How to Get More Catering Clients for Your Restaurant

You've built a catering menu, set your pricing, and maybe even set up online ordering. Now you need customers. Here's what actually works.

The corporate catering opportunity

First, where the money is. Corporate catering accounts for the majority of drop-off catering revenue for most restaurants, because office lunches, team meetings, trainings, client visits, and company celebrations happen every week at businesses near you, and a single corporate account can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars per month in repeat orders.

Corporate catering is a relationship business. You're not selling to strangers one at a time. You're building accounts with office managers, executive assistants, and HR teams who order again and again.

Strategy 1: Local business outreach

Highest-ROI tactic on this list, and the one most owners skip because it feels awkward. Go talk to the businesses near your restaurant. In person.

The door-to-door approach

1. Make a list of every office, coworking space, medical practice, law firm, real estate agency, and corporate office within 3-5 miles
2. Prepare a catering sampler - a tray of your best items, enough for 8-10 people
3. Walk in during lunch hours and ask for the office manager or person who orders food
4. Lead with the food, not a pitch - "We're [Restaurant Name] down the street, and we just launched catering. We brought a free sampler for your team to try."
5. Leave a catering menu with your online ordering link and a first-order discount

This costs you maybe $30-$50 in food per visit. One converted corporate account pays that back on the first order.

Follow up

Send a thank-you email the next day, follow up a week later to ask if they'd like to place an order, and add them to your catering email list for monthly specials.

Strategy 2: Optimize your online presence

Buyers who don't know you yet start on Google, so that's where you need to show up.

Google Business Profile

• Add "catering" to your business categories
• Upload photos of your catering spreads (not just dine-in food)
• Mention catering in your business description
• Add your catering ordering link as a website link
• Respond to reviews that mention catering

Your website

Add a dedicated catering page (or better, an online ordering page), put "catering" in your page titles and meta descriptions, and show photos of catering setups rather than individual dishes. The "Order Catering" button should be impossible to miss, not buried in a dropdown.

Local SEO

Target keywords like "[your city] catering" and "[your cuisine] catering [your city]", get listed on local business directories, and ask happy catering clients to leave Google reviews that mention catering specifically.

Strategy 3: Leverage your existing customers

Your dine-in and takeout regulars are your warmest catering leads. They already trust the food. They just don't know you cater.

In-restaurant promotion

A table tent or menu insert ("Need to feed a group? Ask about our catering!"), your catering link at the bottom of every receipt, a simple poster near the register, and servers trained to ask "Do you ever need catering for your office?" when a regular comes in.

Email marketing

If you have a customer email list, use it.

• Send a dedicated "We now offer catering" announcement
• Include catering in your monthly newsletter
• Offer an exclusive discount for existing customers' first catering order
• Share photos of recent catering orders to build social proof

Social media

Post photos of catering setups, both before delivery and at the client's location. Share testimonials from catering clients. Run a "First catering order gets 10% off" promotion. And tag corporate clients who are willing, since B2B visibility is the whole point.

Strategy 4: Partner with complementary businesses

Some businesses need catering all the time and don't want to source it themselves. Be their answer.

Event planners - offer a referral fee or commission for every catering order they send you. They're already planning events and need reliable food partners.

Coworking spaces - offer to be their preferred catering vendor for member events, lunch-and-learns, and community gatherings.

Real estate agents - open houses, client appreciation events, and closing gifts all need catering. Offer a standing discount for their office.

Hotels without restaurants - business travelers need meeting catering, and hotels without in-house food service need to recommend someone.

Corporate wellness companies - healthy meal programs for offices are growing, and your restaurant might be a perfect fit.

Strategy 5: Offer a first-order incentive

The first order is the hard one, so make it cheap to say yes.

• 10-15% off first catering order - enough to motivate, not enough to destroy margin
• Free delivery on first order - removes the biggest hesitation
• Free dessert platter with first order over $200 - adds value without heavy discounting
• Complimentary sampler tray - let them try before committing to a large order

You're not buying one order. You're buying the relationship, and a happy corporate customer comes back for recurring lunches, trainings, client meetings, and seasonal events until that first-order discount has turned into thousands.

Strategy 6: Build a referral program

Your best catering customers can be your best salespeople.

• $25 credit for every referred customer who places their first order
• Free platter upgrade for customers who refer 3+ new accounts
• Quarterly appreciation - send a thank-you gift to your top referring accounts

Keep it simple. Points and tiers won't get used. "$25 off your next order for every referral" is easy to remember and easy to repeat.

Strategy 7: Use catering software with built-in growth tools

Manual follow-up works at 5 catering clients. It falls apart at 20+. The right catering software does the remembering for you.

• Automated re-order emails - "It's been 3 weeks since your last order. Ready to reorder?"
• Customer CRM - track who orders, how often, and what they prefer
• Order history - make reordering as easy as clicking "repeat last order"
• Email campaigns - promote seasonal specials, new menu items, or holiday catering

FlashCater builds all of this into the platform so you're not cobbling together separate tools for ordering, management, and marketing.

The 30-day launch plan

Starting from zero? Here's the timeline:

Week 1: Set up your catering menu and online ordering. Update your Google Business Profile. Email your customer list.

Week 2: Visit 10-15 local businesses with sampler trays. Post on social media. Add catering signage in your restaurant.

Week 3: Follow up with every business you visited. Send a second email to your list. Reach out to 3-5 potential referral partners.

Week 4: Evaluate results. Which tactics generated orders? Double down on those. Set up automated re-order emails for customers who've ordered.

Run this plan and most restaurants land 5-10 catering orders in the first month, plus a pipeline that keeps growing after.

If nobody on your team can own outreach, follow-up, and reorder emails every week (and in most restaurants nobody can), look at an outsourced catering sales manager or FlashCater's broader restaurant catering growth service.