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In an trade constructed on large moments, Sebastien Centner bets on the small stuff.
“In our trade, there are issues folks simply anticipate,” he says. “If it is scorching meals, it must be scorching. The meals must be good. That is the muse. 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 might assist cater his daughter’s engagement occasion. It could be his first try at doing an occasion like that.
He figured he had every part lined: cooks, servers, drinks and meals. It will 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 stunned.”
However as an alternative of strolling away, he received 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 upfront so his group might deal with curveballs and nonetheless ship one thing particular.
“I at all times say we will solely ship the 5 p.c if we have already deliberate out the primary 95,” he says. “In the event you’re scrambling to repair one thing fundamental 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 together with your shoppers,” he says. “But when one thing goes fallacious, we are the assist. They don’t seem to be our associates.”
Centner loves the power of the catering world — the tempo, problem-solving and creativity. However he is clear on one factor: This can be a enterprise, and it solely works in the event you constantly ship.
And that is not one thing he does alone. His spouse, Sheila, has been with him for the reason that 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 every week,” he says. “We have been engaged inside a month, and we have been married throughout the yr.”
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They’ve labored aspect by aspect for many years. Whereas Centner focuses on logistics and scaling, Sheila leads the inventive aspect — growing content material, directing technique and always pushing the corporate to evolve.
“She’s the one who’ll say, ‘If I see yet one more 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 group 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 only a few years in the past. That non-public contact has change into a part of their 5 p.c.
What retains Centner going after twenty years is not simply progress or scale. It is the folks. “My favourite half is seeing folks’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 every part. 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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