Catering as a second income stream: how to win the work yourself

Does catering suit your kitchen?

Catering is ordinary cooking at a bigger scale, for a group that orders ahead and wants to eat at an agreed time. That is exactly what makes it attractive. You know days in advance what is coming, you buy with a purpose, you cook one large batch instead of forty small ones and you hand it over once.

There is a second benefit that never shows on your till receipt. A lunch for forty colleagues puts your food in front of forty people at once, and some of them have never heard of you. Anyone who eats well in a meeting asks where it came from, and that is how one order tends to bring new buyers with it. Offices also order on weekdays during the day, often when your dining room is quiet.

Against that, catering loads your kitchen at a different moment from your normal service. The order has to be ready just as your lunch rush begins, and a late or lukewarm delivery happens in front of the buyer’s colleagues. They remember. So do not start by asking how to get a lot of catering. Start by asking whether your kitchen can take it.

If you can answer four of the five, you can start, and start small: four or five bundles, a minimum number of guests and a ceiling on what you accept per day. You can always add more. A botched first job cannot be undone.

The biggest obstacle is not in your kitchen. Plenty of restaurants give up on catering because it did not take off, when the real reason was simple: nobody knew they offered it. A regular who eats with you twice a month has no idea you could also do the lunch for his team. So this article is about an offer that works and about everyone who needs to know it exists.

Who orders catering, and what they care about

Catering is not one audience. It is a series of situations in which one person arranges food for a group. That person, the buyer, is your real customer. They do it on top of another job and are judged on whether it goes well. That explains what they want: certainty, ease and an amount that fits the budget.

Business buyers mostly order on weekdays and pay on invoice. Private buyers often order for the weekend and pay up front. Clubs and schools have little to spend per head and often need somebody to approve it. That is three different conversations from the same menu.

The year comes in waves

• December and January: Christmas lunches, year-end drinks, Sinterklaas at the office and New Year receptions. Companies often plan these in the autumn, so your offer should be live by October.
• Spring and summer: communions, King’s Day, graduations, the farewell for the last year of primary school, garden parties, company outings and sports club tournaments.
• Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, and the meals during Ramadan: the dates follow the lunar calendar and move about eleven days earlier each year, so look them up and put them in your own calendar.
• All year round: birthdays, anniversaries and funerals.

A coffee table after a funeral is a category of its own. The request comes at short notice and the buyer is grieving. What works there is calm: a fixed, short menu, a clear price per head and one phone number where somebody picks up. For religious and cultural celebrations, ask in advance about the guests’ requirements.

Building a catering menu from what you already make

A catering menu is not your normal menu in bigger portions. It has to work for large quantities, for transport and for the way a buyer thinks. Start with your best sellers that hold up well, and feel free to add something that only makes sense in bulk, such as a sheet cake you cut into slices and keep in the freezer.

Think in terms of a price per head

Do not ask a buyer for the total budget. Ask for the amount per head. ‘I have a hundred euros for the whole team’ sounds reasonable until it turns out forty-five people will be eating. If someone says ‘eight to ten euros each’, you know exactly what is possible. Let your menu do the same: show the price per head, the number of people and the total with every bundle.

A dish of chicken and rice for twelve costs €66. That is €5.50 per head. Add a salad and bread and the menu reads €9.00 per head, which looks like a complete lunch. Offer three bundles and the buyer can choose without doing sums. The middle one reads as the sensible pick. The prices below are an example. Yours should come from your own calculation.

Steer buyers towards less variety

Buyers often want lots of variety: five hot dishes, two salads, three desserts. That means more food thrown away at the client’s end and more work in your kitchen. Say so honestly: ‘We can make whatever you like, but our advice is three dishes. It costs less per head and leaves less over.’

What travels well and what does not

Dietary needs come with the job

Every group has someone who skips gluten, dairy or meat. For catering, always keep a vegetarian option, a gluten-free or lactose-free choice and a vegan variant in reserve, and offer individual lunch boxes alongside the platters. Anyone who serves food must also tell guests beforehand which of the fourteen allergens it contains. According to the NVWA, the Dutch food safety authority, for unpackaged food that can be done on a menu or card, or verbally as long as a notice says guests can ask. With catering, put it on the label of the container.

Make the menu readable for your kitchen too

Put the portion into the name that prints on the kitchen ticket. If it only says ‘large tray of sandwiches’, the cook wonders whether that means fifty or sixty. If it says ‘large tray of sandwiches (60 pieces)’, it is always right. Put the same number and the number of guests on the online menu, and print the menu for your team, so that even a member of staff without training can answer the phone.

How buyers place an order

Let standard orders run through an ordering page where the buyer enters date, time, number of guests and address. An office manager wants speed and certainty, not three days of email for a lunch for twenty. Custom work, such as a wedding or a big party, runs better through an enquiry form or a conversation, followed by a quote. In both cases you capture the buyer’s name, email address and phone number. You need those to invite them to order again later. You can read more about catering as part of your own ordering channel on the catering page.

Price per head, minimum order and VAT

A catering price works differently from a menu price. With catering, packaging, preparation, transport and set-up come on top, and none of those appear on your supplier invoice. How to calculate a price is covered in the article on menu pricing. Here the question is what catering adds.

A worked example for a lunch

Say you sell a lunch for €11.50 per head, including VAT. Net, that is €10.55. The ingredients for rolls, fillings, fruit and a biscuit come to €3.40 per head, the drink €0.60, and the packaging, napkins and cups €0.70. A member of staff costs you €25 an hour and the round trip €30 in time and fuel. This is how it works out for twenty and for sixty guests.

At twenty guests about €25 is left, and your fixed costs still have to come out of that. At sixty it is eight times as much, while the order is only three times as big. The drive and the preparation do not grow with the number of guests. That is why a minimum is not meanness. It is the floor below which the order earns you nothing.

Minimum, surcharges and deposit

• Minimum: for example ten guests or €150 per order. Send smaller groups to your regular menu or to collection.
• Delivery charge: a fixed amount up to a distance you choose and a rate per kilometre beyond it. How to set that up fairly is in [the article on delivery fees](post:delivery-fees).
• Deposit: for large or one-off jobs, for example half on confirmation.

When the budget is tight

A buyer who says it is too expensive usually wants not a discount but an amount that fits. First check whether too much was ordered: someone who adds up five of this, three of that and seven of something else sometimes overestimates what a group eats, especially at lunch. Then propose an equivalent alternative: a pizza with plain toppings instead of the deluxe version, chicken instead of beef. It is the same amount of food and it costs less. Only if that is not enough do you talk about the price.

In the other direction, bundles lift the average order: a dessert, coffee or a drinks package with every lunch. Thirteen ways to do that are in the article on average order value.

VAT on catering

In the Netherlands, food and non-alcoholic drinks fall under the low VAT (btw) rate of 9%, alcohol under 21%. That applies to a delivered meal and also to catering where you serve the food yourself, because restaurant and catering services belong to the low rate for food. A lunch buffet with coffee and water is therefore 9%, and the wine and beer with it are 21%.

Anything that is not food or a non-alcoholic drink, such as hiring out tables, a tent or glassware without supplying food, is as a rule 21%. Show the rate on every line of your quote and your invoice. If you are unsure about a combination, ask your accountant or the Belastingdienst, the Dutch tax authority, because rates and guidance change from time to time.

Lead times and capacity

Catering goes wrong in two places: you accept too much, or you accept it too late. Both are fixed by rules you write down in advance.

A fixed lead time

Set a minimum lead time for each kind of order and put it on the ordering page, so nothing comes in that you cannot make. An example:

• Up to 30 guests: order by 2 pm the day before.
• 30 to 100 guests: at least three working days ahead.
• More than 100 guests, a hot buffet or custom work: at least a week ahead, after a quote.

Work backwards from the moment it must be ready

An order for 11.30 does not start at 11.30. Work backwards and see what is already happening in your kitchen in each hour. An example with a forty-minute drive:

1. 11.30: the group wants to eat.
2. 11.00: you are at the client’s, setting up.
3. 10.20: the driver leaves, with everything checked against the order sheet.
4. 7.30 to 10.00: cooking, cutting, packing, labelling and checking temperatures.
5. The day before: ingredients in, and any prep that can wait.

Lay that schedule next to the rest of your morning. If your lunch prep and a second catering order fall at the same moment, there is no room for a third. So set a daily limit, for example two large orders or a hundred and fifty guests a day. Beyond it you politely say no, or offer another time.

Last-minute requests: say what you can do

Last-minute requests are common. Do not say no straight away. Say what is possible.

• Offer an alternative. A lasagne in two hours is not going to happen, pizza with salad and bread is.
• Negotiate the time. If the order lands on your lunch rush, ask whether eleven would do. Between ten and eleven your kitchen is often calmer.
• Have your team read through the list of catering orders at the start of the shift, so nobody is surprised by twenty-five pizzas.

Split delivery as a safety net

If a big order is running late, the rule is: bring what is ready first, at the agreed time, and phone before it goes wrong. If thirty pizzas were ordered and ten are ready, those ten leave and the other twenty follow within half an hour. A group with no food loses faith in your restaurant. A group with half and a phone call does not.

Appoint one person as catering lead for all of this: a name that knows the orders, guards the schedule and picks up the phone. Without that name, catering is everybody’s job and so nobody’s.

Packaging, transport and temperature

In catering, the packaging is your plate. What the container looks like when the buyer opens it is what your restaurant looks like. Invest in sturdy containers with a lid that closes properly, or neat aluminium trays, and give each one a label with your restaurant’s name, the contents and the allergens.

Have that stock in place before the enquiry arrives.

Temperature and hygiene

Food you deliver is held to the same hygiene rules as food you serve. As a hospitality business you work with the Hygiënecode voor de horeca from Koninklijke Horeca Nederland, and according to KHN working with that code meets the HACCP requirements. The NVWA names the limits to watch.

• Chilled products stay at 7 °C or colder, frozen food at -18 °C or colder.
• Hot food stays at 60 °C or warmer.
• Reheat to at least 60 °C, and heat chicken or minced meat to 75 °C or above.
• Food you prepare ahead and do not serve straight away must be below 7 °C within five hours.
• Measure with a probe thermometer. Reading the fridge display alone is not enough.

A separate limit for the transport itself does not appear on the NVWA’s hospitality pages. The workable approach is therefore the same two limits: whatever must stay cold goes in a cool box with ice packs, whatever must stay hot goes in an insulated hot-holding box. Record in your HACCP plan how you do this for catering and who measures the temperature at departure and on arrival. For the current text, read the Hygiënecode or go to nvwa.nl.

Drive so that the containers do not slide, with a non-slip mat and nothing loose in the load space, and do a test run with a full order before your first real client. That is how you find out where it leaks.

Delivering and setting up at the client

Delivery is the only moment the buyer sees you. Punctuality comes before everything. A late order embarrasses the organiser in front of colleagues, and that trust does not come back with a refund. So plan to arrive fifteen to thirty minutes before the agreed time.

Whoever delivers represents your restaurant: tidy, friendly, unhurried. With catering it is not drop and go, because the driver unpacks everything and sets it up. If you have no driver of your own, a courier or delivery service can do it, but temperature and timing remain your responsibility.

Setting up in five steps

1. Put the hot food in the hot-holding trays and keep the cold platters apart. If you want to use fuel gel, ask first whether the building allows it.
2. Put a spoon or tongs and a card with the dish name and allergens at every platter.
3. Put plates, cutlery, napkins and cups at the start of the buffet.
4. Leave a card with your phone number, in case something is missing.
5. Take your rubbish with you and leave the spot clean.

Make sure people can find you

Nothing in this article works if nobody knows you cater. So make catering visible at every point where a guest or a company meets you.

In your restaurant

• A poster at the till or the collection counter with your best photo of a finished buffet, a clear headline (‘We cater for offices, parties and clubs’) and a QR code to your catering page.
• Printed catering menus at the till and on tables. Someone waiting for a takeaway order will take one.
• A card or flyer in every bag, with every delivery and every collection order. Your regulars are your best source of catering jobs.
• Your team mentions it. When someone orders for a group of six or more, the member of staff says: ‘By the way, we also cater for offices and parties.’

Online

Anyone looking for catering starts on Google. Make sure it is visible there that you do it.

• Put a ‘Catering’ button in your site’s navigation and at the top of your homepage.
• Build a dedicated catering page, in plain text: your menu, price per head, the minimum, lead time, delivery area, photos and an enquiry button. Write it in the words an office manager searches with, such as ‘office lunch delivery’ with your town beside it. Without such a page Google cannot show you for those searches. A position in the results is never guaranteed, but with one you are in the game.
• Update your Google Business Profile: add a catering category, point the order button at your catering page instead of your homepage and post photos of finished buffets regularly. How to get the profile in order more broadly is in [the article on local search](post:local-seo).

Guests from a delivery platform

If catering orders arrive through a delivery platform, you are meeting new guests there. The platform is good for reach, but you do not know who arranged the order. So put a card in every platform order: ‘Shall we handle it directly for you next time? Then we can tailor the menu to your team and we will know your preferences.’ Add a QR code and a small reason to switch, such as a free dessert on the first direct order. Give the offer its own code so you can see who uses it. After that, only contact people using details the buyer gives you themselves, and read the platform’s terms on contact with guests.

Going out to win the work yourself

Search engines catch people who are already looking for catering. There are also companies who are not searching because it has never occurred to them that the restaurant round the corner could do their lunch. You have to reach those yourself.

Make a list

In Google Maps, search within five kilometres of your restaurant for organisations with many people in one place: accountancy and consultancy firms, notaries and estate agents, dental and GP practices, garages, insurers, builders, schools and sports clubs. Pick a few dozen, preferably with twenty-five or more staff, and find the name of the office manager, the director’s assistant or the HR officer. Put them in a spreadsheet, with a column for what you did and when.

The tasting lunch

One of the best ways to win a business client is to let them taste. You offer a free tasting lunch for about twelve people, on condition that the company collects it itself and, if everyone agrees, shares a photo of the team with the food. The collection saves you a trip.

Keep it short and not too salesy. You are the restaurant round the corner that would like to show what it can do. Say the ingredients for the tasting lunch cost €35. That is less than an advert that may reach nobody, and it reaches a whole office in one go, including the people who decide about food.

Sometimes the contact says: ‘We are actually twenty-five people, what would it cost if we added a few more?’ Then the tasting lunch has become a paid order. If not, you still keep something: a photo for your own channels, an office that has tasted your food and the name of the person who decides. Phone two days later: was it good, and what does the team need next time?

Visits between services

In your quiet hour, say between two and four, send a manager or a trusted member of staff round to nearby offices. Ask at reception for the office manager and bring a printed catering menu with a QR code and a small taster. Tasting something beats a flyer. When you deliver an ordinary order to an office towards the end of the year, add: ‘If you ever want to thank the team with a lunch, we would be glad to arrange it.’

LinkedIn

Many business catering buyers are on LinkedIn: office managers, directors’ assistants, HR officers and team coordinators. Make sure your profile and your restaurant’s page say you cater, send a short personal connection request and do not open with a sales pitch. Post a photo of a finished buffet or a happy team a few times a month, with the client’s permission, and keep that up for a year.

Emailing companies you do not know

Rules apply to unsolicited messages, business ones too: say who you are and why you are writing, give a simple way to stop receiving your emails and, under the GDPR (the AVG, in Dutch), keep only the data you need. The ACM, the Dutch consumer and markets authority, explains what exactly is allowed; read that before you email a list.

Reward the buyer, but be careful

Make life easy for the person who keeps ordering for the company: a repeat order in a few clicks and one regular contact at your end. Loyalty points for the buyer personally can work, but some companies have a code of conduct that does not allow suppliers to give individuals personal benefits. So ask first, or reward the company instead, for example with a free dessert on the fifth order. More on loyalty in general is in the article on loyalty programmes.

Quote, confirmation and invoice

In catering the money rests on an agreement: what, for whom, when, where and for how many. Put it in writing before you start cooking.

The quote

Send the quote the same day. Whoever answers quickly shows how they will handle the order.

Confirming

A quote only becomes a job when the client agrees, by replying ‘agreed’, paying the deposit or confirming digitally. Set a date by which the final number of guests is fixed, for example three working days ahead. After that, a few more guests can be added at most, not removed. Two days ahead you send a short confirmation with time, address, number of guests and dietary needs, so you catch misunderstandings while there is still time.

Write your cancellation rule into your terms. For example: free up to five days before, after that the cost of the ingredients is charged, and on the day itself the full amount. Have your terms checked once by someone who knows the subject, especially if you also supply private customers. What the law arranges for private customers is explained by the ACM.

Invoicing a business

A business client usually pays on invoice, and that invoice has to be right, because the client’s accounts depend on it. These are the details the Belastingdienst requires.

• Your name and full address, and the client’s. A PO box alone is not enough.
• Your VAT identification number, which starts with NL, and your KvK number if you are registered with the Chamber of Commerce.
• The invoice date and an invoice number. Number them in sequence and use each number only once.
• What you supplied and how much: the type of dishes and the quantity, or the number of guests.
• The date you supplied it.
• The amount excluding VAT, shown separately for each VAT rate if you have more than one, with the rate.
• The VAT amount.

Invoices up to and including €100 including VAT have lighter requirements, but with catering you rarely fall below that. Send the invoice by the fifteenth day of the month after the month you delivered. Keep it for seven years. Keeping it digitally is allowed as long as the scan is a complete and accurate copy.

The amount to pay here is €557.00. At confirmation, ask a business client what their accounts department needs: a reference or order number, the department or cost centre and the email address of the finance team. Put a payment term, for example fourteen days, on the quote and the invoice. If a client orders every month, one monthly invoice with an overview of the orders can be easier.

Coming back: follow-up and repeat orders

A business client comes back for one reason: it went well. On time, complete, tasty and easy to eat. That part is your work in the kitchen. What you do afterwards decides whether it stays at one order.

Call the day after

For every order above an amount you choose, say €250, call the next day. It takes a minute: was everything in order, was there enough, did the team ask for anything next time? If something went wrong, you hear it from the buyer rather than from their colleagues, and you get the chance to put it right. If everything went well, you are the first restaurant they call next time.

Write it down

After every job, note the company, the contact, the date, the number of guests, what was ordered, what they liked, dietary needs and when the next opportunity comes up, such as an annual dinner or a recurring meeting. A spreadsheet is enough to start. How to turn guest details into repeat visits is covered in the article on restaurant CRM.

Email at the moments they order

Office orders cluster in the working week. A short email on Monday morning, such as ‘Need a lunch for this week? Order directly with us before ten’, catches the order that would otherwise be put off. In the autumn, remind companies about Christmas lunches and year-end drinks, and after a big job show what you can handle with photos. How to build such emails is in the article on email marketing. Use text messages sparingly, only for people who have agreed to them and only for something urgent.

Keep regular clients close

For a company that orders often, you can agree a standing arrangement: a fixed price per head, free delivery above a certain amount or a standard menu that comes back every week. Say an office orders €300 worth every two weeks. That is 26 times a year, €7,800 in total. You do not get that from an ordinary guest, and that is why you can afford to invest more in a business client: a tasting lunch, good photos, sturdy packaging.

Your first ninety days

A plan with dates and numbers stops catering from staying a ‘one day’. Put in numbers you can count.

Track four numbers: your catering revenue, the number of clients who ordered again, the average order and how many enquiries became a confirmed job. If after ninety days there is little to show, look at where it sticks: does nobody know you do it, is the quote too expensive, does the order arrive late? Also give yourself a goal you can hit or miss, for example four regular business clients and €4,000 of catering revenue a month by the end of the third month. The number does not have to be right. It has to exist.

Catering is not a side job. It is a second source of income that grows with every satisfied buyer, because one company or one club keeps ordering and tells others about you. Make it visible, make sure your kitchen can take it, and go out and fetch the work.