How to grow catering sales at a franchise location
Group orders are a store's biggest tickets and its most seasonal. How to track them, win them back, and protect the reorder.
A handful of offices, schools and teams can be a store's largest customers. They don't show up in a daily sales total until they stop. Track them as their own line.
Define a group order
Pick a threshold relative to your own store — five times the median ticket works for many — and count those orders monthly, reporting count and value separately. When online sales fall, check which one fell: the same number of orders with smaller tickets means the big orders went, not the channel.
Compare with last year
Group business follows school years, budgets and holidays. September against June can look like a collapse and often isn't. Compare the same 30 days last year.
Keep an account list
- Your top 20 group customers: contact, what they order, how often, and the last order date.
- A call when an account passes its usual gap between orders. "Want your usual for next week?" often works better than a promotion.
- Two calls a day to new offices in delivery range, in a quiet hour.
Protect the reorder
Group customers remember one missing tray. Set a lead time you can meet, a checklist for the pack, and a follow-up the same afternoon. When you contact customers by text or email for marketing, follow the consent rules that apply — they differ by channel and location.
Where Franlever fits
Franlever counts orders well above each store's usual ticket, compares them with the same period last year when there's history, and turns a real drop into a lever for the GM — usually a short call list.
Common questions
- How do I increase catering orders?
- Track your top group accounts by name, call when one passes its usual gap between orders, prospect nearby offices in quiet hours, and protect accuracy so customers reorder.
General information for restaurant and franchise operators, not legal, tax, accounting or financial advice. Figures in examples are illustrations, not predictions or promises of results. Laws and platform policies change and differ by location, so check the current rules and talk to a qualified advisor about your situation.