Catering to the wedding crowd
“Always the caterer, never the bride,” quips Cathy Cugini, who spends virtually all her time preparing and managing weddings. For all but the coldest weeks of the winter, Cugini will begin her day at 6 a.m. and often continue past midnight, seven days a week.
Cugini’s professional world has gotten even more pressure-packed since she and her business partner, Brad Boyd, decided to expand Treats Catering & Flying Lobster Clambakes from catering trucks to the elegant grounds of the Dennis Inn.
Owning and operating the classic inn – blocks from Cape Cod Bay, the Cape Playhouse and the Cape Museum of Art – is a far cry from 12 years earlier when she first met Boyd in an evening class at the Sandwich Community School.
Cugini readily acknowledges that her journey has been built as much on good fortune as hard-nosed planning. She also concedes that yesterday’s success hardly assures tomorrow’s. “The great lesson for me has been to see the cumulative effect of daily dedication.”
As the Cape becomes an increasingly popular locale for destination weddings, this activity has become the heartbeat of their business. For some time, she and Boyd managed to cater weddings at private homes, but it became increasingly apparent that having their own venue was critical to long-term success. “Private residences are available as rentals, but at price tags reflecting the soaring real estate costs of choice locations,” she explained.
“The inn enables us to sell our real estate” as part of the package, she said. The inn’s upstairs guestrooms can accommodate a weekend wedding party. To round out the amenities of the facility, Cugini and Boyd installed an in-ground pool last year that overlooks what may be the country’s oldest cranberry bog.
Boyd is the business and operations side of the Dennis Inn; Cugini, the food side. “I think it’s a great advantage that we don’t overlap much in personality and skills,” she said.
“I like putting all the pieces together. That’s what is so different from being a chef in a restaurant. It is not just about putting plates out. It is about organizing the event: ordering the liquor, the food, the linens, getting the staff on board, and going over details with the clients so their big day unfolds to match their vision.”
Finding a niche in a crowded market
To succeed in the highly competitive wedding business, the Dennis Inn has had to establish its own niche. “A wedding is often planned over the course of an entire year. We really wanted to stretch that ‘big day’ out so that it’s not over in just a few hours.” The Dennis Inn hosts only one wedding a day, and Saturday receptions include two nights’ stay for up to eight guests in the four-room suite upstairs, with extended stays available.
Cugini also is learning that more events do not necessarily translate into more net revenue. “Beyond the wedding business, we have to be more selective. Smaller dinner parties are just not profitable for us. Catering is a tough industry, especially as prepared foods are increasingly available at grocery stores. We have seen longtime caterers who are not doing it anymore. Before we had the inn, all we sold was food. So all of our operating costs depended on what we charged for that salad, that ear of corn. Now we sell the real estate and the liquor, too.”
Boyd and Cugini often sit down with their pie charts to analyze business. “We see that we generated the same revenue last year with 40 fewer invoices. You really need to keep an eye on where income is coming from. Is it from food? Liquor? Lodging?”
Keeping up with savvy brides
Meanwhile, Cugini works diligently to stay abreast of trends in her industry. “People in general are pretty sophisticated when it comes to food. And the brides are all pretty savvy about what they are looking for. Matching their budget to what they want is always a challenge.”
She’s no longer surprised how many bridal clients have spent hours at Web sites such as www.theknot.com, studying everything from budgets to what matters most to guests. Just as the Internet is central to a bride’s planning, it has become critical to enterprises like the Dennis Inn.
“Exposure is really more and more about the Internet,” said Cugini. While advertising locally sells clambakes in the summer, it’s the Internet that reaches out to wedding clients from all over the country and as far as Australia and Europe. “And e-mail is such an efficient tool for a documented dialogue. We don’t miss playing phone-tag with clients all day long.”
Cugini takes great pride that she is co-owner of the Dennis Inn, having gained her share through sweat equity. “I don’t have a formal culinary education; in fact, my degree is in painting,” she explained. “But, as with so many art students, I worked in a restaurant to pay my tuition. After I graduated, the restaurant I was working in offered me a great job, and here I am.”
“First it was to have a paycheck, which was pretty appealing. Then one experience led to another. I moved here 15 years ago and worked for a wonderful family in Oyster Harbors as a personal chef. Twelve years ago, I came to Treats as an employee – and I have never left.”
Her biggest challenge is finding balance to her life. “There are other things I like to do, beginning with painting. But, for the time being, painting begins and ends with Benjamin Moore in the dining room.” She dreams of developing a series of monolithic portraits of stockpots and colanders, “all gray and stainless steel and aluminum. They strike me as very beautiful.”
For now, the pots are used for her very own veal stock, which she prepares by the gallon and freezes in blocks inside Ziploc bags.
“Since we bought the inn, I do feel I have aged,” she observed – not with a complaint, but instead, a sense of responsibility that includes employing 20 to 30 people at any one time. “It really struck me as I became a partner that I was now an employer, with people depending on me. We are blessed with the most amazing, energetic staff, who I think of as our good-will ambassadors to each guest.”
As Cugini looks ahead, she sees a summer that is fully booked, with only a few openings for spring and late fall, which is becoming more popular than even June. “We’re already booking for 2008.”
Originally published in the March/April 2007 issue of Cape Business.
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