5 Quick Ways to Increase Catering Sales at Your Restaurant

I read that the U.S. catering market is about $70 billion. That's a lot of money and a great way to earn revenue at your restaurant. Catering is great. Catering has great margins, its a great use of fixed costs, can expose you to new guests and can add to your bottom line.

We love catering. We want more catering orders!

If it was only that easy.

If you could just wave a magic wand and have more catering orders, that would be great.

While there is no magic button, there are some simple and quick moves that your marketing team could put easily into play that will definitely set you up to get more catering orders.

1. CONTENT

Instagram, and social media in general, is a great tool for retention. They call them followers, but we call them guests. Be sure you are sharing content about catering on a regular basis (every other week) on your social media.

Boss Move: Creating a catering video and pin it to your profile.

2. LINK IN BIO

You're promoting catering on social channels, right? If not, go back and read No. 1.

Instagram now allows for multiple links in your bio, add a link direct to the catering page on your website. Include CTAs in your catering content that encourage people to click the catering link in your bio.

Boss Move: Get a link in bio tool so you can customize the placement and look of the catering button.

I like https://milkshake.app/

3. DEDICATED WEBPAGE

Speaking of a dedicated catering page on your website, make sure you have one. Best bet is to make sure the url is yourrestauranturl.com/catering. Include the catering menu, photos and make it as easy as possible for people to place an order.

Boss Move: Make it easy to place the order right there on your website without having to contact someone. While they are waiting for you to reply, they are looking at other options.

4. SEND AN EMAIL

There is one marketing move that will increase lifetime value AND order frequency, making ALL of your marketing efforts easier. It's email.

Assuming you are sending 1 newsletter per week, make sure that at least one of 4 either spotlights catering (we call this a HERO) or is included as a module in the email.

Also, be sure there is a link to catering in your footer.

Boss Move: Add a catering banner to every other email. If you put it in every email, people will stop seeing it.

5. LISTINGS

Search, in particular Google, is the #1 way in which hungry diners discover new restaurants. Optimizing for search should be an every day priority.

Be sure that links to your catering, photos of your catering and your catering menu options are included in your Yelp, Facebook, Siri, Apple Maps, Bing, Yahoo, Alexa, Foursquare and ESPECIALLY Google.

The key moves...

• Add your catering menu to your listings
• Mention catering in your business description
• Add it to "services" in the "additional attributes section"
• Select "catering" in the "Google Business Profile Attributes" section

Boss Move: Take that catering content you created for social media and share as Google Post on your Google Business Profile.

There you go ... Five easy marketing tactics that will set you up for more catering orders.

P.S. I'll be speaking at the Restaurant Catering Workshop event covering this and much more - Oct 15-16, 2024 -- hope to see you there...

David "Rev" Ciancio is a co-owner of Handcraft Burgers & Brew and also a Brand, Customer & Technology Evangelist. Rev helps tech and software companies generate more leads, quicken the sales cycle, create memorable customer journeys, all while building fervent brand ambassadors and growing business & sales. He helps restaurants to make tech decisions and to create guest acquisition and retention marketing that works. Get more marketing tips from Rev at #revsmarketingtips. If you ever have questions about restaurant marketing, just email me.