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1. 

   Perzen Darukhanawalla July 29, 2013, 5:40 am

   Hi Natwar,

   Thanks for your ask – being from the hospitality industry formerly myself I find this very interesting. The primary reason for not having food sponsors is typically if the event is being organised in a formal hotel/conference type venue the venue will already have partnerships with certain caterers. This arrangement includes not promoting any other caterer’s food there (understandably so) as they offer special prices/menus to the venue.

   In places such as universities, colleges where the catering facility is not already available is probably a good arena for these food sponsorships. However, for a sponsorship to be valuable it must be something that is low cost for the brand but high value for them.  For example, things like an exhibition stall offers many networking opportunities or sponsoring gifts for the speakers means your brand is in front of these speakers when they use the gift…However, for a food sponsorship – this is not always the case as typically food cost ranges between 28 – 30% for a big setup and for startups/home chefs it’s more around the 50% mark. 

   Keeping the cost aside for a minute, let’s also think about the attendees for the event. Have you ever been to a startup event thinking “gosh I wonder what amazing food they are going to serve? Typically, food is the last thing on people’s minds and moreover the organisers have to keep registration fees low  to ensure sufficient entrepreneurs can afford it. This means:

   1. organiser may not be open to even paying just the food cost for the food sponsorer to get some decent unique food like home baked brownies or different flavoured noodles etc as a samosa and chai is generally cheaper

   2. unless the event calls for a food stall type setup the sponsorer can’t even brand their food or create awareness about the brand short of handing out business cards with each plate which would be very strange. This applies to even bigger brands such as Dominos – even if they call it the “Startup Pizza” the attendee will think the name is cool but they won’t then go an buy a dominos pizza just for that reason.

   I am not saying that this is always the case but from my 4 years working in a catering firm in NZ the high cost of sponsoring (monetary + effort) was always a strong deterrent for our brand unless we were getting things like attendee lists or when we were sponsoring the food for exclusive art auctions etc OR if we were exploring a new market and exposure to new clientele was our number 1 priority which is not the case for a Dominos, Pizza Hut etc.

   However, having a small weekend catering setup myself now, I would be more than happy to get your views on this point as food sponsorship is something I will shortly start looking at too 🙂

2. 

   Karan Pandhi July 29, 2013, 6:35 am

   Hi Natwar,

   there are a lot o food creatorz out here. One of them being me, here is my funding pitch which was used from the pitch which Alok Sir had given to all of us in the funding pitches.

   https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/the-final-step-to-my-dream-pr…

   this is my link to the funding pitch and below is my business idea

   https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/where-do-i-stand-3

   and if you don’t know Fasoos is one brand which has been funded by Sequia Capital.

   I’m not here for venture capital I’m here just to show what I intend to do.

   I have already been funded so its out of question for funding now for me.

3. 

   Natwar Maheshwari July 30, 2013, 5:19 am

   Hey Karan,

   Thank you for reply. I checked your website, its pretty impressive, I will be contacting you soon. 

   Natwar

4. 

   Natwar Maheshwari July 30, 2013, 5:22 am

   Hey Perzen,

   I understand what you are saying, what I was wondering is why no one wants to be the go to joint for “Startups” 🙂

   Well, I really appreciate you taking time and explaining things in detail.

   Thank you,

   Natwar

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