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In an trade constructed on huge moments, Sebastien Centner bets on the small stuff.
“In our trade, there are issues individuals simply anticipate,” he says. “If it is scorching meals, it must be scorching. The meals must be good. That is the inspiration. However that final 5 p.c? That is what makes us stand out.”
Centner is the founding father of Eatertainment, a Toronto-based catering and occasions firm that now runs greater than 1,000 occasions a yr. His journey began with confidence and a tough lesson.
On the time, Centner wasn’t within the catering enterprise. He was working a bar and restaurant when a loyal buyer requested if he may assist cater his daughter’s engagement occasion. It will be his first try at doing an occasion like that.
He figured he had the whole lot coated: cooks, servers, drinks and meals. It could possibly’t be that onerous, the hospitality entrepreneur thought.
“It was a catastrophe,” he tells Shawn Walchef, host of Restaurant Influencers. “If we delivered 50 p.c of what the shopper anticipated, I would be shocked.”
However as a substitute of strolling away, he acquired obsessed. “Within the first yr, we did 20 occasions,” he says. “I realized from occasion to occasion to occasion. I did a much less and fewer sh*tty job every time.”
Over time, he developed a system based mostly on preparation and precision. Each element of an occasion was mapped out prematurely so his workforce may deal with curveballs and nonetheless ship one thing particular.
“I all the time say we are able to solely ship the 5 p.c if we have already deliberate out the primary 95,” he says. “When you’re scrambling to repair one thing primary the day of the occasion, you do not have time to go above and past.”
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The philosophy caught. So did the stress.
“You are tasting wine collectively, you are flying to South Africa to scout venues, you are mainly on trip along with your shoppers,” he says. “But when one thing goes fallacious, we are the assist. They are not our associates.”
Centner loves the vitality of the catering world — the tempo, problem-solving and creativity. However he is clear on one factor: It is a enterprise, and it solely works when you constantly ship.
And that is not one thing he does alone. His spouse, Sheila, has been with him because the very starting, serving to to drive each the enterprise and the model ahead. “She balances me,” Centner says.
The couple’s connection wasn’t simply instantaneous in enterprise. It was instantaneous in life. “After I did meet her, we met, [and] she moved in inside per week,” he says. “We have been engaged inside a month, and we have been married inside the yr.”
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They’ve labored facet by facet for many years. Whereas Centner focuses on logistics and scaling, Sheila leads the inventive facet — growing content material, directing technique and consistently pushing the corporate to evolve.
“She’s the one who’ll say, ‘If I see another matcha inexperienced tea mini burger, I will scream,'” he laughs. “And he or she’s proper. We have been doing it for six months. We gotta do away with it.”
With Sheila main the inventive route and content material technique, Eatertainment’s in-house workforce now captures each occasion, edits video reels and sends shoppers curated spotlight recaps. It is a layer of polish that did not exist in catering just some years in the past. That non-public contact has grow to be a part of their 5 p.c.
What retains Centner going after twenty years is not simply progress or scale. It is the individuals. “My favourite half is seeing individuals’s faces once they stroll right into a room,” he says. “They smile. They pull out their telephones. That is the response we would like.”
For Centner, that second is the whole lot. The lights, the meals, the music — all of it builds to that spark of pleasure. That connection. It is the additional 5 p.c that Eatertainment was constructed to ship.
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