Hey everyone, Aidan here. The other day I was thinking about what exactly a restaurant needs in order to book catering far beyond normal. I was just thinking about separated my old pizzeria from other restaurants that never make significant catering sales. Now having a sales pitch is a part of the process, as is having a marketing strategy, and getting that message in front of the right people. There's a lot that goes into this equation.

At the Pier 49 Pizza location that I owned, I couldn't control the menu, prices, or so much else. I had to stick with a menu that every one of the restaurants used. Why then was I able to scale to $950 per day in catering sales, while so many other restaurants can't capture $950 in catering a month. As crazy as it sounds, how good the food was has very little to do with the amount of catering sales a restaurant makes.

Here's the deal: if your restaurant is still open, you have good food. Restaurants with bad food close real quick. So if you're watching this and you own a restaurant, food truck, or catering business, just know that your food is good. It's great. It's enough to book serious catering orders. What you need to change is how you present the food to potential customers.

Now I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's take a step back and look at the catering success equation and break it down step by step.

After thinking about what separates great caterers from restaurants with nonexistent catering, I found what I call the "Catering Success Equation." Basically what it comes down to is this. An irresistible offer + the right audience + the right marketing = a dominant catering network that pays you today, tomorrow, and for years to come.

Let's break this down into the 3 variables and address them one by one.

Variable 1: An Irresistible Offer

First up is having an irresistible offer. The first half of this variable involves having a catering menu that is easy to order from. Basically, if ordering catering at your restaurant involves anything beyond choosing a catering package and inputting a headcount, it's too complex. Take a step back and create a "per person" catering menu like the one I used to have at my old pizzeria, where we gave people a choice between 3 catering packages and a "meal for 10."

When you keep things simple, more people follow through and actually put an order on the calendar.

Now, if you want a detailed breakdown of how to do this, go back and look at a video I made called "Boost Catering Sales with This Simple Menu Hack." That goes into more detail on the strategy behind creating catering packages and a simple to order menu.

The second half of your restaurant's catering offer is your first order deal. If you don't have a first order deal, then you need to make one. You can do something simple like free desserts, free appetizers, or free salads with a meal purchase. But, if you want a really amazing and high-converting first order deal, you combine all 3 of those.

When you offer someone free appetizers, free salads, and free desserts when they order pizza for the office, that's a deal too killer to ignore. Not everyone's going to redeem it, but you're going to get a whole lot more calls than if you just showed people your menu and told them to order.

Everything with catering revolves around aligning your motivations (so trying to earn as much catering business as possible) with food buyer's motivations (trying to look like a hero to the people they're feeding), that's where a profitable long-term partnership can come from. When you reward people every time they order catering from you, that just makes your offer even more irresistible.

So, summing up what makes an irresistible catering offer. Your menu needs to be structured in a way that people choose a catering package and just select a headcount to order. Then, you need to have a killer first order deal, where the first time someone orders catering for the office, they get something for free. Afterwards, we make the food buyer aware of your rewards program, and the fact that every time they order, you are going to reward them personally.

Pull all of this together, apply it to your restaurant, then your catering offer is going to be irresistible and better than anyone else. After owning restaurants for years and working with restaurants to analyze what works for a catering menu and what doesn't, I can say that simplicity is the driving factor behind why food buyers order from some restaurants and not others.

Make things easy on your customers, and they'll not only order with you, but stick around and order month after month, year after year.

Variable 2: The Right Audience

The right audience is so important when marketing any product, but especially a catering program. Generally the best audience to target with catering is companies of 20 or more employees. Any office with 4 or 5 employees could send us a $50 or $60 catering order, but that's not large enough to have a significant impact on our catering sales.

You can 100% target small companies of 5, 10, or 15 employees, but before you do that, make sure you are targeting the big fish—the offices with 20, 50, 100, and 500 employees. One catering order to an office of 500 is worth as much to you as 50 orders to an office of 10—but you're only having to make and deliver food once, instead of 50 times.

When building your catering network, focus on the largest companies in your area first. If there are 6 offices in your area with over 500 employees, then those 6 offices are your number 1 priority. One catering orders from one of those customers could mean $5,000 - $8,000 to your bottom line. That's serious money. For a lot of restaurants out there, one sale that big could be a 25-50% increase on weekly sales.

Line up one of these orders every week, and any financial difficulties you've had evaporate into thin air. This is why I say catering is a game changer for any food business.

Now if you and I have ever sat down and talked about catering at your restaurant, you know that I use a software called Data Axle Genie to locate companies to market to. Let's take a look real quick.

 In the early days of setting up my restaurant's catering network, I used to go to Google Maps and just copy/paste business names and addresses into a list. This was a terrible way to do things. I spent so much time building a businesses list, but I had no idea what size these companies were. Because of that I had no idea which of them were worth marketing to, and I wasted time and resources marketing to all of them.

All that changed when I learned about B2B databases. The best B2B database I've found for our purposes is called Data Axle Genie. This is the platform that helps us target the right audience that needs to hear about your restaurant's catering program.

Let's do a quick example for a restaurant in Las Vegas. We can head over to "City" then select "Nevada" and "Las Vegas" from there. Then scroll down to "Business Size" and select everything down to 20+. Now you'll see a huge list of over 2,200 companies here. That's a huge base to choose from.

Vegas is a pretty big city, so if I were building the perfect contact list for a real restaurant, I'd go in and do a 5 or 10 mile radius from the restaurant instead of blanketing a whole city like this, but I just wanted a quick example so people can see that wherever your restaurant is located, there are hundreds and possibly even thousands of businesses that are prime targets.

A majority of these businesses order catering, but they don't order if from you. We need to change that, which brings us to the next step—our actual marketing message.

Variable 3: The Right Marketing

So, how do you reach out to these people to let them know about your restaurant's catering program and why they should choose you above everyone else? After trying dozens of different marketing methods, I've filtered out everything that doesn't work, and I'm left with 6 really effective ways to do it. Check this out.

Number 1: Catering Mailers. So, sending physical mailers to food buyers. As we already walked through, we have a perfect contact list of the exact people to reach out to. Print mailers, send out hundreds of them, and customers will start reaching out to you every day to put orders on the calendars.

Number 2: Email Reach out. So, sending emails to Office Managers, Executive Assistants, Receptionists, and all the people we just reached out to with our physical mailers. When you reach out over email shortly after sending out your mailers, you can remind people that you have the best catering around and they should give you a try.

Number 3: Partnerships with Wedding Venues & Wedding Planners. You can't have a wedding without a venue. That means that Wedding venue owners and wedding planners have constant contact with your dream customers. If you can convince wedding venue owners and wedding planners to be an advocate for your restaurant, and do the hard work of a salesforce for you, then you can book thousand dollar orders every weekend. There's a way to do this effectively, and its worked really well in many markets, at upscale venues and more economy venues.

Number 4: Google Ads. Everyone knows ads work. If you want to make serious catering sales, you'll skip worrying about keywords like "Pizza Near Me" and start putting money towards keywords like "Catering Near Me" and "Affordable Catering". This way, every person in your area who searches for catering keywords will see your restaurant at the top of the list. When they click for more info and see your first order deal and easy-to-order catering menu, chances are very high they order catering from you.

Number 5: Meta Ads. Building off Google ads, we have meta ads on Facebook and Instagram. We can hyper-target just people who are engaged and likely to need wedding catering. Then, we can also target the demographics that usually order corporate catering too. With Meta ads, you can show your ads just to the people who need to see them.

Number 6: 1:1 Networking meetings. Going out to offices in town with some of your food and introducing them to your restaurant and you is the best way to do this. Start at the top of your business contact list at the largest companies in town and work your way down. Every day you go out to meet people, you'll book catering orders.

Now this is pretty complex stuff. But the good news is this. Catering Launch can help you with our 10 weeks to $10,000 Catering Accelerator Program. I'm really not trying to do a sales pitch here, so if you want more info, reach out and we can chat.

Right, so moving on. When you use these marketing methods, you're reaching out over different channels in ways that are proven and work, you're going to see huge results. These are the same methods that helped me book up to $7,200 in catering in a day, $15,000 of catering in a week, and over $300,000 in catering last year.

It doesn’t matter if you run a pizzeria, a deli, a BBQ joint, or a Mexican restaurant—these strategies work. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in a small town or a major metro area—there are businesses near you right now that need a reliable, go-to catering partner. The only question is: Are they going to order from you, or are they going to send that business to someone else? 

Catering isn’t something that just "happens." You can’t sit back and wait for companies to stumble across your menu. The biggest catering clients—the ones placing $1,000, $3,000, even $5,000+ orders regularly—aren’t casually browsing Yelp or scrolling through Google reviews. They order from restaurants they already know and trust. And if they don’t know you yet, that’s what this system will fix. 

Combine an irresistible offer with the right audience, and a multi-channel marketing plan, and your catering network will absolutely explode. Unlike traditional restaurant marketing, we aren’t chasing one-off customers looking for a cheap lunch special. We’re targeting the decision-makers who control corporate catering budgets and need dependable food solutions on a recurring basis.

Don’t rely on billboards, random social media ads, or marketing tactics that burn through cash without producing results. Instead, use the 6-step marketing plan we just went over. If you do this, your restaurant won’t just be another place people think about when they need a meal—it will be the catering provider that offices and wedding venues trust and rely on. 

If you're serious about growing your restaurant's catering network, join our communities where all we talk about is making more money through catering. Talk to you later, my friends.