How your restaurant can make THOUSANDS with mailers
Feb 20, 2025Why Your Restaurant Needs Catering Mailers
Hey everyone. Aidan with Catering Launch here, and I'm really excited to talk to you about a new program my company is rolling out that's going to make food buyers - the people who order lunches for offices - send you orders, then stick around as loyal customers.
No, I'm not talking about running expensive social media ads or culture-building. We're actually going back to a method that most people think doesn't work, but actually works super well if you do it the exact way we're about to walk through.
So last year, my restaurant (Pier 49 Pizza in the city of American Fork, UT) made $162,000 in additional sales just by targeting high-ticket catering customers with mailers. That's right - physical mailers sent through the postal system.
My restaurant's catering program brought in over $300,000 total, and slightly more than half of that came from one simple strategy—sending mailers to the right people. I'm talking about the people who control corporate catering budgets.
A lot of these customers didn’t even know my restaurant existed until I got a mailer into their hands. They weren’t Googling “catering near me.” They weren’t looking for new options. But when the time came for them to order food, my mailer was sitting right in front of them.
This wasn’t luck. It happened because I used a proven system to get catering-focused marketing materials directly into the hands of the people who actually make food-buying decisions. No guessing. No wasted effort. Just results.
And here’s the best part—no one else is doing this. While other restaurants are spending thousands on social media ads or competing on Google with the big chains, I focused on a marketing channel no one else was using. When food buyers get my mailers, I’m the only restaurant talking directly to them. They respond well to this strategy.
Look, here's the deal. Wherever your restaurant is located, there are hundreds of offices in your area trying to get employees in the office by giving them free food. This is where you come in.
I want to copy and paste the method I perfected at Pier 49 Pizza in American Fork, UT, into your business. I want to help you add thousands of dollars in catering sales—over and over again.
Because if you're only relying on dine-in and carryout, you're playing a losing game. You didn’t open a restaurant just to struggle. You didn’t take on this kind of stress just to break even or hope every Friday night is busy enough to cover the bills.
But that’s what most restaurant owners do. They spend their days chasing small wins—a $10 meal here, a $30 takeout order there—hoping it all adds up. Meanwhile, another kind of restaurant owner exists. The one who has built a system that funnels high-ticket catering customers straight into their business—like clockwork.
Then there’s the other kind of restaurant owner—the one stacking $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 catering orders on repeat. This restaurant owner isn’t stressing over slow weeks because catering checks keep rolling in. They aren’t crossing their fingers, hoping that customers show up. They know they have a steady stream of big orders coming in—because they put the right system in place.
And here’s what separates these two types of restaurant owners: The successful ones go after the right customers. They’re not: begging for small takeout orders, running endless 10% off discounts to get people in the door, or spending money on ads that attract people who only buy a slice of pizza and a soda
Instead, they’re getting in front of the decision-makers—the ones who control massive food budgets for their offices, companies, and events.
I’m not here to try and convince you of some random, untested theory. I’m not here to give you another “marketing idea” to throw on your already overwhelming to-do list. I’m here to give you a plug-and-play system that you can roll out at your restaurant without lifting a finger. I'm going to do everything for you.
Let’s talk about flyers for a second. If you’ve ever printed a stack of them, you probably did one (or all) of the following: Left them on tables at your restaurant, hoping customers would grab one. Stuffed them in takeout bags, thinking maybe someone would call for a catering order. Handed them out at events, hoping it would turn into future business. Or even paid tens of thousands of dollars to mail them to every house in the neighborhood.
And what happened? Very little. Maybe you got a handful of small orders—someone called in for a couple of pizzas, another person ordered a few salads—but it never turned into anything substantial.
That's because you were targeting everyday normal people. And while we love these customers who keep our businesses alive, who you need to target with mailers are decision makers at large companies in your are. These are the people with corporate credit cards with hundred thousand dollar limits, people who control catering budgets.
These are the people who order thousands of dollars’ worth of food at a time. They are: Office Managers – who feed entire offices. Executive Assistants – who coordinate meetings for CEOs and executives, often feeding entire Marketing teams, Sales teams, and every other team under the sun. Event Planners – The people in charge of conferences, corporate events, and parties.
These people don’t think in terms of “what’s for dinner?” They think in terms of feeding 50, 100, or even 500 people at a time. And if your restaurant isn’t targeting them? You’re leaving money on the table—every single month.
99% of restaurant mailers and flyers specifically fail because they’re being used as mass-marketing tools when they should be precision-targeted sales weapons.
Here’s the craziest part about all of this: Corporate catering decision-makers never get direct mail from restaurants. They never hear from potential catering partners. Think about that for a second.
These people are actively looking for catering solutions—they need reliable vendors, and they have big budgets to spend. Yet, no one is reaching out to them directly. Instead, they’re forced to: rely on Google to search for local catering (and guess who dominates there? The big chains). They stick with the same old options they’ve always used—even if they’re tired of them. Or maybe they take whatever recommendation someone in the office gives them, even if the food is mediocre.
But when your mailer lands on their desk? You instantly stand out. You become the only restaurant in town that bothers to introduce themselves to the people spending thousands on food every month. They don’t toss your flyer in the trash. They don’t ignore it. They look at the coupons we send them, they get interested, then they send you thousand and multi-thousand dollar orders.
At Catering Launch, we aren't trying to help you spread a generic “Try Our Catering” message. We want to help you create an irresistible offer, engineered to make corporate customers order immediately, then keep ordering for years to come.
Landing one high-ticket corporate catering customer could pay for this program many times over. My largest corporate catering customer at Pier 49 Pizza sent me $72,000 of business over 25 months. Those are the kind of numbers we're talking about here.
I want to break down every step of the Catering Launch "Done For You" Catering Mailer program, so you can understand how we are going to acquire high-ticket catering customers for you.
Step 1: We Repackage Your Catering Menu (to Streamline the Ordering Process)
Let’s talk about your catering menu for a second. If you’re like most restaurant owners, your catering menu is probably just a longer version of your regular menu—a big list of options with pricing that requires the customer to do some mental gymnastics to figure out how much food they actually need.
And that’s a problem. Because if a decision-maker has to stop and do the math, chances are, they’re moving on. Most office managers, executive assistants, and event planners don’t have time to figure out food logistics. They’re juggling meetings, deadlines, and 50 other responsibilities. The last thing they want to do is estimate how many trays of salad they need to feed 85 employees.
And when something feels complicated? People put it off. This is why restaurants lose thousands in potential catering sales. Not because the food isn’t good. Not because the price is too high. But because the ordering process is frustrating.
And if something is frustrating, customers go with the easiest option—which is usually a large chain. Think about it—why do so many offices default to ordering from Jimmy John’s, Domino's, Panera, or Chipotle? It’s not because they have the best catering in town. It’s because ordering from them is simple. And that’s the key: Simplicity wins.
That's why the first step in our process is to strip away all the confusion and rebuild your catering menu for high-ticket sales. We eliminate friction by restructuring it into a clear, per-person pricing model. Instead of forcing customers to figure out quantities, we give them a simple, all-in-one catering solution.
So now, instead of a decision-maker thinking, "Okay, we need to feed 100 people… so maybe 10 trays of pasta, 15 salads, and 10 garlic bread orders. Wait, is that enough? What about drinks?"
They just see:
✅ Bronze Package – Pizza for everyone - $7.99/person
✅ Silver Package – Pizza & Salad for everyone - $9.49/person
✅ Gold Package – Pizza, Salad, Breadsticks & Dessert Pizzas for everyone - $10.99/person
All they have to do is pick a package, tell you how many people they’re feeding, and boom—you’ve got a $1,000+ order. There's no thinking, no overanalyzing, no frustration. Just the easiest ordering process they've ever seen. And they didn't have to spend 10 minutes on the phone to figure everything out.
No matter what kind of restaurant you run, I can help you create a tiered "per person" menu. You can create "tiers" based off of protein types - so chicken tacos, pork tacos, beef tacos, veggie tacos - "tiers" based off of larger packages like I did at my restaurant, or "tiers" based off of anything you'd like.
All we have to do is re-structure your catering menu with the easy-to-order options at the top so customers aren't getting overwhelmed. Make it easy to order, and more customers will do it. It's simple but powerful.
Step 2: We Design & Print High-Converting Mailers That Get Catering Orders (Not Just Compliments)
Most restaurant mailers are a complete waste of paper. “Try Our Catering!” is not a marketing strategy. That’s wishful thinking. The reason most restaurant mailers don’t generate high-ticket catering orders is because they are informational, not persuasive.
These mailers list what you offer, but they don’t give the customer a compelling reason to act now.
The way to get catering orders on your calendar isn't to send a generic mailers and hope people order. My mailers went through about 10 versions before I found one that converts extremely well, and it's a whole lot more than just a flyer talking about what you do.
If you're interested in working with us, we're going to work together to use my mailers and other promotional material as a baseline for designing yours to make sure it has everything necessary. Catering Launch mailers are engineered to convert interest into sales. They don't have to be professionally designed, they just have to look good enough, and include 5 items that will motivate people to order.
I want to show you my restaurant's flyer, so you can follow along with what I'm talking about.
(First) We have a Call to Action: In other words we tell people exactly what we want them to do -> Order now, or reach out to me personally for help creating a special menu.
(Second) Create a killer First Order Deal so good that the customer would have to be crazy to not take us up on this. At Pier 49 Pizza, mine was a Buy 1 Get 3 free card, where I gave away 3 appetizers when people bought pizzas for the office. We want something that sounds amazing on paper, and really is, but costs us the smallest amount to fulfill.
Instead of saying, "Hey, we do catering—give us a call!", we say "buy pizza for the office, and we'll throw in free salads (for the healthy folks), free cheesy breadsticks (our bestselling appetizer), and free dessert pizzas (for a sweet way to end the meal). I think you'd agree with me that that second option sounds a whole lot better.
As someone who's tried both ways, when you make a great first order deal that motivates people to give you a try, you'll earn 10 times the business.
(Third) Use Social Proof to your advantage: People don’t like to take risks—especially when they’re ordering food for their co-workers. If they’ve never worked with you before, their biggest fear is that something will go wrong. That's why in our mailers, we include testimonials from other customers just like them.
Ordering food for an entire office is a big responsibility—no one wants to be the person who chose the wrong caterer. That’s why we let our customers do the talking. In our flyers and mailers, we include actual screenshots of texts from happy clients who rave about our food, reliability, and service. No fancy testimonials, nothing too complex—just real messages from real people at real companies who keep coming back.
(Fourth) A Guarantee that they're going to love your food: This just builds off the testimonials to cement in potential customers' minds that they're going to love your food. On my flyers, I put the guarantee that if everyone at the office wasn't smiling while eating our pizza, then they got their order for free. Over 25 months, do you know how many people took advantage of this guarantee? Exactly zero.
This guarantee is above and beyond what other restaurants do. So, it converted super well, even though no one ever used it. When you put your reputation and your wallet on the line, usually nervous customers are more willing to give you a try.
(Fifth) A Rewards Program: Basically, I made it clear on my flyer that anytime anyone worked with me, they would get 10% of their order total back in restaurant gift cards. Not so their office would be rewarded. But so the food buyer - the decision maker - could take their family and friends out for pizza outside of work. This is a huge part of what kept people coming back and ordering from my pizzeria instead of any other.
No one else was rewarding these people - who usually don't make a ton of money and are super receptive to rewards programs.
I don't want to dive into every detail of the flyer and how it's designed to drive sales. When you decide to work with Catering Launch, we'll hop on a call to design your flyer and all the other promotional materials. At that point, I'll give you the full breakdown of why these flyers convert so well.
Step 3: We Find Every Qualified Decision Maker In Your City
At Catering Launch, we don’t just hope the right people find your restaurant and order catering. We go out and find them for you. We use several B2B (so business to business) databases to get you a perfect list of every company in your area worth pursuing. We don't want to waste time and effort sending a mailer to an office with 2 or 3 employees coming in, because that order isn't big enough.
You and I are going to set a baseline office size, then my team at Catering Launch will build your business list, clean the data, then filter out duplicates or companies that have recently shut down, so every mailer arrives in the hands of someone who could send you a high-ticket catering order.
When you invest in your restaurant’s future and work with Catering Launch on this Done-For-You Mailer program, you’re benefiting from a proven system designed to get you the best return on investment. My only goal? To get you as many catering sales as possible, as fast as possible.
Now, most restaurant owners assume that if a company needs catering, they’ll just Google “catering near me” and magically find them. Here’s the problem: Big chains dominate Google. They have massive marketing budgets and name recognition, and they drown out independent restaurants.
Food buyers aren’t scrolling through endless options looking for you. They pick the first or second choice. But if they need to order food, and your mailer landed on their desk yesterday? Boom—you’re top of mind. Even if they’ve never heard of you before. Even if they’ve never tried your food before.
That’s why we don’t waste time marketing to the wrong people. Instead of blasting mailers to random businesses, we use data-driven targeting to laser-focus on the right audience. After acquiring over 250 catering customers at Pier 49 Pizza and analyzing every single one, I know exactly who places the orders.
I’m targeting Office Managers. I’m targeting Executive Assistants. And I’m definitely targeting the six other job titles that control catering decisions at companies. This is how we win - by knowing exactly who to reach out to, then actually doing it.
Step 4: We Send the Mailers FOR You—So You Can Focus on Running Your Restaurant
Let’s be honest—this is where most restaurant owners get stuck. Maybe you’ve gone through the trouble of designing a mailer. You spent time and money making it look nice. You printed a stack of them. And then… they just sat there. Because you're a busy restaurant owner with payroll to run, prep to do, orders to make.
I've seen a lot of restaurants go through the work of designing promotional materials, just to let it sit in the manager's office. We've all done it before. We have something on our "to-do" list, something that we know we need to do, but life gets in the way.
The best part of the Catering Launch "Done For You" mailer program is the "done for you" part. You need results, and I'm going to send your mailers out as quickly as possible, to be sure your first customer calls to place a catering order in a matter of days. The quicker you win your first catering order, the better. When you win, I win.
So instead of wasting time figuring out how to distribute them, you can sit back and watch the catering orders roll in. You can keep doing what you do best - running your restaurant - while Catering Launch does what we do best - getting you high-ticket customers.
Once your mailers lands in the hands of the right people, your catering program starts growing on autopilot. Instead of hoping for one-off catering orders, you’re stacking repeat customers who send you thousands of dollars in orders every single month.
This is the fastest, easiest, and most effective way to grow sales at any restaurant. Sending out one round of flyers is going to bring business into your restaurant for 6, 9, 12 months or more.
Some corporate food buyers are going to order as soon as they receive your mailers - because they need catering right now. Others won't order immediately, but 3 months down the road when they're planning a quarterly office lunch, they're going to remember your mailers, and grab your business card that they've been saving, to reach out.
The result of this program is your bank account gets flooded with $1,000+ deposits. No more relying on weekend crowds and crossing your fingers that you do $500 more in sales than you did last week. When your restaurant has a catering program bringing in recurring revenue, the daily stress of counting sales fades away.
If you know you have a $3,000 order tomorrow, then missing your daily sales target by $100 isn't such a big deal. When you work with Catering Launch, we help you set up a predictable, high-ticket catering pipeline that brings big orders, big margins, and repeat business.
And once these customers start ordering? They don’t stop. Corporate catering customers are like loyal walk-in customers, just taken to the max. They come back regularly, texting you orders for hundreds or thousands of dollars at a time.
Here’s The deal…
At Catering Launch, we only work with ONE restaurant per niche per market. That means if you’re a pizzeria, and another pizzeria in your area signs up for our program first—then you’re locked out for good.
We want your restaurant to stand out, and to do that we have to limit the number of restaurants we work with. This isn’t a mass-market system. We’re not flooding your area with competitors. We’re partnering with a handful of ambitious restaurant owners and helping them dominate catering in their city.
If you wait, someone else will capture all the high-ticket catering orders in your area and establish loyalty with that company. This isn’t a “maybe I’ll try it later” opportunity. Spots are limited, and if one of your competitors signs on to our program first, then we can't work with you.
If you’re serious about scaling your restaurant with predictable, high-ticket catering sales, this is your one chance. Schedule a call with me and see if the Catering Launch Done-For-You Mailers program is the right fit for your restaurant.
This isn’t theory. This isn’t a gimmick. It works. It worked for me. It worked for others. And it will work for any restaurant. I hope you're ready to take your restaurant to the next level by launching a high-ticket catering program.
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