Caterers
Local SEO for catering businesses.
Drop-off catering needs a thirty-five to forty-five percent margin. Plated service survives on twenty to thirty. The cheap-looking work is the demanding work, and most caterers price it the other way round.
- $12 to $25
- per head, drop-off and box lunches
- $45 to $75
- per head, full-service buffet with staff
- $75 to $120
- per head, wedding food line, before bar and rentals
- 10%
- net margin floor for a sustainable operation
Two kinds of work with opposite margin requirements
Published 2026 catering benchmarks. The relationship between the first two rows is counterintuitive and it should shape which enquiries you chase.
| Drop-off and box lunch | $12 to $25 a head | needs 35 to 45% margin |
|---|---|---|
| Casual buffet with setup | $25 to $45 a head | |
| Plated and fine dining | can run at 20 to 30% margin | large absolute contribution per head |
| Food cost target | 28 to 35% of the per-person price |
A ten percent net margin is the floor, and the top performers reach fifteen to eighteen.
The gap between those figures is not won by charging more. It is won by controlling waste, scheduling labour tightly and adding premium items, and by choosing which enquiries to take. Search is the lever on that last one, because the searches you rank for determine the mix of work that arrives.
Figures are 2026 US catering benchmarks. Regional variation is substantial.
Corporate feeds you weekly and events pay for the year
Corporate catering is regular, predictable and comparatively low ticket. The same office orders every fortnight, the requirements barely change, and the relationship survives on reliability rather than on flair. It fills weekdays and it smooths cash flow.
Event catering is the opposite. Large, occasional, planned months ahead, emotionally weighted, and lost or won on a tasting rather than on a price. One wedding can equal a quarter of corporate work.
Most catering websites present these as one business with a shared menu, which serves neither. An office manager ordering lunch for twelve wants to know the price per head, the dietary options and whether you deliver by half past eleven. A couple planning a wedding wants to know whether you have worked at their venue and what happens if it rains. Those are two websites sharing a domain, and treating them as such is the single biggest structural improvement available.
Occasion and constraint
| Search type | What they type | Where their head is at | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate and regular | office catering [suburb], corporate lunch delivery near me, working lunch platters [city] | Recurring, practical, decided on price and reliability. Fills weekdays. | Highest |
| Event | wedding caterer [city], caterer for [venue], engagement party catering, funeral catering [suburb] | High value, planned months ahead, won at a tasting. | Highest |
| Dietary and cultural | halal catering [city], gluten free event catering, vegan wedding caterer, kosher catering near me | A hard requirement. Very few providers and almost no price comparison. | Highest |
| Generic | catering near me, caterers [city], catering prices | Early, broad, and contested by everyone including venues. | Medium |
Four things that get you shortlisted before the tasting
Per-head pricing by service style
Drop-off, buffet, plated, with what each includes and what the minimum numbers are. Published ranges exist and clients have seen them. A caterer who quotes only on request loses the enquiry to one who does not.
Named venues you have worked at
With the practical detail: kitchen access, power, whether they require a licensed operator, how the service flows in that room. It is the search couples make and it proves competence better than any menu.
Dietary and cultural catering, properly separated
Halal, kosher, gluten free, vegan, allergy management. These are hard requirements with few providers, almost no price comparison, and they are usually a bullet point in a menu instead of a page.
A corporate page written for an office manager
Delivery windows, standing order arrangements, invoicing, dietary labelling, minimum numbers. A completely different reader from a wedding client and one who orders forty times a year.
Six months, corporate first
Weeks 1 to 4
Split the two businesses on the site
Corporate and events as separate sections with separate menus, pricing and language. Nothing else on this list matters as much and it costs only structure.
Weeks 4 to 10
Corporate pages and pricing
Per head pricing, delivery windows, minimums, dietary labelling. Corporate converts fastest, recurs, and fills the weekdays that events cannot.
Months 3 to 5
Venue pages
Every venue you have catered, named, with the practical detail. These are the highest converting event pages and there is almost never a local competitor for them.
Months 4 to 6
Dietary and cultural specialisms
Where you can genuinely deliver them. Small volume, very high intent, and the clients cannot simply choose somebody cheaper.
What caterers ask us
Should corporate and event catering be on the same site?
On the same site, in clearly separate sections. An office manager ordering lunch for twelve and a couple planning a wedding have nothing in common in what they need to know, and a single blended menu page serves neither.
Should we publish per-head prices?
Yes, by service style, with minimums. Published ranges are widely available and clients arrive with a number in mind. Quoting only on request loses the enquiry to somebody who answered the question.
What is the highest converting event page?
A venue page, for each venue you have actually worked at, with the practical detail about kitchen access and service flow. Couples search the venue name and there is rarely any local answer.
Is dietary specialisation worth building for?
It is some of the best work available. Halal, kosher, gluten free and vegan event catering have few genuine providers, the requirement is not negotiable, and price comparison barely happens. Name each one in your profile's services list too.
Why does the margin structure matter for marketing?
Because drop-off work needs 35 to 45% margins on small tickets while plated work survives on 20 to 30% of much larger ones. The searches you rank for determine your mix, so it is worth deciding which mix you want before chasing volume.
Local SEO for nearby trades
What a customer is worth, and which searches actually convert, change by trade. These are the closest neighbours to this one.
See which catering searches you are missing.
The free audit separates your corporate and event visibility, shows which venue and dietary searches near you have no local answer, and identifies where your enquiries are going instead.