3 Big Reasons Why Your Restaurant Should Offer Catering

Not sure if your restaurant should be offering catering? Here are three catering service perks for your restaurant, and some tips for digital promotion:

Minimize Waste

It’s hard for any food business to perfectly predict optimal inventory levels—you can come close using historical data, but still, it’s tough to be exact. When it comes to catering, though, you can know in advance how many perishable ingredients to order with a lot more accuracy—especially if you require a specific amount of advanced notice when guests hire you.

Reach More Guests

Offering catering lets your restaurant reach more potential guests and convert them into paying customers. Think about it: catering lets people get to taste your menu when they might not have otherwise stepped foot in your restaurant. One way to ensure you reach more people is to bring business cards and takeaway menus to any event you cater, and ask the event planner if you can display a sign-up sheet for your email list. Also, it’s a good idea for your waitstaff to know your website to refer curious guests there to learn more about your offerings.

Watch Your Revenue Soar

Catering is a smart way to generate more revenue for your restaurant because when it comes to cashflow, you’ll be getting in hand money in advance when guests put down a deposit or pay in full before you order supplies and inventory. You’ll also save money by not having the same operational costs as running a lunch or dinner service. The event planner is usually in charge of logistics in the space, and wait staff might not even be needed for some events. Set your restaurant apart by offering catering and clearly promoting it on your digital channels like social media, website, and email newsletters.

If catering sounds promising to you, but you aren’t sure how to promote it, BentoBox makes it easy to sell your catering services straight from your website. You have the option to add  a pre-order catering store and/or a custom catering inquiry form. With the pre-order store, you set all the food options, guests add them to their cart, and specify the date they want the food delivered or picked up. With the custom form, guests are able to inquire about special catering orders. No matter which catering option you choose for your website (or both!), you can easily manage and build all your catering events through the BentoBox backend.

The more you promote your catering offerings, the better. So be sure to let your guests know about your catering program through social media channels and in email newsletters. You can even have it right on your homepage so that it’s one of the first things visitors see when they enter your website. The more you spread the word, the bigger the benefits.

So go ahead, ask BentoBox about their catering features!