Caterer branching out in a new direction
Branches finding a new market by offering
teleconference service
By Sherry conohan
Staff Writer

VERONICA YANKOWSKI John Lombardo, a partner in Branches, West Long Branch, shows off the new teleconferencing equipment the restaurant is using to draw in new business.

WEST LONG BRANCH — There’s a new offering on the menu at Branches that you won’t be finding anyplace else nearby.

The catering facility on Route 71/Monmouth Road is offering teleconferencing along with food and drinks.

According to John Lombardo, a partner in Branches, the service is more than a business tool. It is also available for social events to allow family and friends from far away who cannot attend to see the principals and share in the celebration.

As an example, he cited a gathering of 400 family members and guests at Branches on July 26 for the traditional gujarati engagement ceremony for Rohul and Urja Patel. Everything was perfect, he said, with one exception.

"Rohul’s uncle, Jagdish Patel, an important family member, was in Michigan and unable to travel to this important cultural ceremony," he said.

With teleconferencing, Lombardo said, "the ceremony was brought to Jagdish’s doorstep.

"Both New Jersey and Michigan were able to see and speak with each other, and an important family member was included in the memory," he said.

Another application soon to come to Branches, Lombardo said, is the use of teleconferencing by a school district to do the initial interviewing of applicants from far away for teaching positions.

The applicants go to a Kinko’s to use their teleconferencing setup, he said.

"Kinko’s has them (teleconferencing) at most sites," he said.

In order to bring teleconferencing to Branches, Lombardo forged an affiliation with York Telecom Corp., an Eatontown company that sells teleconferencing equipment.

Ken Scaturro, the vice president of sales and marketing in York’s office in Landover, Md., said use of teleconferencing instead of traveling to another location for a meeting spiked after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, when people became wary of traveling, and rose again with the outbreak of SARS.

"People weren’t going to Toronto and Asia," he said.

Speaking from his office in Maryland over a large screen set up at Branches in a live demonstration of teleconferencing, Scaturro said the infant communication technique has expanded as high-speed Internet access has increased.

Along with the health and terrorism threats, the troubled economy has companies trimming their travel budgets, Scaturro said, so more and more businesses have turned to teleconferencing as a more affordable alternative.

By adding the hospitality feature, Branches is meeting a need, he said.

According to Lombardo, a business gathering for a teleconference session at the facility frequently begins with coffee and welcome time and afterward dovetails into cocktails and hors d’oeuvres or dinner.

Lombardo said an executive here who may have to speak to employees in offices in Boston, Houston and Chicago can take part in a four-way teleconference and do in one day what it would take four days and a lot of travel to get done otherwise.

He noted that 40 people might be gathered at each location.

The firm could be spending 50 to 60 percent less and saving the executive’s time, he said.

"Usually you can save time or money, and if you can save both, it’s a double win," he said.

Lombardo said graphics or documents with written text can be shown and seen during teleconferencing.

He said the teleconferencing sessions can be recorded for a charge of $35 and put on the Internet as media streaming for a month or so. He added that Branches can make arrangements for all the sites.

"I am the single point of contact," he said. "They write one check."

Tracy Arnold, inside sales representative at York, said the equipment is extremely easy to move around.

Arnold said the camera on top of the video screen weighs 7 pounds and operates with a remote like those used with a regular television.

It rings like a regular telephone when dialing up the other location, she said, adding that its transfer rate is 384 kilobytes per second.

"That’s seven times faster than your modem at home," Scaturro said.

Arnold said the teleconferencing equipment for one location costs about $15,000 and comes with a monitor and a cart that can be rolled around.

"It’s extremely user friendly," she said.

Scaturro said it boils down to a cost alternative decision.

"The cost could be prohibitive for some companies, and that’s where Branches steps in," he said. "With the price dropping, it’s becoming more available to mid-sized companies."

According to Scaturro and Lombardo, some of the biggest users of teleconferencing to date have been large corporations; the federal government, including the military, court systems and jails; law firms; and colleges.

In addition, colleges and other schools use it for long-distance learning. Scaturro and Lombardo said the schools will put up on the screen for a class of students to see and hear an expert on a subject who is in a distant location.

"It’s much more efficient," Scaturro said.

Other significant users, they said, are pharmaceutical companies and financial institutions.

"Financial firms use it to reach their field offices and give the message of the day," Scaturro said.

Lombardo said an executive of a local company affiliated with a hospital outside San Diego who must attend monthly staff meetings uses teleconferencing at Branches now instead of taking a Tuesday-to-Thursday trip to the West Coast.

Scaturro said some of the biggest strides in recent years have been in the reliability of the system.

"You want to know, when you sit down, that people on the other side can hear you," he said.

Lombardo recalled one of his early experiences with teleconferencing eight years ago when he saw a demonstration of it in New York at the International Hotel Exposition, held every November.

"It was fine until someone began to move," he said. "Then you would have tiling."

He explained that tiling was the emergence of dots and other interference.

"If it was a straight shot and someone wasn’t moving, it was fine," he said. "At that time, that was the cutting edge. Now I call it near-video quality."

To introduce more firms to the technology, Branches is hosting a reception for interested businesses with a live teleconferencing demonstration from 5-7 p.m. Tuesday. Those interested in attending can get more information at the Branches Web site, BranchesNJ.com, which has a section on teleconferencing, Lombardo said.