Restaurant Catering: Print Materials That Win More Bookings

A catering order for 60 people, booked two weeks out with a deposit paid, is about as close to guaranteed money as a restaurant ever sees. In a May 2026 Citizens Bank report, 57% of multi-unit franchise operators put catering and off-premise growth on their priority list. 

Getting picked is the hard part, and the print materials you put in a buyer’s hands have a lot to do with whether your name’s still on the list when the order goes out.

Print Materials Keep A Restaurant On The Catering Shortlist

Office lunches almost never get booked in one sitting. Say an office manager has to feed 40 people at next Thursday’s training. She’ll grab three or four quotes, send them to her department head, and then wait while finance decides whether the spend is okay. 

That’s the big difference from regular restaurant advertising, which is mostly aimed at someone deciding where to eat tonight. Catering marketing has a slower buyer and more people weighing in, and print marketing happens to suit that pace.

The Catering Print Materials Worth Paying For

Three pieces do most of the selling.

Build A Separate Catering Menu

Printing “catering available” at the bottom of your dine-in menu won’t book much. Whoever’s ordering lunch for 25 wants the per-head price of a boxed lunch, the minimum on the hot buffet and how early you need a final count. That’s the real gap between catering and everyday restaurant marketing. For catering menus, printing on heavier cover stock is worth the extra few cents, since that sheet could stay pinned up for weeks.

Add An Event Brochure

A couple planning a June reception wants to see who’ll be serving and what the buffet looks like at 7 p.m., and a printed brochure has room for that plus a sample menu or two. Good catering brochure design leads with photos from your own events.

Slip Inserts Into Every Order

Every delivery puts your food in front of people who didn’t pick it, and some of them plan events too. A half-sheet insert with your address, a first-visit offer and a QR code gives them an easy way back. They cost pennies, which makes inserts the cheapest print materials you’ll ever order, and a 30-person lunch hands yours to 30 people who might book you next. 

Regulars are easier still. Stick a table tent by the salt shaker and they’ll read it while they wait for the check, and restaurant flyers stapled to takeout bags have a way of ending up on fridge doors. Restaurant flyer printing is cheap in bulk, so swap the offer every season. It’s hard to think of a catering promotion that costs less per person.

Menu Design Details That Get Catering Booked

Nobody reads a menu start to finish. They glance at it between a Zoom call and a delivery that showed up late. When ezCater looked at its own platform in 2026, menus with fuller descriptions were booked twice as often, and the best listings had photos plus several dietary options. Print materials aren’t any different. If your restaurant print advertising hides the price, you’ve handed the buyer a perfect excuse to try the next caterer on her list.

Put Your Number On Every Panel

Folded menus rarely stay folded. One panel ends up tacked to the break room corkboard, so your phone number and QR code need to be on all of them. Mailing them is its own decision, and this breakdown of self-mailers versus enveloped mail walks through the cost side. Whatever you send, a postcard that doesn’t match the menu she saw in March is money wasted on catering marketing materials.

Mailing Print Materials To The People Who Book

Unlike broad restaurant advertising, each catering drop should go to one kind of buyer.

Send Print Materials To Past Clients First

Past clients are the easiest bookings to win back since they already trust your kitchen. Get your holiday packages in front of them eight to ten weeks ahead, with one reason to book now, like a waived setup fee on December events confirmed by November 1. Restaurant direct mail advertising with a single, obvious offer gets acted on, while a page of discounts mostly gets skimmed.

Reach Office Managers By Name

The CEO isn’t the one ordering sandwich trays. It’s almost always the front desk person, or whoever’s stuck managing the boss’s calendar. That’s who a targeted mailing list is for. Pull the law firms and dental offices around your kitchen, filter by headcount and ZIP code, and your restaurant marketing materials end up with someone who can actually say yes. Wait about a week, then call. “I sent you our lunch menu last Monday” is a far easier opener than a cold pitch.

Cover Nearby Homes With EDDM

Plenty of orders come from households too, for graduation parties and fiftieth birthdays. USPS lets you send 200 to 5,000 pieces per ZIP Code per day through EDDM Retail, and you don’t need a mailing permit. That makes it one of the easiest kinds of restaurant print advertising to start with. Every door direct mail reaches every address on the carrier routes you choose, so there’s no list to buy.

Track Which Print Materials Pay For Their Postage

Give every mailing its own QR code, promo code or phone number. Without that, there’s no telling whether it was the October postcard or the insert in a lunch order that landed you the 80-person holiday party. With catering menus, printing a short first run lets you try two package lineups before committing to thousands. Put an end date on each offer, same as your other restaurant promotions. Two or three seasons of print marketing will show you where the restaurant marketing budget pays off.

Catering Print And Direct Mail FAQs

What Should A Restaurant Catering Menu Include?

Your packages and what each one costs per person, first and foremost. Next comes everything she’d otherwise have to call you about, like the minimum order, what a tray feeds, which dishes are vegetarian and whether you’ll drive out to her side of town.

How Do Restaurants Promote Catering Services?

Regulars get in-store print materials, mostly table tents and restaurant flyers. Offices down the street get postcards, and the wedding venue across town gets a stack of brochures to hand out. What ties it together is one offer and one look, because catering marketing that changes every month doesn’t stick in anyone’s head.

Does Direct Mail Work For Restaurant Catering?

It does if you mail the right people, usually past clients and office managers close to your kitchen. Restaurant direct mail advertising needs one offer and a real deadline. It’s also worth doing a quick break-even calculation for direct mail before you print a thing.

When Should Restaurants Start Promoting Holiday Catering?

Aim for late September. Office party dates get locked in early in the fall, so a postcard that shows up the first week of October catches planners while they’re still shopping around. A catering promotion that starts in November can still land January kickoff lunches.

What Size Works Best For A Catering Brochure?

Most places get by with an 8.5 x 11 tri-fold. Folded up, it fits the brochure rack at a venue or a standard #10 envelopes, and you’ve still got six panels to work with. A restaurant doing 20 weddings a year might go bigger, say an 11 x 17 half-fold, because catering brochure design for weddings is mostly about the photos.

Wrapping It Up

None of this has to happen at once. A sensible first month is an insert in every catering order and one mailing to people who’ve booked you before. Once they’ve paid for themselves, bring in the brochure and the office list. EDDM routes can wait until after that, and by then catering should sit on the same calendar as your other restaurant promotions.

MailProsUSA handles the design, printing and mailing of catering marketing materials for restaurants, whether that’s wedding brochures, restaurant flyer printing or a postcard drop aimed at the offices around your kitchen. Tell us your delivery radius and when you want the mail to land, and we’ll send a free quote in time to beat the holiday rush.