Catering
One booking is worth a month of walk-ins.
RevThread pursues catering the way it actually gets bought, which is slowly and in advance.
What this business is actually like
Catering is a considered, high-value purchase with a long lead time and a genuine qualification problem. A corporate account can be worth more than an entire quiet month, and an enquiry that does not fit your capacity costs real time to work out. The buyer is comparing several providers on price, reliability and whether you have done their kind of event before.
Worth knowing: Catering margin is consumed by labour and delivery — discounting per head on a large order can turn a profitable event into a loss.
Where growth gets lost
Not generic marketing problems. The specific ways a catering business loses money it had already earned the right to.
Enquiries arrive unqualified and eat the day
Working out headcount, budget, dietary requirements and whether the date is even possible takes real time, and a large share of it goes to enquiries that were never going to book.
The buying window opens long before you hear anything
Events are planned months ahead. By the time an enquiry reaches you, the shortlist usually exists, and being on it depended on being visible when nobody was asking yet.
A flood of tiny enquiries that consume quoting time
A flood of tiny enquiries that consume quoting time. It is the kind of loss that never shows up as a bad month — the spend still goes out, the catering enquiry with event type, date, headcount and location still gets counted, and nothing tells you the money went to the wrong place.
Winning a date the kitchen cannot actually staff
Winning a date the kitchen cannot actually staff. It is the kind of loss that never shows up as a bad month — the spend still goes out, the catering enquiry with event type, date, headcount and location still gets counted, and nothing tells you the money went to the wrong place.
What marketing costs before anyone has sold anything
These are the ranges businesses are quoted when each piece is bought separately. Turn a line off to see what the stack looks like without it.
And then the advertising itself
- Cost per click
- $2.05
- Cost per lead
- $31
Median US search advertising for Restaurants & Food, the published category this business sits in — against an all-industry median of $67 per lead. Your market and competition move this considerably.
Then there are the hours every week spent briefing, reviewing and chasing it. And after all of it, the owner is still the one coordinating the marketing.
What actually convinces your customer
In order. This is what RevThread leads with for a catering, and it is not the same order as the business next door.
- 01Photos of real catered events at scale
- 02Corporate or venue references where permitted
- 03Menu and dietary flexibility
- 04Logistics capability
- 05Reviews from event organisers
And what stops them
- “Can they handle our headcount?”
- “Will they cope with dietary requirements?”
- “Are they reliable for a date we cannot move?”
What changes
- Enquiries that arrive with the details that decide whether they fit
- Presence during the planning window, not just at the enquiry
- Repeat and corporate accounts pursued deliberately
The parts of RevThread that matter here
Marketing Director
Decides what the business should be promoting this week, and why, based on the goal you set and what has already worked.
Campaign planning
You approve itBuilds the campaign — objective, audience, budget shape and the creative to run — so what you launch is a decision, not a guess.
Landing pages
Builds the page a campaign points at, so the click lands somewhere built for the offer.
Email
Once connectedDrafts campaign emails timed to what you are already promoting that week.
Content Lab
Writes posts, captions and creative in your voice, ready to review rather than start from a blank page.
See what RevThread would do for your catering
Tell us about the business and we'll look at it properly — what you're running now, what the numbers on this page look like in your market, and whether this is a fit.