AI for catering companies. From inquiry to BEO without the retyping.

At a glance

• Who it's for: owners, presidents and operations leaders of full-service, corporate and social catering companies with $10M+ in annual revenue.
• What Modern Thesis does: AI strategy, change management, implementation and ongoing stewardship, from one team.
• How it starts: a strategic assessment that measures how the work moves today and ranks where AI pays first. See the assessment.
• Where: based in the Denver area, with an office at 11001 W 120th Ave, Ste 400, Broomfield, CO 80021. On site across the Denver metro and Colorado, and remote anywhere in the US.
• What it doesn't do: replace your catering software, make food safety decisions, or publish a rate card. Each engagement is priced to its scope after a first conversation.

What makes AI different for a catering company?

Catering combines sales, kitchen production and service at locations that change every day. Each event moves from inquiry to quote to a banquet event order (BEO) that the kitchen and service teams work from, and headcounts and menus change until the final count. Allergies and dietary needs have to be right every time. Purchasing and prep depend on the week's final numbers. Much of the work is copying the same details from one document to another, which AI does well.

Where does AI help catering companies?

These are examples of what can be built, not past results:

• Answer inquiries, check availability and draft quotes from your menus, packages and minimums.
• Turn a booked event into a BEO and update it when headcounts, menus or timelines change.
• Build the kitchen's prep lists and purchase orders from the week's final counts.
• Pull every allergy and dietary request into the BEO and kitchen tickets, flagged for the chef to confirm.
• Schedule servers, bartenders and drivers across events by skill and availability.

How does AI handle allergies?

As a checklist, never as the final word. AI can collect every allergy and dietary request from the client, put it on the BEO and kitchen tickets and flag anything unclear. The chef and event lead confirm each one. Food safety decisions stay with your kitchen.

What does Modern Thesis do here?

Modern Thesis covers four disciplines with one team. In strategy, Jim Coleman and the team map how the work moves through your company today. In people, we work with sales staff, chefs and event captains on training and incentives, so they use what gets built. In implementation, our AI specialists and Forward Deployed Engineers build the workflows and connect them to the software you already run. In stewardship, we stay to check accuracy, keep pace with new AI models and report the return against the baseline.

How does an engagement start?

Every engagement starts with a strategic assessment. We sit with the people who do the work, map how it moves through the company today, and measure a baseline on the workflows that matter most: inquiry response time, booking rate, hours per quote and BEO, food cost per event and staffing cost per event. Then we rank the opportunities by return and define the first build. If AI won't pay for itself somewhere in your business, we'll tell you.

When is something else the better choice?

If your catering software already handles quotes, BEOs and prep the way you need, use it fully first. If the main need is better writing and email, the ChatGPT or Copilot licenses you already pay for may be enough; our comparison of Copilot or ChatGPT and an AI partner walks through the difference.

How Modern Thesis handles this

We put AI to work inside xFusion, the 70-person company Jim co-founded, and then for several of its clients. For a catering company, we usually start with quotes and BEOs, because every event passes through them. Ongoing stewardship has no set end date, and you own your data, accounts, code and documentation throughout.