Catering is one of the highest-margin revenue streams a restaurant can add. The fixed costs of production are already covered by your core restaurant operation. Your kitchen is already equipped. Your team is already trained. A catering order for 50 people is incremental revenue with incremental cost — and if you're doing it right, a gateway to recurring corporate clients and large-scale events that your restaurant dining room could never accommodate on its own.
The challenge is that most restaurants don't market their catering capability at all. They wait for referrals. If catering is a meaningful part of your business strategy, it deserves dedicated, consistent marketing.
Understanding Your Catering Audience
Catering clients are different from restaurant diners. They're not deciding where to have dinner — they're solving a problem: "We need food for 80 people at our company away day in three weeks." Your marketing needs to speak to that problem-solving mindset, not to the pleasure-seeking mindset of a restaurant diner.
The two primary catering client segments:
Corporate clients: companies that need food for internal events (working lunches, training days, team celebrations, client entertainment), product launches, off-site meetings, and annual conferences. Corporate clients value reliability, professional presentation, dietary flexibility, and easy ordering and invoicing. They're repeat clients if the experience is smooth.
Private event clients: weddings, birthday parties, graduation celebrations, baby showers, anniversary dinners, and any event happening outside a restaurant. Private clients value creativity, personalisation, and the ability to create a restaurant-quality experience in a non-restaurant setting.
Social Media Content Strategy for Catering
Show the scale: photos and videos of catering in action — large platters, trays of food, delivery van loading, event setup — communicate to potential clients that you can handle volume. A restaurant post showing eight covers doesn't tell a catering client anything. A photo showing 100 miniature canapés being prepared communicates capability.
Document actual events: with client permission, document your catering jobs. A Reel of your team setting up a corporate lunch, assembling boxes of food, or arranging a garden party spread is highly effective content that prospective clients can immediately envision as their own event.
Before and after setups: the raw space before your team arrives, and the finished catering setup after. This transformation content communicates both scale and aesthetic capability.
Client testimonials: "Thank you to [company] for trusting us to cater their annual retreat. The team did an incredible job." Naming the client (with permission) adds credibility. If the client reposts it, you've reached their entire network.
Menu showcases: a rotating feature of your catering menu options — "This week we made our mezze boxes for a client's board meeting" — regularly reminds followers that catering is part of what you do.
LinkedIn: The Best Platform for Corporate Catering
LinkedIn is the most direct route to corporate catering clients. Restaurant marketing rarely uses LinkedIn — which makes it an uncontested opportunity.
A simple LinkedIn strategy for restaurant catering:
Company page: create a LinkedIn page for your restaurant if you don't have one. Most corporate catering decision-makers (office managers, event coordinators, PAs) use LinkedIn.
Post catering events: when you cater a corporate event, post about it on LinkedIn (with client permission). Tag the client company if they allow it. Corporate professionals who see the post think "we could use them for our events."
Direct outreach: search LinkedIn for "EA to CEO," "Office Manager," and "Events Manager" in your city. Connect with a personalised message and a brief mention of your catering service. This is direct but not aggressive — it's the LinkedIn equivalent of handing someone a business card.
LinkedIn recommendations: ask corporate clients to leave a LinkedIn recommendation on your company page after a successful event. These function like reviews but carry professional credibility that Google reviews can't match.
Building a Dedicated Catering Section on Your Website
Your website should have a dedicated catering page distinct from your restaurant page. Corporate clients especially will visit this page specifically — they want to know you take catering seriously as a service, not that it's an afterthought.
The page should include:
- Types of events you cater (corporate, private, weddings, etc.)
- Your geographic range
- Sample menus or menu categories
- Minimum order values
- Dietary accommodation capability
- Pricing framework (per person ranges, minimum spends)
- Portfolio photos from past events
- Testimonials
- A direct inquiry form
Treat this page as a landing page designed to convert a visitor into an inquiry. Every element should reduce doubt and make the next step (inquiring) feel easy.
Attracting Repeat Corporate Clients
The economics of catering favour repeat clients enormously. A corporate client who orders 10 times a year at 50 people per order is worth far more than 10 one-time clients. Build systems for retaining corporate clients:
A dedicated account manager: give each corporate client a specific person to contact. Continuity in the relationship matters to corporate clients.
Proactive outreach: reach out to existing corporate clients at the start of the quarter to ask about upcoming events. Don't wait for them to remember you exist.
Seasonal suggestions: "With summer approaching, we have some great outdoor catering menu options — would any of these be useful for your team events?" Proactive suggestions convert at a higher rate than waiting for inbound inquiries.
Consistent quality and reliability: a missed delivery time or a quality inconsistency costs a corporate client relationship that was worth thousands. Operational reliability is the most important client retention tool in catering.
Pricing and Quoting
Catering pricing is typically per-person with minimum order values. Clear pricing on your website reduces friction in the inquiry stage. Being reluctant to share pricing forces multiple back-and-forth conversations and loses time-pressured corporate clients who need to make quick decisions.
A simple published pricing framework: "Catering from £[X] per person, minimum [Y] people" gives prospects an immediate sense of fit. Those who can afford it inquire. Those who can't self-select out — saving you time on quotes that won't convert.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a separate license or permit to do catering off-site?
Requirements vary by country and region. In the UK, for example, catering events off-site may require a Temporary Event Notice (TEN) if alcohol is being served, and your food hygiene standards must meet the same standards as your restaurant. Check with your local council before starting a catering operation.
How far in advance should clients book catering?
For large events (100+ people), four to six weeks minimum is ideal to ensure menu planning and ingredient sourcing. For smaller corporate lunches, one to two weeks is typically manageable. Publish these lead times clearly so clients can plan accordingly.
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