How to Build a Profitable Catering Menu for Your Restaurant

By Jim Rand

As you build your catering menu, remember the story of Goldilocks: The menu needs to be small, but not too small. While a streamlined menu is good for your bottom line, it needs wiggle room to offer customers variety. Here’s a primer on creating a profitable catering menu.

1. Research Your Competitors to Keep Your Edge

Check out the offerings of your direct competitors. Do they offer:

• Food delivery (or just pick-up?)
• Lower prices
• A better, varied menu

Evaluate the competitive landscape, and compete smartly by finding gaps in offerings.

2. Limit Your Catering-Menu Lineup

Don’t offer your full restaurant menu. It’s too difficult to manage and potentially harmful to your brand as a complex menu can slow down the kitchen and hurt the food. Instead, tighten up your catering menu. A smaller menu makes it easier to deliver tasty food to large numbers of people, especially when customers order catering à la carte. It also cuts down on inventory costs and waste.

To create a small menu, select ten mains from your restaurant menu using these guidelines:

• What are your best sellers?
• Which dishes travel well?

Using these same guidelines, select five or six appetizers, side dishes, and desserts for your catering menu.

3. Offer Bundled Meals to Boost Margins

Customers love bundled meals because they’re easy to order, especially online and for business meetings. People also view them as a good value for the dollar.

Bundled meals are beneficial to operators, too, as bundling encourages customers to spend more money than they normally would. When you bundle a big-ticket sandwich with a side (pasta salad, bag of chips, piece of fruit), dessert (cookie, brownie), and a beverage, that creates a perception of value in the customer’s mind. But it also justifies a $12 charge, even though the meal is mostly made up of cheaper, higher-margin items. That’s why bundled meals often bring more money than the average customer check. The pricing strategy of bundled meals works as long as you use correct parameters to stay profitable. Price your bundled meals correctly and they can be profitable menu items. (Learn more about using menu design to increase sales.)

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