Nonprofit (B Corp movement)
B Lab France : 100% centralized management
sessions, learners, schedules, attendance
Event catering group
Event catering: 50% more responsive to clients, and the true margin of every event
Food Side Stories is an event catering group based in Montreuil, just outside Paris, that brings together three brands: Presqu’île, Cantine California and Mijote. I worked with its team to rethink the way it works, around a system that generates deliverables in each brand’s style and makes the true margin of every event visible.
1 · Context
Food Side Stories brings together three brands with distinct positioning. Presqu’île is built around produce from land and sea. Cantine California serves Californian and Mexican street food and started as a Parisian food truck. Mijote is dedicated to catering for event productions.
The business is highly seasonal, with peaks in spring, early fall and December, and many events running in parallel. Its success depends on flawless coordination between the office, which handles logistics, and the kitchen, which handles production.
Three people run the events with dozens of vendors, in a business with complex margins: staff, equipment, transport, vendors and raw ingredients each weigh on profitability.
2 · Challenge
The brief at a glance
- Generate deliverables in each brand’s style
- Eliminate double data entry
- Reconcile actual costs with forecast margins
- Track every event from start to finish
- Share a consolidated view of production
Notion was confined to a documentation role, with no databases, relations or automations. Information was scattered across Gmail, Dropbox, Drive and Pennylane, the accounting tool, at the cost of double data entry and a constant risk of errors or oversights.
Run sheets for clients and vendors were built by hand, in each brand’s style: several hours per document, up to two days a week in peak season. Every transcription put critical information at risk: schedules, access details, menus.
The business stakes were twofold: respond faster to clients and finally manage profitability. Actual costs were never reconciled with the margins forecast in the quote, and no consolidated view tracked the progress of events.
3 · Roadmap
- 1
Workflow audit
An analysis of the existing information system, business workflows and priority friction points: event production, logistics and administration.
- 2
Relational architecture
Notion rebuilt around interconnected databases for events, tasks, clients, staff, vendors and brands: information entered once feeds the whole system.
- 3
Automated run sheets
Make workflows that produce client and vendor documents in Google Slides and Google Docs, in the brand’s style, as soon as the event is entered.
- 4
Margin management
Revenue and margin dashboards by event, brand and cost category, reconciled with the quote.
- 5
Team workspaces
Workspaces where everyone has immediate access to their tasks, events and priorities.
- 6
Training and documentation
Training sessions and video documentation, to support adoption, maintenance and the evolution of the system.
4 · The transformation
Before
- Notion limited to documentation.
- Information scattered across Gmail, Dropbox, Drive and Pennylane.
- Run sheets built by hand: up to two days a week in peak season.
- Manual transcriptions, a source of errors.
- Actual costs never reconciled with forecast margins.
After
- 50% more responsive to clients: run sheets go out as soon as the event is entered.
- Higher perceived value: deliverables in each brand’s style, delivered on time to clients and vendors alike.
- 30 minutes instead of two days a week in peak season, with no re-entry at all.
- The true margin of every event and every brand, reconciled with the quote.
- Production meetings run from shared dashboards.
We don’t need to re-enter information, it avoids errors, it’s really cool.
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