How to Create a Profitable Catering Menu

How to price and sell catering orders has been a popular topic in the juice bar industry lately, including on the Goodnature Juicing Facebook Group, and on a recent episode of the Goodnature Radio podcast. Here's some tips and tricks for pulling off a successful catering program.

What is a catering order?

A catering order is basically a large order that is usually delivered to another business for an event. The buyer may book an order for a board meeting, or just to feed their staff for breakfast or lunch. Usually, the order will be delivered and set up for the buyer with all required single use plates, cups, and serving utensils.

Developing a Catering Program

Your catering menu should be straight forward and simple with the products offered. For example, you can offer your most popular items grouped together into packages. Package one might be the "Arise" package, and come with light breakfast items such as acai bowls, juices, coffee and tea. The "Wellness Brunch" package could include those items plus more savory items like sandwiches, salads, etc.

Each package should specify which products are included and how many people it serves. It's fine to customize packages if requested, but having some place to start for the customer will make it easier, for both the customer and your business.

Pro Tip: Chef Ari suggests that for catering orders you can offer special smaller-portion-sized items like half-size smoothie bowls and juices that are only offered as part of the catering packages. This allows you to provide more affordable pricing for larger format events while keeping a low, consistent food cost. It also has the added benefit of allowing the guests to taste many of your most popular items.

Need help building a profitable catering program? Contact our consulting team for personalized, collaborative juice bar consulting.

Catering Pricing

Pricing is very important here. Having clear transparent pricing for the customer is best, and make sure to keep your profit margin high!

In the Facebook group, some people suggested giving discounts on catering since it's a bulk purchase. This is definitely not recommended. In fact, you should charge extra for catering. It's completely normal to charge a delivery and setup fee, and automatic gratuity of something reasonable like 18%.

If you're following Chef Ari's advice of having special items like half-size bowls in the catering packages, you can actually maintain a higher profit margin than on your regular in-store items. For example, if a bowl is regularly $10, and you sell a half-size bowl for $6, you are making an extra profit of $1 on the item.

Why should you be strict about keeping your profit margin? For a few reasons:

1. Usually, the customers are other businesses that have the budget to pay full price. Chances are, you are the smaller and less profitable business. You don't need to be doing favors for other larger, more profitable businesses.
2. If they are asking about catering orders, they are already interested in your products and are likely happy to support another local business, and not try to negotiate.
3. Catering orders are a lot of work! You or your staff will spend a ton of time preparing the order, delivering it, setting it up, and removing the catering equipment after the event is finished (if applicable). This is a lot of labor cost and time.
4. There's a chance this will become repeat business, whether it's every quarter, every month, or even every week. The last thing you want is a huge, unprofitable order that you have to fulfill every week. Remember, you're running a business, not a charity for other profitable businesses.

So for those main reasons, you must demand a reasonable price that makes it a win-win for both the buyer and your business. Have a good, straight forward menu with clear pricing, and catering could end up being a really great part of your business.

Marketing your catering program

Don't be shy about your catering program once you put one together. A common marketing strategy is to have a nice display setup in-store advertising the catering options, so people see it when they walk in. You've probably seen these displays in lots of local restaurants.

And of course, social media is your best friend here. Put together a couple of nice posts about your catering program, and post them once or twice per month.

If you need help with designing your in-store signage or social media posts, Goodnature is here to help with our expert juice bar branding consultants! Simply contact us and schedule a free consultation.