BB-INT014 — Nadia Haddad

Okay so — here's the thing, I didn't find them the way a normal person finds a taco truck. [laughs] I find everything through logistics. We had a team offsite last spring, downtown, and one of our engineers said "there's a truck that parks by the LRT, the brisket one, you have to." And I'm the person who has to feed thirty people, so I don't just go try it — I go, okay, do they cater? Can they invoice? Are they going to actually show up? So first I walked over on my own lunch, tried it, the smoked brisket, and — yeah. It's very good. It's not, you know, sad-tray-of-sandwiches good. It's actually good. Then I looked up whether they do group orders. That's the order of operations for me.

Always. I will never put my name on something I haven't eaten myself. That's — I've been burned. I'll tell you the burned story later, remind me. But yes, I vet everything first.

[laughs] Okay, quick version — different vendor, not them. I booked a caterer for a client lunch, twenty-two people, big deal, our VP was hosting. Confirmed by email, I thought. The day of? Nothing. No truck, no van, no call. I'm standing in the lobby at 11:45 with a hungry executive team and I'm phoning a number that goes to voicemail. I ended up ordering forty pizzas in a panic. So — that is the fear. That is the thing that lives in the back of my head every single time I book anything now. Will they actually be there.

So first I go to the website, borderblend.ca, and I'm looking for a catering page or a "book us" button. And it's — it's there, but it's kind of buried, honestly. It felt built for the person buying one taco on their lunch, not for me booking for thirty. Then I filled out a form, and then somebody from the local truck — the Calgary operator, lovely guy — emailed me back. And then we did the actual planning over email and one phone call. Which, fine, I don't mind talking to a human, I actually prefer it for the big ones. But there were, like, four steps before I even knew if they were available on my date.

[pause] So this is my pet peeve. Which — okay, this is my pet peeve, so bear with me. I need a hard confirmation. Not "sounds good!" in an email. I need "Nadia, we are confirmed for Thursday the whatever, arriving 11:30, here for ninety minutes, this is the truck, this is the driver's cell." Locked. In writing. And with BorderBlend it was a little casual for my taste — it was friendly, the guy was great, but it was like, "yep we'll be there!" and I'm sitting there going, can I get that as an actual booking confirmation I can forward to my VP? Because I'm not forwarding "yep!" to leadership. So I basically had to chase it and pin it down myself. And they came, they were fantastic, on time, no issue — but I didn't sleep great the night before, because I didn't have the paper.

Oh it's number one. By a mile. Reliability is the whole game for me. The food being good is table stakes — I wouldn't book anyone whose food is bad. But "will you actually show up when you said, at the headcount I said" — that's the entire job. If I could pay extra for a guaranteed, confirmed, we-will-be-there booking, I would do it in a heartbeat and never think about it again.

Right, so — this is where it gets fiddly. First I send out a form to the team, because I have to know: how many, and who can't eat what. And here's the thing, on a team of thirty you always have — you've got two or three vegetarians, you've got someone plant-based, and you've got at least one serious allergy. We have a fellow with a tree-nut allergy that's the real kind, the EpiPen kind. So I cannot guess. I need actual allergen information, ingredient-level, in writing, that I can hand to him so he decides for himself. And that was — that was genuinely hard to get from BorderBlend. The menu tells you it's a Korean-style chicken taco, delicious, but it doesn't tell me what's in the sauce, does the slaw have — is there sesame, is there anything processed in a shared — I couldn't find it. I had to email and ask, and even then it was a bit "let me check with the kitchen."

It creates work and it creates risk. And when I can't get a straight answer, honestly? Sometimes I just don't book the thing. I'll go with a vendor who has it all spelled out, because I'm not going to gamble on somebody's airway to save a few dollars on nicer tacos. That's not a close call for me. Which is a shame, because the food's better. But you've — you have to make it easy for me to keep my people safe. The vegetarian and plant-based side is easier, by the way — their plant-based option is genuinely good, people who don't usually go plant-based actually liked it, which was a nice surprise. It's really the hard allergens where the information just isn't there.

Okay so, expenses. I run these through the company, so I need a proper invoice. Itemised, GST broken out, our billing name and PO reference on it, emailed to me as a PDF. Not a — not a photo of a receipt, not a Square text link. Our finance team will bounce that right back to me and then I'm chasing again. BorderBlend got me an invoice but it took a couple of asks and it was a little informal. And the other thing — for planning I need to know the price up front, per head or total, before the event, because I have to get it pre-approved. I can't come back after with a surprise number. So a clear catering price sheet would save me so much back-and-forth.

Bit of both. It's crept up — I've noticed it's not the bargain it maybe was, it's getting close to just catering from a restaurant. But honestly for the team I'll pay for good, that's fine, people notice and it makes the Friday feel special. I'm more sensitive to surprises than to the number. Tell me the number, let me approve it, don't move it on me.

So there's a few things I run. There's the Friday team treat, which is smaller, more casual, sort of a morale thing — "it's Friday, here's something nice." There's the bigger monthly team lunch. And then there's client catering, which is the high-stakes one, that's the one where I'm nervous, because that's in front of people we're trying to impress. And — the weather thing, I have to mention, because it's Calgary. In the winter? A food truck in February is a hard sell. It's minus twenty-five, nobody's lining up outside at a window, and I'm not going to make our clients stand in a parking lot in a parka. So the truck model is basically a spring-summer-fall thing for me, and then I need a plan for winter — do they drop off, do they do a catering setup indoors, what happens November through March. That seasonality is a real part of my calendar here.

Completely. Because right now I have to go remember they exist and go dig up the booking form every time. It's all on me to initiate. Whereas if they came to me at the right moment — like, "patio season's starting, here's our catering menu, here's how to lock a date" in April? Yes. Sold. Or a heads-up in the fall about whatever they do for winter events. I'd love to not have to remember.

For the group side? A hundred percent yes. And I'm normally the person who unsubscribes from everything, my inbox is a warzone, so that's saying something. But — here's what it would need to be. Not "check out our new taco." I don't need that. What I need is: the catering menu with the allergen info attached, so I can just forward it to my team and finance in one shot. How to book, with real availability. A seasonal thing — "spring catering's open," "here's the winter option." And the big one, the thing that would actually make me loyal — reliable "we'll be there" confirmation baked into how they operate. If an email list came with, like, a proper booking system where I get a real confirmation and a reminder the day before? I would subscribe, and I would book them constantly, and I'd stop stress-dreaming about lobbies. That's the whole thing.

Exactly. Talk to me like I'm running an operation, because I am. The person buying one taco wants your specials. I want your reliability. Give me the boring stuff — dates, allergens, invoicing, "we confirm in writing" — and I'm your best customer, because I'm not buying for one, I'm buying for thirty, every month, all year if you help me through the winter. I want to give you more business. I'm honestly a little frustrated that it's harder than it should be, because I'm on your side here.

Just — the sellout thing worries me for the big orders. When I went on my own that first time they'd sold out of brisket by early afternoon on a Saturday, which, great problem for them, but if that ever happened on a booked catering order for thirty people? With a client watching? That's my nightmare scenario, that's the burned story again in a different outfit. So for group orders I'd want it ring-fenced — reserved, prepped, guaranteed for my count. Not "first come." That's the reassurance I keep coming back to. Everything for me comes back to: can I trust it in front of my executives.

Oh, my pleasure — this was honestly kind of therapeutic. And listen, if they build the boring version of this, tell them Nadia in Calgary will be first in line. Feed my team well and I will love you forever.

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