How To Use Your Restaurant App To Double Catering Orders in 2026

It's 10:47 a.m. on a Tuesday and your phone rings. An office manager needs lunch for 30 people — tomorrow. She's already called two other restaurants. One didn't pick up. The other said they'd email a catering menu and never did. You scramble to take the order on a notepad, read it back twice, and hope your kitchen gets the details right.

That order is worth $400. But the process that got you there — the phone tag, the scribbled notes, the zero follow-up — is the reason you're only getting one or two of these a week instead of ten.

Here's the thing: the U.S. restaurant catering market hit $60.1 billion in 2023 and is on pace to reach $124.4 billion by 2032, growing at roughly 8.4% annually (Verified Market Research, 2024). Catering is the fastest-growing revenue stream in the industry, with off-premise catering orders growing 18–20% year-over-year between 2022 and 2024 (Technomic, 2024). And yet most independent restaurants are capturing a tiny fraction of what's available — because they're still running catering like it's 2005.

This post breaks down exactly how to use your restaurant app to double catering orders, with real numbers from real restaurants that have done it.

The $200,000 Opportunity You're Leaving on the Table

Let's do some quick math. According to Paytronix's 2024 Annual Loyalty Report, the average catering order placed through a restaurant's own app is $285, compared to $195 for phone and email orders — a 46% lift. ezCater's 2024 platform data puts the gap even wider: $430 average order value for digital catering orders versus $250 for phone-placed ones, a 72% increase.

Restaurant consultant Mark Berinato, a former Panera executive, put it bluntly in a 2024 interview with Restaurant Dive: "A $2 million restaurant can realistically add $200,000–$400,000 in catering revenue within a year if they build the right app experience and market it aggressively through push notifications and loyalty programs."

That's not aspirational. That's what the data supports. Black Box Intelligence's Q1 2024 data showed that restaurants with dedicated catering functionality in their apps grew catering revenue 2.3x faster than those without digital catering capabilities.

The question isn't whether app-based catering works. It's why you haven't set it up yet.

Why Phone-and-Email Catering Is Killing Your Growth

Before we get into what to build, let's be honest about what's broken.

According to Technomic's 2024 Catering Report, 67% of catering decision-makers — office managers, executive assistants, event planners — now prefer to place catering orders digitally. That's up from 48% in 2020. But only about 30% of restaurants offer a truly seamless digital catering experience.

As Technomic Senior Principal David Henkes noted: "That gap is a massive opportunity. The restaurants closing that gap — especially through their own branded apps — are seeing catering growth rates of 2x to 3x the industry average."

Phone and email catering fails for three specific reasons:

1. Friction kills conversion. The person ordering lunch for 30 doesn't want to call, wait on hold, get emailed a PDF menu, call back to confirm, and then give a credit card number over the phone. They want to tap, customize, pay, and move on.
2. No upsells happen naturally. When someone calls in a catering order, your staff reads back what they asked for. Nobody says, "Would you also like a beverage package and a dessert platter?" But an app does — automatically. Mendocino Farms saw their average catering order value jump from $275 to $410 after adding suggested add-ons within the app's catering flow (Restaurant Business Online, 2024).
3. Zero follow-up means zero repeat business. Catering customer churn runs 45–55% annually for phone and email customers, according to Technomic's 2024 data. For app-based customers with automated reorder reminders? That drops to 22–30%.

How To Use Your Restaurant App To Double Catering Orders: The Playbook

Here's the step-by-step framework, built from what's actually working at restaurants that have done this.

Step 1: Make Catering Impossible to Miss in Your App

This sounds obvious, but most restaurant apps bury catering three taps deep under a "More" menu. Mendocino Farms launched a dedicated catering tab right on their app's home screen in early 2023. Within 12 months, their catering revenue grew 94% — effectively doubling (MUFSO 2024 presentation).

Your app needs:

• A prominent catering section on the main screen — not hidden in a submenu
• Catering-specific menus with packages, platters, and per-person pricing (not just your regular menu in larger quantities)
• Scheduling functionality so customers can order days or weeks ahead
• Deposit and payment processing built in — no calling back with a credit card

Potbelly launched "Catering Bundles" exclusively through their app and increased average catering ticket by $85 per order. Their digital catering grew 25% year-over-year, outpacing overall revenue growth of 7% (Potbelly Q3 2024 Earnings Call).

Step 2: Add Smart Upsells to Every Catering Order

This is where the real money is. When someone orders sandwich platters for 25 people through your app, the app should automatically suggest:

• Beverage packages
• Dessert or cookie trays
• Individual chip bags or sides
• Utensil and napkin kits
• Setup and delivery service upgrades

Olo's 2024 Engagement & Commerce Report found that restaurants enabling catering through their digital ordering platform saw catering revenue increase by an average of 31% within the first six months. Popmenu's 2024 data showed that apps with upsell prompts pushed average catering order values to $410–$580, compared to $195–$275 for phone orders.

That's not a marginal improvement. That's the difference between a $250 order and a $500 order — on the same customer, ordering the same core items.

Step 3: Use Push Notifications to Drive Catering at the Right Moments

Push notifications are the highest-performing marketing channel restaurants have access to. Airship's 2024 Mobile App Engagement Benchmark Report puts restaurant app push notification open rates at 40–60%, compared to 20–25% for email and 2–5% for social media posts. OneSignal's 2024 data shows restaurant-specific click-through rates of 8–12% — roughly 3x higher than email CTRs in the same vertical.

But timing matters. The restaurants seeing the biggest catering lifts aren't blasting generic promos. They're sending targeted pushes tied to specific occasions:

• "Game day is Saturday — feed your watch party with our catering platters" (sent Wednesday)
• "Holiday party season is here — book your office catering before slots fill up" (sent early November)
• "It's been 30 days since your last catering order — ready to reorder?" (automated based on order history)

McAlister's Deli reported that push notifications promoting catering for specific occasions drove a 22% conversion rate — meaning nearly 1 in 4 people who got the notification placed a catering order within 7 days (QSR Magazine, 2024). Mooyah Burgers saw a 14% conversion rate on geo-targeted pushes promoting "Office Burger Bar" catering packages to app users within 3 miles of a location during weekday lunch hours (Fast Casual, 2024).

Olo's data showed that restaurants adding push notification campaigns for catering saw an additional 18% revenue lift on top of the gains from digital ordering alone.

Step 4: Build a Catering Loyalty Track

Your regular loyalty program (buy 10, get 1 free) doesn't motivate catering customers. They need their own track.

Zoe's Kitchen implemented a catering-specific loyalty program — order 5 catering platters, get a free appetizer platter — and drove a 28% increase in repeat catering orders within 6 months (Nation's Restaurant News, 2023). Moe's Southwest Grill created a "Catering Rewards" tier within their Moe Rewards loyalty program, and catering customers enrolled in it ordered 3.1x per quarter versus 1.4x for non-loyalty catering customers (National Restaurant Association Show 2024).

Paytronix CEO Andrew Robbins explained the mechanics: "When you combine a loyalty program with catering functionality in a single app, you create a flywheel. The loyalty program drives repeat engagement, the catering module captures high-value orders, and the data from both lets you personalize outreach in ways that email and phone simply can't match. We're seeing restaurants with this combination achieve catering reorder rates above 60%."

Step 5: Automate the Reorder Loop

This is where most restaurants completely drop the ball. Someone places a $400 catering order and then... silence. No follow-up. No thank you. No "ready to reorder?" prompt. They forget about you and Google "catering near me" next time.

Big Dave's Cheesesteaks in Atlanta built an automated follow-up system that sends a "How was your event?" message with a one-tap reorder button two days after every catering delivery. The result: a 40% reorder rate (Black Enterprise, 2024). Their catering revenue went from $8,000/month to $22,000/month within five months — a 175% increase.

ezCater CEO Erin DeCesare put the lifetime value in perspective: "A catering customer who has a great digital experience reorders an average of 7 times per year." At a $400 average order, that's $2,800 per customer per year. Ten regular catering customers is $28,000. Fifty is $140,000.

The automation is simple:

• Day 0: Order confirmation with delivery tracking
• Day 2: "How was everything?" message with feedback prompt and reorder button
• Day 25–30: "Time to reorder?" push notification with their last order pre-loaded
• Day 60 (if no reorder): Win-back offer — 10% off their next catering order

Square's 2024 Future of Commerce Report found that restaurants using integrated digital ordering for catering experienced 35% higher repeat order rates compared to those taking orders by phone or email. The app doesn't just take the order. It builds the relationship.

The Real Results: Restaurants That Doubled Catering Revenue

Let's recap the numbers from restaurants that executed this playbook:

These aren't outliers. Black Box Intelligence's data confirms the pattern: restaurants with app-based catering grew that segment 2.3x faster than those without.

Noah Glass, CEO of Olo, summarized it at the ICR Conference in 2024: "Catering is the single most underleveraged revenue channel in the restaurant industry. The app is the unlock — it removes the friction of phone tag and faxed menus that has held catering back for decades."

Why This Matters Even More for Independent Restaurants

Every case study above is a chain. But the principles apply even more powerfully to independents — because you have something chains don't: genuine community relationships.

You know the office manager who orders every Friday. You know the church group that needs platters for every potluck. You know the local company that throws quarterly all-hands meetings. Those relationships are worth tens of thousands of dollars per year — if you give those people a frictionless way to order and a system that keeps them coming back.

The average restaurant app retains 18–22% of users at 90 days without loyalty integration. Add loyalty, and that jumps to 32–38% (Appsflyer, 2024). For catering customers specifically, the retention difference is even more dramatic: 45–55% annual churn for phone/email versus 22–30% for app-based customers with automated reminders.

You don't need 600 locations like Moe's. You need one app, one catering menu, one loyalty track, and one set of automations. The math works at any scale.

Let Menuro Build Your Catering Revenue Engine

Here's what you probably don't have time to do: research app platforms, design a catering flow, set up push notification sequences, build a loyalty program, and wire up reorder automations. You have a restaurant to run.

That's exactly what Menuro does. We build your branded restaurant app — with catering ordering, loyalty programs, push notifications, and automated marketing — and we handle everything. No commissions on orders. No tech skills required. No six-month implementation timeline.

You focus on the food. We build the system that turns one catering order into a recurring revenue stream.

Book a free demo at menuro.io/demo and see how your restaurant can use its own app to double catering orders — without adding a single hour to your workweek.