"What a great idea for increasing your business." Victoria Downing, President

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Cooking Up Great Leads and Referrals

You know how food brings families together? It also brings remodelers, clients, and prospects together and feeds the production pipeline.

In 2006, Kurt Schulte, president of Schulte Restorations, Inc., in Hopewell, N.J., teamed up with Will Mooney, whose restaurant he’d remodeled, to begin offering cooking classes for employees, architects, clients, and clients’ friends. On nights the restaurant is closed, master chef Mooney guides the remodeler and three other participants in the hands-on work of peeling, chopping, and assembling ingredients for top-notch dishes. When the food comes out of the oven or off the stove, everyone digs into a delicious dinner and later goes home with photocopies of the recipes prepared.

Although Schulte lines up the lessons mostly to keep in touch with current and past clients, the opportunity to generate some sales is the icing on the cake. “More than once, a potential client has gone from using ‘if statements’ [‘if we go ahead with the project’] to ‘when statements’ [‘when Kurt and his crew start our project’] in the course of the evening,” says Schulte. 

The remodeler recently gathered all of the recipes into a cookbook to share with cooking class participants. “I want to offer all of the recipes to the ‘alumni’ so that each of us can extend the cooking-class experience to our own homes,” he says. Distributing the cookbook to past clients also gives him another opportunity to get in touch with them.

Schulte outsourced the design and printing of “Cooking With Kurt & Will” and produced 25 copies, one for each household that participated in this year’s cooking classes. “I see the cookbook as a way to reach out to people with an unusual gift that reminds them of a pleasant evening out. I like to think it sets us apart from the crowd,” he says.

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