“We have our style!" Optimizing food experiences in personalized catering boutique concepts

Restaurant innovativeness and the experiential qualities of service are important factors in the hospitality industry. This case study was conducted at Epikus, a boutique catering service located in Quito, Ecuador. It provides insight into how catering service providers can cocreate value through customer participation to deliver beneficial, aesthetic, relational, and symbolic service experiences. Semistructured interviews with managers and frontline employees were conducted to identify critical incidents that shed light on behaviors pertaining to restaurant innovativeness and the structuring of the experiential aspects of luxury catering services. Four characteristic themes were identified that can provide competitive advantages to the firm: (1) the communication of the difference between service and servility, (2) a capacity to integrate and contextualize new information, (3) the ability to facilitate social interactions, and (4) the implementation of entrepreneurial marketing approaches to foster innovative capacities. Based on these themes, practical recommendations for luxury catering businesses were formulated.