Ever dreamed of taking your restaurant or café on the road? Or serving your signature dishes at weddings, corporate events, or birthday bashes?
Welcome to the world of catering, where your meals step out of your dine-in operation and into the limelight of a wider audience.
But launching a catering operation isn’t easy. It requires time, money, and organisation — all of which are hard to come by when you’re running a restaurant.
Fortunately, there are some best practices you can follow to launch a successful catering operation. And the even better news? This is exactly what we’re covering in this article!
Keep reading for some top tips on how to launch a catering business, plus real examples from cafes and restaurants that are already doing it successfully. But first, let’s outline some of the reasons a catering operation can be good for business.
How running a catering operation can help your restaurant business grow
Let’s start by taking a look at how launching a catering enterprise can help your restaurant succeed.
Increase your revenue streams
Running a catering operation provides you with an additional revenue stream beyond your standard in-house dining experience. This makes you more resilient to market changes, economic fluctuations, and changing dining trends.
Think about the pandemic as an example. The more adaptable and flexible hospitality businesses could be, the better their chance of coming out the other side — whether creating a takeaway service or serving food outside from a catering van, like Griolladh.
When lockdown hit in March 2020, bar managers Jacob and Jack used their unexpected free time to launch a pop-up food truck, serving grilled cheese toasties. The business was so successful that they eventually opened a restaurant and are now growing a successful franchise (with Nory’s help).
Nory has been with us every step of the way. It’s been incredibly helpful to the business, and has played pivotal role in the successful franchising of Griolladh.
Jacob Long, Co-founder of Griolladh
In other words, diversifying your revenue streams puts you in a good position for stable growth. You’ll have a better cash flow, and you’ll be more flexible to changes in the market.
Build your restaurant brand
Whether you’re pitching up a food truck in the local community or providing food for a large event, catering helps you build brand recognition. People see your logo in new places, they become more familiar with your brand, and they start to trust you.
And when people trust your brand? They’re more likely to buy from you.
Catering also helps your restaurant reach a wider pool of people.
You can expand your presence beyond your in-house dining operation, reaching potential customers in different neighbourhoods, cities, and regions. The more people that are familiar with your restaurant brand, the bigger the chance of gaining more footfall.
Why is catering overlooked?
Catering is an impactful revenue stream, so why is it overlooked? Here are a few possible explanations.
Perception of potential risk
We’d be lying if we said that launching a new catering enterprise doesn’t come with any risk. Hiring more staff, buying more ingredients, adhering to health and safety protocols, and purchasing additional equipment are some of the risks you take when branching into this area.
But in the grand scheme of your business, setting up a catering operation doesn’t carry massive risk.
Yes, you’ll need to spend time and money to set things up and keep it running successfully. But you’ll also be adding a new revenue channel to your business, diversifying and stabilising your income in the process.
In other words: When done successfully, you can counteract the risks and boost your overall revenue.
Take a look at Rocksalt as an example. The growing cafe and restaurant is focusing on developing the catering side of its business. Why? Because they see the value it brings to the business.
Find out more about how Rocksalt is growing and expanding with Nory. 😎
Lack of experience
Running a catering operation might be an entirely new avenue for a lot of restaurant operators, so it’s no surprise that this might put people off. But if you’re already running a restaurant, you have the necessary skills to operate a catering service.
You have experience with food preparation, people management, quality control — the list goes on.
So yes — the format is different, but your skills are transferable.
Time
Setting up an entirely new arm of the business takes time — time that could be better spent running your existing operation, right? But think about it like this:
You spend a lot of time initially setting things up. But the more you operate the catering side of the business, the easier it is to handle.
This means you spend less time managing it and more time focusing on how to increase sales and revenue.
How to set up the catering arm of your restaurant business
If you’re thinking about launching a catering operation, here’s how to get started.
Start with the logistics
First things first, you need to consider the logistics of running a catering service. This means planning food preparation, storage, transportation, and on-site setup to ensure efficient operations.
- Get equipment and supplies. Invest in the equipment you need to launch your catering enterprise successfully. This could be transport vehicles, portable cooking equipment, chafing dishes, serving utensils, and tableware.
- Build a catering team. Building a dedicated catering team is crucial for success. With the right team in place, you can deliver top-quality food and exceptional service — both of which build a good reputation for your restaurant brand.
- Understand your legal obligations. Check local regulations and get the necessary permits and licences for catering services. Take a look at the NCASS checklist for more information.
Hot tip 🔥 Focusing on your community can be a good way to improve your brand reputation, so think about this when planning logistics. What locations will you operate from? Are there local groups you could cater for? Rocksalt, for example, provides food for different sports teams and local groups to become part of the wider community and build relationships with potential customers.
Develop a catering menu
Unfortunately, you can’t generally use the same menu for your restaurant for your catering operation. You need something more concise, with food items that are easy to transport, quick to make, and simple to create in bulk.
You may even want to create multiple menus to appeal to different types of customers. Hook & Ladder does this really well, offering a selection of options for catering customers. People simply reach out to them via their website, let them know what type of event and food they’re looking for, and Hook & Ladder will
Find out more about how Hook & Ladder used Nory to consolidate data access, centralise operations, and track costs in real-time.
The fact that Nory can bring everything together in a central location was very powerful for us.
Andrew Moloney, Managing Director at Hook & Ladder
Hot tip 🔥 If you’re not sure what to add to your catering menu, choose your most popular menu items as a starting point. If you use Nory to manage your operations, you can easily pinpoint the meals that people love the most!
Implement the right technology
Technology is fundamental to the success of your catering venture. Why? Because it helps you manage your entire catering operation.
With technology in place, you can manage your inventory, track sales, and ensure you’re as profitable as possible. Plus, if you’re operating from a food truck, you can use technology to streamline the ordering and payment process. This makes it easier for staff to handle customer orders and improves the customer experience.
The good news is that Nory can help you with all of these elements:
- Inventory management. Use our inventory management software to track supplies in real-time. Our AI features can predict customer demand, helping you optimise inventory orders and reduce waste across the business — in both catering and in-house dining.
- Real-time sales. Nory integrates with industry-leading POS systems (like Toast and Vita Mojo) to help you manage orders and payments on the go. Track performance in real-time and make quick decisions to boost revenue and improve your bottom line.
Hot tip 🔥 If you’re managing inventory for multiple locations from a central production unit, use Nory AI-powered CPU to streamline the process.
It reduces the need for manual work and automatically ordering the right ingredients. How? By reviewing historical data and trends to predict what ingredients you need at each location. Then, we’ll take care of ordering the ingredients to save you the hassle.
Not to mention, you get instant CPU updates based on performance. The CPU dashboard displays stock counts, new deliveries, and POS sales so you can make quick and informed decisions about how to optimise your inventory and increase revenue.
Expanding into catering? Let Nory help
Launching a catering operation isn’t a small undertaking. It requires planning, research, and a lot of organisation. But with the right support and technology? You’re in a good position for success.
Give Nory a try to see how our AI-powered software can elevate your operations and provide real-time insight into your catering performance. Sign up for a product tour to see it in action!
FAQs about running a catering business
How do I manage my catering business?
Having a dedicated team, investing in the right equipment, and creating an epic menu are some of the best places to start when managing a catering business.
But one of the most important aspects? Getting the right technology in place. With the right restaurant tech, you can manage your entire catering operation. Track sales, monitor inventory, and ensure that your new venture is as profitable as possible.
Why run a catering business if you’re already operating a restaurant?
The main benefit is to diversify your revenue streams. It makes you more adaptable to market changes, which means you have a better chance of staying profitable when unexpected hurdles crop up (like the pandemic, for example).
And on top of this, it can increase your brand awareness, help you reach new customers, and boost your overall revenue.
What comes first: venue or catering?
In all honesty, it can work both ways – in some cases, it makes more financial sense to start with catering (like a food truck) and expand into a restaurant — like Griolladh. In other situations, you might already have a successful dine-in operation and want to diversify your revenue with a new catering operation.
The most important thing is that you’re in a good financial position to expand your operations.
