I've been in this industry for 35 years. I've sat across from thousands of operators, walked through hundreds of kitchens, and had more conversations about revenue growth than I can count. And one thing keeps coming up over and over again that honestly drives me a little crazy, operators who are sitting on a goldmine of catering revenue and don't even realize it.
On Episode #1620 of The Late Night Restaurant Podcast, I got to spend some real time with Elias Hage, the CEO and Founder of App8, and the conversation turned into one of those episodes where you walk away genuinely fired up. My co-host Domenic from NEXT Foodservice + Hospitality Expo was with us too, and between the three of us we got into something that I think every single operator in Canada needs to hear.
Elias didn't grow up in restaurants. He came from the world of technology transformations, which you'd think would make him another tech guy talking at operators instead of with them. But he earned his credibility the right way — by spending an enormous amount of time actually inside food service operations, learning the real problems before he tried to build solutions. That matters. It's why what he's built hits differently.
Here's the thing about catering that most operators don't want to face. The inquiries are coming in. Someone finds your restaurant, they've got a corporate lunch, a team event, a private party, and they reach out to ask about catering. And then what happens? Slow response. A confusing back and forth. A PDF menu that was last updated two years ago. Or worst of all, nothing — the inquiry just sits there until they give up and call someone else. That lead, that revenue, that relationship — gone. And the operator never even knew it was there to lose.
Elias put it simply. The entire order journey, from the moment a customer looks at your menu to the moment the food is in their hands, needs to be seamless and digital. Right now for most operations it is anything but. That gap between inquiry and fulfilled order is where catering revenue goes to die, and most operators have no system in place to close it.
That's exactly what Rally Catering was built to solve. It's purpose-built for food service operators who want to grow their catering program without adding chaos to their operation. The platform handles the full digital order flow — menus, ordering, kitchen fulfillment, pickup or delivery — and it does it in a way that actually makes sense for how restaurants work. And here's the part that Domenic nearly lost his mind over when he spotted it on their website mid-episode — no commissions on orders. In a world where too many platforms want a piece of every transaction you process, Rally Catering's model is completely operator-first. You build the business. You keep what you earn. Full stop.
One of my favourite moments in the whole conversation was when Elias said something that I think every operator needs to write on the wall of their office. He said, technology is the tool to the business. It is not the whole magical silver bullet. You, as the owner, as the decision maker — you are the star. You are the magic. And he meant it. He wasn't just being motivational. He was making a real point about commitment, about not chasing shiny objects, about understanding that no tool in the world works if you don't go into it fully and give it the time it needs to deliver. That's a message that applies way beyond catering tech. That's just the truth about growing any part of your business.
We also got into something that I've been talking about a lot lately — the idea of auditing yourself. How often are you actually stepping back and looking critically at your catering menu? Your response time to inquiries? Your conversion rate from someone asking about catering to actually placing an order? Elias talked about how AI can help operators do a real menu audit now, identify new corporate accounts they're missing, uncover untapped markets in their own backyard. We ran a similar audit looking at Saskatoon restaurants recently and found that 75% weren't using video for social media at all. Not a criticism — that's an opportunity sitting right there waiting to be taken. The same mindset applies to catering. If you haven't looked at your program honestly in a while, you don't know what you're leaving on the table. And what you don't know is costing you real money.
If any of this is landing for you, I want you to do two things. First, go to rallycatering.com and reach out to their team. Tell them Canada's Restaurant Guy sent you. Have an actual conversation about what your catering program looks like right now and what it could look like with the right system behind it. Second, join me and Elias live on LinkedIn on Tuesday, February 24th at 2PM EST for The Catering Growth Formula — The Real Playbook for Catering Growth. This isn't a sales presentation. It's a real working conversation where you're going to walk away with things you can actually use. We're going to get into why catering inquiries don't convert, what operators need to do right now to fix that, and how to turn catering into a real consistent revenue engine for your business.
The catering opportunity in your market is real. The only question is whether you're going to build the process to capture it — or keep watching that revenue walk out the door and into someone else's operation.
Episode #1620 — Orders. Speed. Growth. — is live now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Search The Late Night Restaurant Podcast wherever you listen. Brought to you by Beyond, SafeCheck Training, and Rally Catering.
