We Built a Catering Business in Three Weeks

The obvious way to grow ASANO is to open more locations. We’re working on it.

But there’s another kind of growth that’s been forming quietly; what if instead of people coming to ASANO, ASANO came to them? Skip the team happy hour and have us show up at your office with matcha, coffee, and pastries to make your morning feel a little extra special.

Here’s the story, told through three brains: me (the ASANO brain), Alexis Harris our Summer Business Fellow (the financial and ops brain), and Elizabeth Vogt our artist and designer (the creative brain). The dream team!

The financial reality (a conversation with Alexis)

Alexis Harris is ASANO’s Summer Business Fellow. She handled pricing, packaging, online ordering, and the sweepstakes.

Kate: Where did you start?

Alexis: Packaging, because we couldn’t finalize the menu until we knew the price of all the inputs. I approached pricing by looking at it from both a cost-plus perspective (cost of everything that goes into an item plus a margin) and based on what competitors were charging.

Kate: What did you find?

Alexis: To price the menu, you need to know the packaging cost. To know the packaging cost, you need to know what box you’re using. To know what box you’re using, you need to know how many pastries fit. And to know how many pastries fit depends on which pastries and their size (yes we did measure each pastry with a ruler). We had to work through all of it at once and iterate a few times to land on the right options. An example constraint: we couldn’t use the bags we already carry in the café. A flat pastry box doesn’t fit in any standard paper bag at a reasonable price. So we landed on a reinforced plastic bag at $1.02, the only SKU that holds both the pastry box and a coffee traveler so we’d only need one type of bag. Even though it’s an expensive plastic bag, simplicity matters when Kate is packing every order herself.

Kate: Which is currently true.

Alexis: And then comes the pinwheel problem. It’s one of our most popular pastries but it’s wider than the others, so a “box of 8” can quietly become a “box of 6.” We’d be losing $10 in revenue to save $1.28 in packaging. That math doesn’t work so we went with the larger box, and for edge cases we tuck extras into individual pastry bags rather than compromise the presentation.

Kate: How did you think through some of the ordering logistics?

Since you’re handling all the logistics right now, I wanted to make it as streamlined as possible. We integrated catering into the existing Square setup so we could have all our orders in one place to simplify planning, payment, and accounting on the back end. We also set up some agentic workflows to make sure the ball doesn’t get dropped on things like placing orders, getting additional staffing if needed, and payments.

Kate: How did we justify the price?

Alexis: By being really clear about what we’re selling. This isn’t a coffee order. You open the box and it should feel like a treat with the artwork, the checkered deli paper, and the postcard tucked inside. All of that is earning the price before anyone takes a sip. We don’t want to just hand you a cup of coffee. We want you to open a box and feel like someone thought about you.

Kate: And the in-café promo?

Alexis: We wanted a reason for existing customers to try catering, but if you discount too heavily the margins evaporate. So we landed on a modest first-order deal via a card at the counter to target people who already love the product and just need a nudge.

The design sprint (a conversation with Elizabeth)

Elizabeth Vogt is the artist and designer behind ASANO’s visual identity.

Kate: What was the brief?

Elizabeth: Make catering feel like an extension of the existing Asano world, not a new category. We wanted to maintain the warm feeling people get when they enter the cafes, even if the Asano goods were now traveling to them. The goal was to start with what we already have and supercharge it. Same world, new context. We’re using our funky orange-and-cream checkerboard pastry paper to wrap everything up in the box, a handy stickering system to organize everything, and special postcards for customers to discover inside.

Kate: The postcard feels like the heart of it.

Elizabeth: It was inspired by two things. New York restaurants often have a postcard that comes with the check at the end of the meal, something beautiful you actually want to take with you. And Japanese woodblock printing and vintage art. ASANO draws on Japanese aesthetics without being literal about it, and the postcard felt like a natural place to let that come through. We’re featuring old artwork from Japan that lives in the public domain, and blending those special images with Asano’s bold branding. With the postcard, folks get something beautiful to pin up on their wall or even mail to a loved one. Something collectible, not disposable.

Kate: And then we did a real photoshoot.

Elizabeth: Yes! You (Kate) had just met someone at a party — Robert, a photographer building his portfolio who shoots film. And so we had him come into to shoot film photos on a busy Friday morning. Chaotic in theory, but what you get are images that feel alive — not staged. The light, the movement, the pastries. It all comes through differently on film. There’s more warmth and a subtle grain that feels timeless. The images turned out beautifully! Having great photos makes my job as a designer easier and more fun, so I was excited when the film came back.

The ASANO brain (a few final thoughts from me)

The question I keep coming back to is: how do you convince someone they want this?

Most people aren’t waking up thinking I should order a matcha catering drop for my team. That category doesn’t exist in their head yet. So part of what we’re doing is less marketing and more category creation — showing people a morning experience they didn’t know they could have, and making it feel obvious in retrospect.

That’s partly why the packaging matters so much. The first order someone places is a leap of faith. The box has to land and make them think: yes, this is exactly what I hoped it would be. If it does, they’ll order again. They’ll tell their office manager. The second order is easier than the first.

The other thing I’ve been disciplined about is not over-investing before we know what works. There’s a version of this launch where I buy 500 coffee travelers upfront, order custom-printed boxes, and build out the full delivery infrastructure before we have a single customer. Instead: small initial runs, existing suppliers where possible, designs that use what we already have. We take time on the things that are hard to undo — the artwork, the brand, the postcard that someone might keep on their desk for a year. We stay scrappy on everything else until the signal is there.

We don’t know if it’ll work. But it’s out there — and if you’ve ever wanted ASANO at your office morning, your team breakfast, your run club, your brand moment, we’re officially open for biz!

🎉 Win a Free Catering Drop for 20

We’re giving away a free catering drop for 20 — pastries and coffee, delivered to you, on us.

Enter here → asanocafe.com/sweepstakes

To enter (complete by July 31):
1. Subscribe to our Substack Behind The Curtain (sign up below)
2. Leave us a Google review with a photo — if you’ve left a review for one location, you can leave one for the other!
3. Tag us (@asano.nyc) in an Instagram story from the cafe and DM us the screenshot to confirm

Tell your office manager. Tell anyone who has ever wished their morning meeting had better coffee and matcha. You won’t regret it!

— Kate

MY RECS FOR THE MONTH

1. To go and listen: Ornithology Jazz Club has been on my list forever, and I finally made it in. I'm no jazz aficionado, but there's something infectious about being surrounded by true die-hards and musicians who clearly know their craft. Bonus: the drinks are surprisingly good for a spot where the doorman doubles as your bartender, and the hummus next door at the café is not to be slept on.

2. To cook: This tangy baked tofu with peanut sauce and coconut lime rice is a longtime favorite I recently brought back into rotation. It's easy enough to throw together before friends come over, light but satisfying, and honestly gets even better a few days later.