This document provides guidance on selling wedding catering services to caterers. It outlines key aspects to consider such as meeting directly with the business owner, understanding appropriate price points, seasonal trends, optimal contact times, partnership opportunities, competitor research, pain points caterers face, roadblocks to working with wedding websites, trends in catering, relevant articles, important stats, pre-call preparation strategies, building rapport, and qualifying questions. The overall goal is to understand the catering industry and effectively pitch catering packages to caterer owners and managers.

1. Selling to Caterers
By: Linze Peters

2. Decision Making Process
• Go straight to the owner
• Owner might push you down to
marketing or events manager, but final
DM will be made by owner
• Owner can sometimes be a team
(husband & wife, Partners, etc)

3. Price Point
• They should be able to break even in one
booking
• Most should be able to afford Featured
• Check Wed insights for your region on
average spend for couples on catering
• Higher end or larger companies will opt for
spotlight

4. Seasonality
• Depends on type of caterer
– Full service 6-9 months out
• Specialty or casual (taco, BBQ, food truck)
can be as quick as 3-4 months

5. When to contact
• Times to avoid
– If it’s also a restaurant, don’t call around
lunch/dinner rush
– Friday afternoons, they are typically
prepping for an event
– Monday’s can be tough as that is typically
their one day off since they work all
weekend

6. Partnerships
• NACE
• Preferred vendors for venues

7. Competitors - where to poach
• Yelp
• Thumbtack
• GigSalad

8. Pain Points for Vendor
• Quality vs Quantity
• Price Shoppers
• Tough Margins
• Reaching couples outside local market
• Time they spend on each lead
• Not tech savvy

9. Roadblocks for WW
• ROI with small margins
• Rely heavily on WOM or vendor partners
• Old school - not tech savvy
• Price
• Time commitment of contract

10. Wedding Trends
• Taco Caterers
• Food Trucks (can be for full service
dinner or late night bite!)
• Dessert Bars/Dessert Caterers
– Ice cream, s’mores, doughnuts
• Coffee Caterers
• Mobile Bartenders/Craft Cocktail
• Paella

11. Articles to use
• Millennials Article
• WedInsights Stats
• Wed Report specific to your market

12. Stats to know
• When couples book caterers
• Average price point for region
– Benefit of being at beg of conversation (for
specialty caterers)
• How many destination weddings
• Millennial/online generation stats

13. Strategies
• Pre Call Prep
• Rapport with owner - they won’t buy
unless they trust you!
• Leverage competitors - FOMO
• Share knowledge about region
• Big Pain
• bundle , bundle, bundle
• texting!!

14. Rapport Questions/Qualifying Questions
• Length of time in business
• Price Point
• Conversion rate
• Target audience/how couples find you
now
• Is this full time?

15. The End!
Questions?