Abraham Catering adapts to the COVID-19 pandemic while maintaining its tradition of service

Juli Oberlander • October 1, 2020

Abraham Catering adapts to the COVID-19 pandemic while maintaining its tradition of service

Photos courtesy of Matthew David

When the world shut down in March due to COVID-19, Abraham Catering had to rapidly adjust to the circumstances.

Based out of Ralston, the company specializes in both large and small events, offering catering services at seven Omaha venues. As the food and restaurant community became impacted by the pandemic, Abraham Catering was faced with significant financial challenges.

"We had to quickly pivot around the second week of March when all of our parties began to cancel," says Matthew David, head chef for Joslyn Art Museum. "We made the hard decision of furloughing 29 employees and trimming down to only 15 essential employees."

Once that decision was made, David says Abraham Catering had to figure out how to best serve its customers' needs and adjust its business model. Luckily, the company already had its business plan in place with ACasseroleToGo.

A division of Abraham Catering, ACasseroleToGo donates 15 percent of its proceeds to Heart Ministry Center, which helps Omahans affected by poverty. David says the company started ACasseroleToGo seven years ago as a way to offer the community fresh, homemade meals that are both healthy and convenient.

While the business plan remained stable, David says Abraham Catering faced many difficulties in adapting to the pandemic.

"At first, the conversion of our kitchen and minds to execute such small orders versus cooking for thousands of people in a day was a challenge," he says. "We quickly retrofitted our settings and adapted to this new business model."

David says the other challenge was informing the community about the changes and building up its social media presence. Since Abraham Catering largely relies on customer referrals in order to obtain new clients, social distancing requirements brought changes in how the company marketed its services.

"Abraham Catering has been around for 61 years and with that longevity we have enjoyed a primarily word of mouth approach to our marketing that actually serves us quite well," David says. "We quickly customized our product and packaging to a younger more media savvy clientele while maintaining our tradition of offering excellent nuanced food that you couldn’t find anywhere else."

In addition to relying more heavily on social media, Abraham Catering focused on its casserole offerings as a way to increase its sales. David says the company's famous casseroles provided an option to expand the business that the team hadn't considered before.

"We were blessed with a huge order of 600 casseroles for Westside High School by generous alumni which then jump started us and allowed us to see the potential of a larger scale casserole operation from the one we had which consisted of maybe 50 orders a week at best to 50 or more a day," he says.

Abraham Catering also adapted its business model by offering more family meal and kids menu specials delivered hands-free at no cost. With the pandemic shutting down events and large parties, David says the company started offering happy hour specials, which included selling liquor items from its various venues at a deep discount.

Since the pandemic hit, David says the team has leaned on each other during the crisis.

"As a team and family we have never been closer," he says. "This crisis molded us and shaped us into a leaner, more streamlined operation that can change and grow whenever to whatever situation befalls us, even fortifying our business philosophy and culture."

Throughout the pandemic, he says Abraham Catering has sought to maintain its values of family, respect and service to the community while adapting as a company.

David says this commitment has served the company well as Omaha starts to reopen.

"Large parties are slowly returning as the quarantine and restrictions are lifted," he says. "We are starting to hire back employees and things are starting to feel like normal. We know there are still challenges ahead, but we know we have each other."

Slide title

Write your caption here

Button
Slide title

Write your caption here

Button
Slide title

Write your caption here

Button
Slide title

Write your caption here

Button
Slide title

Write your caption here

Button

< Older Post Newer Post >