How Much Revenue Can Catering Add to a Restaurant? (With the Math)

How much revenue can catering add to a restaurant? Take the extra catering orders you can realistically win each week, multiply by your average catering order, then by the weeks a year you take catering orders and by your number of locations. For example, three extra orders a week at MONKEY's 2025 average catering order of about $416, every week of the year, comes to roughly $65,000 a year in added sales for one location. That is sales, not profit. The answer depends far more on how many orders you go out and win than on the menu, which is why the same restaurant can add almost nothing or a meaningful share of its sales.

The decision this page helps with is what sales target to plan around, location by location, before you commit staff or money to catering. It is part of our guide to restaurant catering revenue, which covers the selling behind the numbers.

Formula: Added catering sales a year = added catering orders per week × average catering order × weeks a year you take catering orders × number of locations.

Step 1: Find your average catering order value

Start with your own data. In your POS, divide the last six to twelve months of catering revenue by the number of catering orders. If catering isn't tagged separately, pull every order above a group-size threshold, such as fifteen people, and check them by hand.

No history yet? Two published reference points help:

• About $416. MONKEY's State of Catering 2026 data, drawn from some 8,000 restaurant locations, put the average catering order at approximately $416 in 2025.
• About $430 for 26 people. ezCater reported that its workplace catering customer averages a $430 check and a headcount of 26, which works out to roughly $16.50 a head.

You can also build the number from your menu: per-person price × a typical headcount. For example, a catering menu at $18 a head, with most orders feeding 20 people, means planning on about $360 an order. The catering pricing calculator gives a starting food price per person or per tray from your food cost, and how much catering costs shows what buyers expect to pay.

Step 2: Estimate how many extra orders a week you can win

This is the input that matters most and the one most often guessed. Estimate it three ways, then use the lowest.

From accounts

Catering runs on repeat buyers. MONKEY found that 60% of catering orders come from just 5% of customers. So count in accounts, not orders. Accounts × orders per month ÷ 4.33 gives orders per week.

Worked example: Say you think you can win eight office accounts that each order twice a month, plus about one one-off order a week. That is 8 × 2 ÷ 4.33, or about 3.7 orders a week from accounts, plus 1, for roughly 4.7 extra orders a week.

From the businesses near you

You can rough out how many buyers sit near you with free public data. The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns counts establishments by industry and employee size down to the ZIP code, and the Bureau notes that businesses use it for "analyzing market potential". Pull the ZIP codes in your delivery radius and count offices, clinics, schools and firms with enough staff to order for a group. The data runs a couple of years behind (the latest release covers 2023), so treat the count as a starting point and check it against what you see on the ground.

Worked example (a scenario, not a benchmark): Say that count comes to 400 businesses, and you estimate one in four orders catering about once a month: 100 buyers near you. If you win five of them as accounts ordering monthly, that is 60 orders a year, about 1.2 a week. If you win fifteen, it is 180 orders a year, about 3.5 a week. Both the one-in-four and the number of accounts you win are assumptions, so test them: call ten of those businesses and ask how often they order food for the team, and track how many of your first twenty contacts turn into a first order.

From kitchen capacity

Catering orders are usually produced in a window, often mid-morning before lunch service. Count how many orders your kitchen can build and send in that window without hurting the line, on your busiest catering day. If the account and local-business estimates come out above that, capacity is your limit until you change the prep plan.

And the weeks you'll actually sell

Office catering follows the office calendar. If your buyers slow down over the holidays or in summer, or you are still ramping up, use fewer than 52 weeks. At 48 weeks, for example, three extra orders a week at $416 is $59,904 a year instead of $64,896.

Step 3: Multiply, then check the result against your total sales

Multiply the extra orders a week by your average order, by the weeks you take orders and by your number of locations. Then divide the result by your total annual sales. There is no reliable benchmark for what share catering should be, so the ratio is a prompt, not a test: if catering would become a large share of your sales, recheck the order count against your account list and your kitchen capacity before you plan around it.

It also helps to translate the result into kitchen terms. Say your average takeout ticket is $35. At $416, one catering order brings in about as much as 12 takeout tickets ($416 ÷ $35 is 11.9), so three extra catering orders a week are roughly 36 tickets' worth of sales, with one build, one handoff and one payment each. Use your own two averages; the ratio changes with both.

Three worked scenarios: one, three and ten locations

Worked example: The three restaurants below are illustrations, not forecasts. Each uses stated assumptions, including orders every week of the year, so you can swap in your own numbers.

Example 1: a single location. 3 extra orders × $416 × 52 = $64,896 a year, about 5.4% of $1.2 million in sales. Going from two to five orders a week sounds small. It is, for example, six new office accounts that each order every other week.

Example 2: three locations. A heavier menu lifts the average order to $450. Four extra orders a week at each location: 4 × $450 × 52 × 3 = $280,800 a year, about 5.9% of sales. If those same orders came through a marketplace at 15 to 30% commission, $42,120 to $84,240 of that would go to the platform.

Example 3: ten locations. Locations rarely perform evenly, so this example splits them. Six locations add four orders a week and four add two, for 32 extra orders a week across the group. At $380: 32 × $380 × 52 = $632,320 a year, about 4.5% of sales. The weaker locations pull the group average down. Planning location by location, instead of one blended number, shows you where the next order should come from.

Run your own numbers

The calculator below uses the same formula. Enter your average order value, the catering orders you do now and a weekly target per location, your number of locations and the weeks a year you take catering orders. It returns the added sales a year and a week at your target, before food, labor, packaging and delivery. It assumes every location hits the same target, so for an uneven group like the ten-location example, run it once for each group of locations and add the results.

It also has an optional, separate result: if you would move orders you already get through a marketplace to direct ordering, enter how many a week and the commission you pay, and it shows the potential fee savings. Those orders are not new sales, so that figure is never added to the sales result. The starting values are examples: $350 orders, two a week rising to five, 52 weeks, and two marketplace orders a week moved at 15%, which give $54,600 in added sales and, separately, $5,460 in potential fee savings.

What this model leaves out

• Profit. The formula counts sales. Food, packaging, kitchen labor, delivery and card processing come out of every order, commission comes out of marketplace orders, and someone's time or a fee goes into winning each one. Is catering profitable for restaurants works through the margin line by line.
• Where the orders come from. An order won through a marketplace isn't worth the same as one won direct. Commission of 15 to 30% comes off the top, and MONKEY found that marketplace orders carry average order values 6 to 8% lower than first-party orders. If you expect most new orders through a marketplace, lower your average order before you multiply.
• Inquiries aren't orders. Count orders won, not inquiries received. If you know your quote-to-order rate, apply it to any inquiry-based estimate.
• Ramp time. Accounts build one at a time. The target is where the channel gets to, not where it starts on day one, so the first year usually comes in below the full-year figure.
• Uneven locations. A blended average hides the location with a fixable problem. Run the numbers by location.
• Your capacity. The kitchen-capacity limit from step 2 still applies.

How long does it take to add that revenue?

Months rather than weeks, and only if someone is actively selling. For a reference point on growth, MONKEY's 2026 report found top-performing brands growing catering sales by 10 to 20% a year. In the scenarios above, most locations more than double their catering orders. A jump that size doesn't come from waiting for inquiries. It comes from outbound selling, fast replies and reorders, run every week, by your own team or a managed service: RASA, a five-location fast-casual brand, closed $450K in new catering revenue in 10 months with Kutlerri.ai's Catering Sales Agent, one customer's result described in the RASA case study.

How to raise each input

More orders a week. Most of the gap is selling, not cooking:

1. Answer every inquiry fast, on every channel, including evenings.
2. Follow up on every open quote.
3. Call past customers who haven't reordered.
4. Build a list of nearby catering-fit businesses and contact the person who orders. How to get catering leads covers twelve ways to do it.

A higher average order. Price per person in clear tiers, set an order minimum, and offer add-ons that travel well, such as drinks, desserts and setup. Check every quote against your margin before it goes out, using the catering quote template.

More weeks selling. If orders stop over the holidays or in summer, a short seasonal menu or an outreach push before the slow weeks can keep some of them.

More locations selling. Give each location its own target and its own weekly numbers, so the strongest location's playbook can be copied and the weakest one gets attention.