working out for you guys. Wish there was a way I could help!

Thank you so much for your kind words. If you are able to spread the word, that is more than enough. If you guys would love for us to cater for you again, just say the world. I truly appreciate it.

If you can get down to Mountain View, we'll try you. Send me an email (click on my username).

We definitely do Mountain View. Will email you right now. Thank you so much.

Healthy food for hackers. Increases happyness+productivity and is a surprisingly big buzz these days with books on the topic and whatnot.

Basically the value you want to provide to startups is that they can use your excellent food as marketing for new employees.

Research customer support ticket software and maybe offer on demand food. Turn those late night hacking sessions on pizza into late night hacking sessions with fresh food (or maybe even a chef right there to cook)

And yes door to door sales ASAP

Thank you for your suggestions

Apologies, but most of my feedback is from your website & sales. I'm not in the Bay area quite yet.. soon, and have never had a "Satay" (rural midwestern guy). They sound pretty good though.

Just one suggestion on the website that would take maybe an hour to fix. Your menu is a giant, low-quality PNG. I can barely read it, and zooming in just makes it worse. You either need to make it real HTML so I can zoom in and read it, or make it a PDF. Make sure your menu and website are VERY accessible via mobile -- if its hard to read on a nice desktop display, it's going to be next to impossible to read on Firefox mobile.

Also, your "Catering Menu" link goes nowhere. There is at least one image in your gallery that says "this is a test".

The pictures look fantastic!

Sales-wise, have you tried cold-calling start ups that are near you? Or have you attended any of the start up groups / meetings / events? Or outright asked to cater them? Spend a few hours on Monday cold-calling some local government offices, they don't cater often but something like satays might be unique enough to prompt them to try it out. For tech companies, reach out to their main account on Twitter. When they book you, tweet about it to help them get cross-promotion.

At this point, it sounds like you need clients more than branding -- reach out and grab some clients!

Do not annoy them. Make sure you keep track of who you call & when, who you reached (if anyone). Even if you only reach a support member or an engineer, if it sounds good they might mention it to feed their next hackathon. Don't expect that every call nets you an order or large catering deal.

Thanks for the feedback. I am definitely going to do those things immediately. Appreciate it.

I wish you all the luck to continue your business, but why do you have a startup that caters to startups and yet you're new to hackernews?

Interesting point. HN is full of founders from startups.

OP, since you are going to do another pivot. Do you have plans on being your own agency and catering directly and having a direct relation with startups or are you looking for another agency?

Right now, we are not pivoting. We have a business model we believe in that was working (albeit some things have to change). I have no plans to be a catering agency or compete with those guys. I just want to cater to startups with the food we have to offer, that we know our customers love. Going direct in the long term makes the most sense for us but we would not rule out working with agencies at all. As a matter of fact, I appreciate everything they can do to help. Any and all mistakes relating to what happened is that of my own.

The honest truth is I didn't know about it. We are a food startup and although we talk to a lot of startups, I guess it never came up. I only know of news sources like Techcrunch.

If you're mobile or have the potential to be, my suggestion would be to consider heading for Seattle or Minneapolis. Both have great startup cultures without as much of the pretense or ridiculously insular "culture" of California. There are also plenty of other places that could present similar opportunities if you actually feel you've shot yourself in the foot in your area.

Several people have pointed out that you may be overreacting, and I agree. If that turns out not to be the case, definitely keep in mind that the west coast is absolutely not the be-all, end-all of startup culture, and startup culture absolutely is not the be-all, end-all of your potential clientele.

You clearly do your work well. Instead of freaking out over a knee-jerk reaction from one of your middlemen, look for more stable resources. Collect references from your happy clients and publish them. Unless you're seriously misrepresenting yourself, there's no reason you can't succeed in spite of this mishap.

I agree. We are just bleeding money right now and this has definitely set us back even more. I have debt right now and if things don't turn around soon, I may not only not have a business, I may be in deep debt trying to keep things afloat, so I promise you this is pretty dire. Its quite difficult for me to admit this publicly or even put all my cards on the table the way I am. I would not do this if I didn't felt like I honestly need the help. I definitely am trying to keep a calm mind and the comments here have been greatly helpful. I appreciate everything and I agree with what you've said. I will do my best to survive and hustle right now.

Here is my advice. Stretch out your runway by cutting down your burn-rate. If you have people on as full-time employees renegotiate with them so you pay them per catering contract. You want your burn-rate to go down to as close to zero as possible. When your burn-rate is zero you can keep running on empty for as long as you want and never go out of business.

Your business name and goodwill will always be there. With the burn-rate under control you can gradually and organically grow your business.

The worst thing to do is to fly into a panic and rush into all these lead generation techniques. People can sense your fear and panic in your food. Think of your business as a dish. Let it simmer slowly and let the flavors gradually express themselves.

Also don't increase your burn-rate by giving deep discounts in a desperate bid for customers. Keep your prices reasonable. The profit-margin is the oxygen for your business to stay alive.

Thanks for the advice. This was definitely in my mind, in order to continue the business as long as I can, I have to reduce the burn rate as efficiently as possible. I have talked to my crew about the matter and they are disappointed but understand the magnitude of the situation. I already apologized to them that their hours are more likely to be cut due to the lack of business. I am blessed to have people be understanding and are making the sacrifice in order to keep this business afloat. However, this can only last so long and I still need to hustle. Burn rate is high due to a commercial kitchen that I am on a lease in. At the moment I have renewed a Craigslist ad of renting the kitchen space out, for extra income. Could use to push that a little more.

I do agree that going to meetups and connecting with people using these leads generation tactics with a sense of fear and panic will not be good for anyone. As a dire situation this might be, staying calm in the storm is going to be a key to my success. The analogy of the dish being simmered slowly is spot on. Initially though of simmering of any dish requires hot fire to get it going and going out there talking to people is that fire, but my business name with goodwill will make it come together.

Deep discounts wasn't what I was going to rely on for bidding customers. I plan to give discounts reasonably so that they have a chance to taste what we have to offer and that I have decent amount of profit margin to make it work. I do appreciate the great advice and everything you mentioned is definitely something to think about.

Do you have a food cart? I live in Portland which is supposedly the food cart capital of the world, so I may have a bit of a skewed perspective, but around here, every company like yours operates primarily as a food cart. The income isn't as good as catering events, but if you set up in a good area, you will get a shit ton of exposure, and any good food cart in Portland usually has catering gigs booked months in advance. Not sure how well that model would work in the Bay area, but I know when I was there last week I was craving some good food cart food, and didn't see many of them. It might be a relatively untapped market down there, though you make need to drop a few thousand dollars for a good cart, which you might not have handy in the short term.

I don't have a food cart. I did something similar where we had a booth before at a food area in SF called Off The Grid where there were a bunch of other food carts, booths, and trailers but it was base on those that get accepted and we only got business once a week. During the rest of the week we did festivals and events to gain business on the other days. It wasn't very much and unstable at best. We pivoted to catering as it was more sustainable as a business and one that we could grow much larger. And over the last year we did move revenue than we did when we were doing the booth and festivals combined.

I've visited Portland recently and saw one of the food truck areas in downtown near 10th. It was nice.

-- I don't like the blurb on your web site.

Satay, a dish of marinated skewered and grilled meats served with sauce, originated in Indonesia in the 19th century, invented by street vendors after an influx of immigrants to the country made it popular among locals.

-- Who originated it? Immigrants to Indonesia? Emigrants from Indonesia? I'm really confused.

Staying true to our Indonesian roots, my grandmother created a unique family receipe we could call our own and have passed that receipe down through the family for generations.

-- "Generations" usually means more than 2.

-- These are small things, but if you redo your website at some point, you might want to be somewhat more clear and credible.

Dude, this guy has bigger problems than you being confused about his semantics. You are just being unfairly picky.

He's in a highly competitive market. He needs differentiation. Other than the impression he can make upon people who have ALREADY tasted his food, the words on his website are one of his key chances at differentiation.

Thank you for your suggestions. When I can afford to do so, I will have it redone. I know it needs vast improvement. In the meantime I'm going to focus on getting as many customers as I can on foot and through reaching out to people online hoping I can pass this storm.

I was just telling my husband (who used to order food for his startup every single day) about you guys and he pointed out that your website really doesn't make it clear you're in the Bay Area, or whereabouts you serve. The yelp page is a lot clearer, but you might want to put a little more location information on your site; the 323 phone number confuses things too.

Good luck! You could try the free samples approach at the Hacker Dojo one lunchtime, perhaps? see if you can get a regular set of customers there.

Thank you so much for pointing these things out. I realize my site needs a major overhaul. I would love to cater to your husband's startup if he would like to give us a try. I would be willing to give him a discount to take a chance on us.

Will definitely reach out to the Hacker Dojo and other hacker spaces per your suggestion. Thank you so much!

Did you participate in First Friday in Oakland tonight‽!? I hope you did! There are literally single-person vendors selling vegetarian food on street corners and I see you have a tofu option, so you're probably vegetarian / vegan friendly. (Not to mention all of the other meat eaters eating brats.)

(I'll mention you to the people I know at UC Berkeley and tech company as well. Can't promise anything though, :-/ )

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I thought it was only a food truck thing.

Well, yeah, food trucks are probably 95% of it. At least it certainly feels that way even if the actual percentage is different, but this feels like an anything-goes-all-hands-on-deck-let's-sell-cheap-tacos-or-curry-if-that-works situation.

Yeah, maybe I will try it the next time around. Thanks so much for your advice. I am willing to try anything at this point, or rather just do my best moving forward.

First, I hope your business recovers. Most of us entrepreneurs have been where you are, its tough. Second, if you intend to act on the excellent advice you've gotten here, I would appreciate a followup post on the results, maybe in a couple of weeks from now; marketing is definitely something I'm trying to get better at.

Thanks. I will do my best and post again.

You DEFINITELY need to redo the menu. I would close the site right then and there.

Make it HTML so I can read and zoom if necessary.

Best of luck!

I definitely agree.

We had your catering a few months ago, I remember it being delicious, hope everything turns out for the best!

Thank you so much for your kind words.

I had a look your site and you seem to be a very enthusiastic team. I'm glad you took this step.

Over the last one year, I've seen many people being helped by HNers. One particular example being that of a founder in India being helped with a lawyer to take care of some legal nuisance.

Wish you good luck. And hope you grow big.

Thank you

Hey Feldo, we cater food into our office in SOMA, we'd be happy to try you out. Give me a buzz.

-Matt@Gigwalk.com

Thank you Matt, appreciate this so much. Will email you right now.

Hey man, I'm not in the Bay Area so there's probably not a whole lot I have to offer you. But I'll be happy to at least tweet, G+, Facebook, etc., your link and try to help get the word out.

Thank you so so much. I appreciate it more than you know.

No prob. I just shared your link on both of my Twitter accounts and on G+. I'll push it out a few more times over the next few days, and share it via a few other channels as well.

Best of luck to you!

Thank you soooo much.

I just sent a LinkedIn invite as well. If you connect with me, feel free to trawl through my list of connections and see if there's anyone you'd like to reach out to, through me. Even though I'm on the East Coast, I do have a few connections out in the Bay area. I'll email a couple of folks as well, and see if they might be able to help.

Add me on linkedin - Mitchell Abdullah I'd be more than happy to chat with you about your business to hopefully help you get out of your current downward trend.

Sorry, is this you? http://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchellabdullah

Maybe its easier if you add me: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/feldo-nartapura/7/b85/494

Thanks

Yes that is me. I sent you an add.

Give discounts for HN karma, if this post ends up helping you.

Not sure if that's a good idea, though, because karma is supposed to have no tangible value. It's just an idea.

I am open to giving discounts to anyone that is willing to take a chance on me right now even though I'm in a serious bind. I appreciate anything I can get. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'll definitely try you the next time I have an event; Indonesian food is awesome.

Thank you. Please email me a reminder. I will be sure to give you guys a discount for helping us out at this time.

I don't know much about the food business other than knowing that it is brutal. I've had the experience of loosing a business after years of hard work and know exactly how painful it can be. I want to try to help you with ideas but, again, please understand that, while I understand business, I do not understand the food business. Here it goes. In no particular order:

How would you sell your competitor's product?

Think about that. If I wanted to hire you to sell my food product for me, how would you kick ass and take names?

List your top ten competitors (not just ethnic food). What are their advantages over your business?

Why do you have to sell ethnic food? Does anyone deliver burgers where you operate. I mean, GOOD burgers? How hard would it be to launch an experiment to sell an absolutely fucking-great would-kill-for-it "asian burger" for $10?

Can you sell other provider's food for them? Why don't YOU become the catering service? You might do far better this way than making your own food. Are there other good ethnic food providers that you could market? A supermarket does well because they have something to please everyone. If I don't want your kind of food there's nothing you can do to make me buy it. If, however, you offer me five different kinds of food choices you might actually have a sale every day of the week.

Can you package some food and sell it to roving food trucks (frozen, refrigerated, whatever)?

Call your local TV station. Find out who you have to lather-up to get on TV with your exciting super-hip ethnic food offerings. Be ridiculously upbeat. Create hype. Give them a reason to put you on TV.

Call every wedding and party planner you can find. Maybe you can land a job that way. I still think that if you are in the food business it might be wiser to not be in a super-narrow ethnic corner but rather be able to offer a wide range of choices.

Here in Santa Monica there's a regular event where a number of streets are closed from car traffic and food vendors put-up canopies and sell their stuff. Anything like that going on where you are?

Any race tracks of any kind near you? You could do lots of business if you could get a space at a good event. Swap meets are the same.

Do you have the means to get a mobile food truck? I don't know that business at all but I used to know someone who made good money with one.

Start an ethnic food meetup of some sort. Charge $15 all you can eat (or whatever makes sense). Get some music. Make it fun. Make it an event somewhere.

Any local camping areas? Crazy idea, but maybe you can print some flyers "we'll deliver your lunch to your campsite on Saturday".

Talk to tour bus operators. Maybe they have some ideas on how you could market your food to their customers. Offer them a cut.

See if you can find any movie productions that need catering.

Contact Home Depot or Lowes. I see guys with hot-dog stands right outside their doors there all the time. Not a clue what it might take to be able to do something like that.

Offer a program through which you'll cook and deliver someone's lunch for the entire week. Some might love the convenience of having five pre-packed meals in their refrigerator that they can just microwave at work and have something special that tastes good.

From watching the Gordon Ramsey shows I remember that, more often than not, he'd come in and grossly simplify the menus. I don't have the experience to evaluate your menu. Maybe you can get some help from a local culinary school?

He also did a lot of testing on the streets in some cases. Cook-up a variety of samples for food you offer now and a few new ideas and go pass them out for free on the street. Ask for feedback. You might discover that people aren't really in love with your food. For control I would have some tasty off-the-shelf microwave something to hand out as well.

I realize you probably need immediate income right now and might not have a lot of time or room for experiments. This is a tough spot to be. Do your best to be creative and try a few out of the ordinary things. You might just discover a gem.

Above all, don't be afraid of failure. I know that while you are going through it the whole experience can be overwhelming both emotionally and physically. Commit to the idea that if you fail to recover you will take a few steps back, critically analyze why you failed and come back stronger. Maybe you need to take job for a while. Do it. If entrepreneurship were easy everyone would be doing it. It isn't. You are unique. Don't give up.

Thanks for your suggestions. We did Satays because it was a family recipe and customers loved our food back when I first started out as a solo guy selling on the streets. From there I expanded the menu around this. I do not know much about cooking to be honest and I think what we have, customers currently love. While I realize we could tangent off to other foods, thats not really our business or goal. We want to grow our current business to reach more customers. Those that have tried us have in the past re-ordered (but this was all through the catering agencies). We are now working to go direct.

Our goal is not to become another catering agency. Our goal is to grow our business to cater to as many companies that will have us. I think its important to focus at what we're good at and I firmly believe in this model.

We have considered selling Satays frozen and ship it but that isn't easy and there is a lot of issues around this. We can't ship cooked food due to lots of regulations and laws. Its an incredibly difficult path as we have considered in the past (before the current pivot) to be the Omaha Steaks of Satays or be in stores like Costco. I have explored both extensively and landed to the conclusion that the business we are doing now was the best for our future.

We have had a few press coverage in the past to be honest but I don't know how much that has helped us as a whole. Especially since we have pivoted but I will reach out to them again soon.

We did do festivals and events before and it was very hit or miss and the total revenue was actually less than what we were doing now.

No race tracks nearby that I can think of. I am definitely going to do a meetup as well as reach out to current meetups soon. Not sure if there are many movie productions that are around here but we are definitely open to any business that would love catering.

Our menu is tiny so we don't have an overly complex menu at the moment. We started on the street with just Satays and expanded the menu there before pivoting twice to the current model. Our customers have definitely been satisfied with our food, it really is more about reaching out I believe.

I greatly appreciate you taking out the time to offer suggestions and will look at the other stuff mentioned. I am willing to try anything at this point and will think it over for future implementation if we survive long enough. Above all, I appreciate your kind words. Thank you.

You have to be open to the idea (and the potential reality) that you could be wrong. In the tech space there are tons of examples of companies that started out to do X and ended-up doing something radically different. I know it's what you want and your family recipe, etc. That in no way constitutes a formula for success, it's just what you want. Success could very well be somewhere entirely different or a few minor changes away.

Another thought. Find your local SBDC chapter (Small Business Development Center) and SCORE (?? of Retired Executives). You might be able to connect with someone with deep knowledge of the food business who could help you figure it out. There might also be loans or grants that, along with advise, could help you get past this problem.

I totally agree. I understand being open to test things is important. Unfortunately where I am, I don't have a whole lot of time left much less pivot the entire menu. If this doesn't work out or turn around, I can't afford to even pivot anymore. I am doing my best to stay afloat but as I have pivoted twice, I am definitely open to change if we can manage to survive long enough for that.

I deeply appreciate the suggestions and will look into it. Thank you.

You may be surprised at how open the local Costco warehouse manager would be to someone running a Satay stand outside the warehouse. They are always looking for stuff like this that will surprise and delight their customers.

Really? I will totally check this out. Thank you.

i don't see any reason to worry, mistakes like this comes and goes. happens to all of us.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your words at this time.

It's much better if you offer a deal and say something like "eat here or we'll both go hungry" and not be in a panic like this.

Keeping a business afloat nowadays is so difficult. I just scrape by month to month myself. I hope you turn things around.

Thank you. I am slowly trying to calm down. Definitely don't want to over react. It is incredibly insanely hard for me to open up like this as it leaves me super vulnerable and pretty much puts everything on the table. I wouldn't be doing this if I honestly didn't feel like things were extremely bad and I realize its never good to not be calm about a situation, or any situation. Just hearing some support here has helped more than I can say.

Running a catering business is honest work, I'm sure. I hope many hungry entrepreneurs visit Sataysfied for years to come!

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, running a catering business is an honest way of living. So we are just hustling as hard as we could to keep that alive. We'll keep you posted.

if i were in SF i'd totally order (moved away a few years ago)

but if anyone is listening, west LA needs more startup-oriented catering. it's a pain in the ass to go to lunch as everyone drives and delivery is shitty because everyone drives (hence food is always cold, late, etc.)

Oh, interesting. I actually moved from LA to the Bay Area and started this business here.

Why is this on HN? Sorry Feldo, though your attempt is valiant, this may not be the right place to advertise. Hit the streets of SF. Use more social channels online like FB, etc.. Try to get local press to pick you up.

I was recommended by a friend to ask for help in HN and I have to say the turnout has been amazing. I am so grateful for the comments, advice and people coming out to help out. I am looking at a other channels and I am definitely going to be hitting up the streets door to door. I did have some press coverage previously but not sure how relevant that is. It is something I am thinking about deeply right now but know I can't depend on it entirely. Thank you.

He's not begging for money, he's begging for a chance to serve a clientele. One is desperate, the other is business development.

"Make your own reality TV show" is your solution to a dude who needs clients immediately? C'mon.

Love this response. Was thinking the exact same thing.