How to Build a Restaurant Catering Business: The Outbound System That Took Me from $250K to $1.6 Million

I’m going to share the paradigm shift that changed my entire business. It took the same level of effort to convince someone to come in and buy a fried chicken sandwich for $16 as it did to sell a $1,500 catering order. As it did to sell a $10,000 private event.

Read that again. Same effort. Same attention. Same 12 to 15 to 18 hour work days. The only difference was where I aimed.

Once I understood that, I stopped going after the small money. I started chasing the big money. I started dialing for dollars. And everything changed.

I had a decent events business at my restaurant. We were doing about $250,000 a year in inbound events. Within 12 months of switching to outbound, I grew it to a million dollars. The next year, we did $1.6 million. And it only grew from there.

Here’s the thing about private events and catering that most restaurant owners don’t realize: they’re annual occurring revenue when you do them the right way. If somebody has their holiday party with you and you don’t screw it up, why would they experiment? It becomes part of their tradition. It becomes part of their routine. It compounds over time.

Why B2B Is Where the Real Money Lives

One of the things I talk about with every client is hitting a 15 to 20% net margin. And people always ask, “How do you do it if we never talk about cost controls?”

The answer is a blended average. We work at 10 to 12% in-house, but then we supplement that with 30% margins on events, catering, and gift cards. That blended average puts you right at 20%.

Think about what you don’t carry with catering and events compared to in-house dining. You’re not paying for the full theater of a restaurant experience during those transactions. The margin structure is fundamentally different. And when you stack that on top of your existing infrastructure – same kitchen, same staff, same fixed overhead – the incremental cost is minimal.

My restaurants existed only to promote my catering and events business. Because that’s where the money was. That’s where the volume was. That’s where the margin was. The dining room was the marketing engine. The events and catering were the profit engine.

B2B is a more predictable sales cycle. You’re not trying to sell people something they don’t want. You’re trying to convince them to do something they’re already going to do – just do it with you. Companies are going to order catering. They’re going to throw holiday parties. They’re going to host client dinners. The only question is whether they do it with you or with someone else.

Understanding Who You’re Selling To

To sell anything effectively, you need to understand the people you’re selling to. And the people who professionally book catering and events are very nervous people.

Think about it. Imagine you’re setting up a holiday party for everybody at your company, and your overall performance review is going to be influenced by how it goes. The final sentiment at the close of the year is going to be rooted in the performance of someone that is not you – the restaurant or caterer you chose.

These people are not looking for you to give them a deal. They’re not trying to save money. More than anything, they’re looking to not get fired.

People only book for one of two use cases. Either they’re booking for people who give them money, or for people they’re directly related to. They don’t want to disappoint their boss, just like they don’t want to disappoint their mother-in-law.

What you’re selling isn’t food and beverage. It’s not events and catering. What you’re selling is confidence. And confidence comes from making the buyer feel like everything is handled, everything is going to be perfect, and they’re going to look great for choosing you.

Stop Waiting for the Phone to Ring

Here’s where most restaurants fail with catering and events. They wait for inbound inquiries. They put a “Private Events” tab on their website and hope someone fills out the form. Hoping for someone to fix your problems for you is not a great strategy.

I want you to think in terms of leverage. What are high-leverage activities you can do that will guarantee you more money? And the answer is outbound. Cold calling and cold emailing people who are more than likely going to do the thing you’re trying to sell them into.

Let me give you a quick example. I had a chef I work with in a very small metro. I told him to use our targeting system and reach out to as many people as he could, asking if they were hosting a holiday party that year. I didn’t hear from him for three weeks. Then he follows up and says, “Well, Josh, it didn’t work.”

I said, hold on. Tell me what you did, and then we’ll figure out what didn’t work.

He says he spent all this time on it and only brought in $9,000 in event sales. So I asked him how much time he actually spent. We went through the math. He spent about six hours on it. That’s $1,500 per hour.

A chef owner spent six hours doing outreach and generated $1,500 per hour for that effort. What else could he possibly be doing that’s worth $1,500 an hour? And if he were to 10x that effort, what would happen? A lot more money.

The Math of Outbound: Leading vs. Lagging Indicators

Most restaurant owners focus on lagging indicators – sales, revenue, event bookings. I don’t care about event sales as a metric. I worry about the things you do on the front end to get event sales. Those are leading indicators, and the best leading indicator is calls and emails.

Let me walk you through a real example. I work with a fine dining restaurant in Miami. She reaches out and says, “We need to sell $500,000 worth of events by the end of the year.” And it’s September.

Challenge accepted. Here’s the process we used.

For her to sell $500,000 in events at her tier, she needed to sell roughly 100 events at $5,000 each. We subtracted out her current events and the people she thought were going to book – all the fence-sitters, all the people we knew would ultimately close. That left us needing 75 new $5,000 events.

Then we looked at close rates. We assumed that if her targeting was right, one out of every 10 would close. Then I said, let’s make it worse. Let’s assume a 5% close rate – half that. At 5%, she’d need to reach out to 1,500 businesses to get those 75 bookings.

Based on the timeline from September, we had roughly 30 business days. So we agreed she would make 50 calls a day over those 30 business days.

Did she hit her target? She sold $500,000 worth of events in about 20 business days. Not 30. Twenty. Why? Because her targeting got better. Her close rate got better. Her pitch got better. She iterated over time. She didn’t stop. She actually stopped before reaching out to 1,500 businesses because she was already at capacity. She couldn’t take on any more business.

That’s what I want you to understand. You are in control of how much money you make. You just don’t know what you’re supposed to do with your time to make it.

Who to Target: The Law Firm Lesson

I worked at a law firm for about six months until I got fired. I’ve been fired from literally every job I’ve ever had, which is why I was forced into entrepreneurship at 24 years old. But when I worked for that law firm, the only thing I was qualified to do was order lunch for them.

Here’s what I found. Number one, they wanted variety. Number two, they had no budget – because they were always billing it back to the client.

So when I started South City fried chicken and began building our corporate catering strategy, I went straight to law firms. Then accounting firms. Then economics firms. Any large office where I knew they were billing catering back to the client.

Today, we use targeting systems to create prospecting lists based on proximity, industry, headcount, and then rank them by their perceived capacity to pay. Then we just reach out to those people.

Most law firms cater. They cater all the time. They can’t stop catering because they don’t have a budget – they bill it back. When I worked at that law firm, they ordered catering five days a week, and all they cared about was that it was delicious.

If you just started by making 20 calls a day, five days a week, you’d be making hundreds of calls a month. And it would directly translate to more money in your pocket.

Speed Kills the Competition

Here’s a question. When somebody reaches out to book on your website, how quickly do you get back to them? 24 hours? 48 hours?

The goal is one hour. But here’s the real statistic. If you reply to somebody within one minute of them filling out a form, you are 391% more likely to close that client.

One of the first things we do with all of our clients is replace the forms on their website with automation-backed forms. When somebody fills out a form, it immediately replies via text: “Hey, this is Josh. I want to let you know we got your inquiry and we’re working on it now. I’m going to follow up with you in less than five minutes with a couple of follow-up questions.”

Then four minutes later, an automated email goes out with specific questions we could have asked on the form but didn’t. Why didn’t we ask them on the form? Because we’re trying to engage in an authentic way.

Here’s what I figured out about my own business. When people reach out with an inquiry, they don’t want to book an event with you specifically. They just want to book an event. Period. Your goal is to stop their prospecting process. Make the inquiry they send you the last one they make, because you seem like you’re on top of it.

This works especially well in our industry because most restaurants aren’t aware of these automations. So it feels like a high level of service without tech getting in the way.

The Hand-Raising Email: Turn Your B2C List Into B2B Gold

Here’s a strategy that has generated massive results for my clients. How many people on your mailing list own businesses or work for businesses that could host a private event? How many of them work for companies that do catering all the time?

You don’t know. You can’t sort your list that way. So we use something called a hand-raising email to pull the B2B prospects out of your B2C list.

Instead of saying “Did you know we do corporate catering?” – which is talking about yourself with no benefit – we give it away. Here’s how it works.

We send an email to the entire list: “We are so excited about our new private events program. We’ve upgraded it this year, and to celebrate, we’re going to give away a complimentary holiday party to someone on this list for up to 250 people. To enter, reply with your name, business name, business website, total number of people, and the person who’ll be managing the event.”

Then we get a flood of responses. And I don’t know how this is possible, but it seems like every single time, the winner is the person with the fewest number of employees.

Then I send out a bulk message to everyone: “Congratulations to Lulu, she won, and we’re so happy to serve her. For those of you that didn’t win, I want you to feel like winners too. I’m going to be reaching out directly.”

Then I reach out to each person individually. “Hey Adam, you lost, but you’re not a loser. You’re a winner to me. And you still have this holiday party that you need to book for 150 people on December 19. I’d love to host it for you. Why don’t we connect, and I’ll go through all the things we can do. I assure you, I can plus up the event to the point where you feel like a winner too.”

It works. It works really well. Because they already opened your emails. They already know, like, and trust you. They already told you they have an event to plan. Now you’re just going to plan it together.

What It Looks Like When It Works

The Dundee Dell in Omaha, Nebraska – literally the oldest bar in Omaha – saw private events skyrocket by over 100% compared to the previous two years after implementing these strategies.

Marquise Steakhouse in Milton, Ontario increased the average price of their private events by 50% and doubled their event bookings.

These aren’t flukes. These are the predictable results of having best-in-class assets, an outbound system, and the discipline to make the calls.

And here’s what I’ll tell you from my own experience. When I ran a virtual reservationist service for hundreds of restaurants, I literally guaranteed complete strangers a 15% lift in top-line sales within two weeks. We hit it every time. Why? Because everyone was under-booked. The capacity was there. It just wasn’t being used.

Your 7-Day Catering and Events Outbound Action Plan

Day 1: Reach out to every past client. Contact every past event and catering client you’ve ever had. Invite them in for lunch or dinner. Say, “We appreciate you. Curious to know – do you have anything coming up on the horizon?” They’ve already given you money. They already know, like, and trust you. Bridge the gap and restart the conversation.

Day 2: Build your targeting list. Identify law firms, accounting firms, and large offices within your delivery radius. Focus on businesses that are billing catering back to clients. Create a list of at least 100 prospects to start.

Day 3: Set up automated response. Replace the forms on your website with automation-backed forms that send an immediate text response and a follow-up email within five minutes. Remember: responding within one minute makes you 391% more likely to close.

Day 4: Create your hand-raising email. Draft an email to your existing mailing list offering a complimentary event to one lucky winner. This pulls B2B prospects out of your B2C list without any hard selling.

Day 5: Start making calls. Commit to 20 outbound calls per day. That’s hundreds of calls per month. Track your leading indicators – calls made, emails sent – not just your lagging indicators like revenue.

Day 6: Audit your response speed. Time how long it takes your team to respond to an inbound event inquiry right now. If it’s more than an hour, fix it. The inquiry they make with you should be the last one they make.

Day 7: Do the math. Calculate what your business looks like with a blended margin. If in-house runs at 10-12% and events and catering run at 30%, what does your total margin look like when B2B represents 20% of your revenue? 30%? 40%? That number is your north star.

How much does all of this cost? Not a dime. It costs time and intention. And the ROI is the fastest money you’ll ever make in the restaurant business. Money likes speed. Start today.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I start a restaurant catering business with no existing clients?

Start with your mailing list. Use a hand-raising email to identify B2B prospects from your existing B2C audience. Then build a targeting list of law firms, accounting firms, and large offices near you – businesses that cater regularly and bill it back to clients. Make 20 outbound calls a day. A chef I worked with spent just six hours on outreach and generated $9,000 in event sales. That’s $1,500 per hour for his effort.

What margins should I expect from restaurant catering?

Events and catering typically run at 30% margins compared to 10-12% for in-house dining. When you blend those revenue streams together, your overall margin jumps to 15-20% without cutting a single cost. My events business went from $250K in inbound revenue to $1.6 million in under three years. Same kitchen. Same staff. Same fixed overhead.

How many outbound calls do I need to make to fill my events calendar?

It depends on your close rate and average event size. A client in Miami needed $500,000 in events. We assumed a 5% close rate and calculated she’d need to reach 1,500 businesses. She committed to 50 calls a day and hit her target in 20 business days – not because the math was wrong, but because her pitch improved with practice and she closed better than 5%.

How quickly should I respond to catering and event inquiries?

Within one hour at the absolute maximum. But the data shows that if you reply within one minute, you are 391% more likely to close. We use automation-backed forms that send an immediate text response and a follow-up email within five minutes. The goal is to stop their prospecting process. Make yours the last inquiry they send.

How do I make catering and event revenue recurring?

Private events are annual occurring revenue when you do them the right way. If a company has their holiday party with you and you don’t screw it up, it becomes tradition. They won’t experiment. The same applies to regular corporate catering – law firms I’ve worked with order catering five days a week. Once you’re their vendor, switching is friction they don’t need. The key is not screwing up the first one and following up consistently.