You don't sell food. You sell a date.
And the moment a client says yes, a countdown starts running underneath it — the retainer that holds the date, the milestone payment at ninety days, the balance at two weeks, the guaranteed count that locks at seven.
Every caterer already has that schedule. It's written into the contract. What almost nobody has is a system that runs it — so it gets run from a spreadsheet, a wall calendar, and somebody's memory. We wire the whole thing to the event date, and it invoices, reminds and locks itself.
Illustrative example.
We didn't guess at your business.
This kit was designed against how catering companies, banquet rooms and event venues really operate — two clocks running at once, a deposit that decides whether a date is real, and a headcount deadline that is a billing rule with money attached.
Your business runs two clocks, and most software only knows one.
Sales counts forward from the inquiry — follow up on day 2, day 7, day 14. Production counts backward from the event date — T-90, T-30, T-14, T-7. A CRM that only does day-offset drips can't run the half of your business where the money actually lives.
“Booked” should mean the deposit cleared, not the contract signed.
A signed contract with no retainer in the bank is a Saturday you're holding for free — and nobody notices until a second inquiry wants the same date. Contract-signed and deposit-cleared are two different exits, and your board should treat them that way.
The guaranteed count is a billing rule, not a suggestion.
The industry standard locks the final count ~7–10 days out, and the guarantee becomes the billing minimum — drops after the deadline don't reduce the invoice, and late additions commonly carry a per-person surcharge. Every caterer has this clause. Almost none has a system that enforces it without a phone argument.
The inquiries are scattered across six inboxes you don't control.
Email, your personal cell, an Instagram DM, a texting app, the marketplace, the phone. That sprawl — not laziness — is the biggest single cause of slow replies in this trade, and slow replies are where bookings go to die. Every channel has to land in one place before anything else can be fixed.
Two boards, with the stages this trade actually uses.
Not a blank CRM you have to design. These are the pipelines your account opens with — sales up to the deposit, production from the deposit to the door. The marked stage on each is the gate the best operators refuse to skip.
Catering Sales
- New Inquiry
- Qualified
- Tasting / Site Visit
- Proposal Sent
- Contract Sent
- Booked / Deposit Cleared
Event Production
- Menu & Details
- BEO Issued
- Final Count & Final Payment
- Event Week
- Executed
- Closed / Reconciled
Every booked event arms its own countdown.
This is the part that doesn't exist in a general-purpose CRM. The date on the contract becomes the anchor, and every milestone — money, headcount, menu, paperwork — is scheduled off it, backward, automatically, the moment the deposit clears.
The e-signature fires the retainer invoice at your deposit percentage — a ~25% non-refundable retainer to hold the date is the category norm, and wherever your own contract sets a different one, that's the number it uses.
The mid-contract milestone invoice goes out on the day, with reminders and a pay link in the same thread. On larger contracts this is the leg that brings the client to roughly half paid before the menu is even final.
Preliminary guest count and service timeline requested, the final-details meeting booked on your calendar, and the final invoice issued — deliberately timed so the balance clears before event week, not during it.
The guaranteed-count request goes out stating the billing-minimum rule in writing, the number is written to the record when it comes back, and if the client goes quiet it escalates to you at T-5 instead of at the loading dock.
Production sheet and pack slip tasks fire to the kitchen, the BEO is locked and published, and the client gets the day-before confirmation. A guard watches for event week arriving with the BEO still open or the count still unset.
Reconcile the final invoice, then the day-after thank-you carrying your review link, the referral ask at day 30, and — a month before next year's anniversary — the rebook with last year's order attached.
Instant answers on every channel
Web form, chat, Instagram DM, Facebook, Google, missed call, phone — each source gets its own intake that replies in under five minutes, tags where the lead came from, and opens the event on your sales board. The reply asks the three questions that qualify: the date, the headcount, the budget band.
Missed-call text-back, with an after-hours voice
A missed call texts the caller immediately and pings the office, with a separate after-hours version that answers at 9pm on a Sunday. A quarter of venue inquiries arrive on somebody's personal cell — this is how they stop dying there.
The tasting, run as a qualification gate
Discovery calls, venue tours and tastings all bookable, with your tasting policy stated up front — the fee credited when they book. Confirmations, 48-hour and 24-hour reminders, and a no-show recovery track on every one of them.
Proposal follow-up that knows when to stop
Check-ins at day 2, day 7 and day 14, then a task for a human call at day 21 on weddings. The window before it's marked lost is set by client type — longer for weddings, shorter for corporate, shortest for small team events.
Contract and deposit chase, until money lands
E-signature reminders at day 1, 3 and 5; deposit reminders that escalate; and a stage that only exits when the deposit clears. If it's still unpaid after two weeks the event flags instead of quietly squatting on your best Saturday.
The event-week guard
A standing check that fires if an event reaches its week with the BEO still unlocked or the guaranteed count still blank. It is the cheapest insurance policy in the build, and it catches the mistake that ruins a Saturday.
Reviews, asked at the right hour
A thank-you ~24 hours after the event carrying your direct review link and a photo ask, with a private route for anyone who rates you low so unhappy feedback comes to you first and never lands in public by accident.
Two-sided referrals and venue partners
A referral ask at day 30 with your reward stated plainly, and a separate record for every venue and planner you work with — preferred-list status and referral credits tracked as their own channel, because they are one.
The anniversary rebook
A month before the one-year mark of every completed event: “a year ago we catered your launch party — ready to plan the next one?” with last year's order summarized and ready to duplicate. This is the highest-return automation in the vertical and nearly nobody runs it.
The corporate holiday push, starting in July
Holiday research and RFPs happen in July and August, shortlists close by early October, and execution is squeezed into two weeks of December. The campaign runs on that calendar to your corporate list, plus a quarterly touch on accounts that order all year.
Win-backs on the lapsed list
Tiers at 30, 60 and 90 days since the last order — the 60-to-90-day window is where these actually convert — running soft reminder, then recommendation, then a time-boxed offer. Unbooked inquiries get re-touched on their own event-date anniversary too.
Compliance rails, on from day one
STOP and HELP handling, consent capture on every intake, unsubscribe and broadcast caps. Plus certificate-of-insurance tracking: any event whose venue demands a COI raises a task at T-14 if one isn't on file.
The date is decided by whoever answers first.
In a trade where the product is a Saturday, being the first credible reply is worth more than being the best price — and the published research on response time in this industry is brutal.
The median first reply to an event inquiry across ~1,200 wedding venues studied. The top decile answers inside a minute.
Of inquiries answered inside one minute convert to a booking in that study — against ~4% of the ones answered a day later.
Of event buyers report booking with the first vendor that responds. Roughly ~60% of catering inquiries to independent restaurants get no reply at all inside a day.
Of venue managers surveyed said they lack an easy system to organize bookings — inquiries arriving across email, a personal cell, Instagram, texting apps and the phone.
Figures are published industry research, shown to illustrate where the opportunity sits — they are not a projection of your results. The response-time and venue-survey studies are single-source and directionally relevant rather than a controlled measurement of any one business. Conversion by reply time reflects the studied population; yours will differ.
Your first thirty days.
Configuration is ours, not yours. Here's the sequence — and the one point where we need something only you can give us.
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Days 1–3
Your account is built, not handed to you blank
Both boards, your event types and service styles, the three guest-count fields, guarantee and final-payment dates, bar packages, dietary tracking, lost-reason list, tastings and site-visit calendars — created and named for catering before you log in the first time.
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Days 3–7
Every inquiry channel points at one place
Event inquiry page and form, chat widget, Instagram and Facebook, your Google Business Profile and missed calls, all wired into the same intake with the same five-minute answer. Every source tagged so you can finally see which ones produce booked events.
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Week 2
The one thing we need from you
Text-message registration and your sending domain both require a real human with your business details — regulation, not paperwork we invented. We prepare the submissions; you approve and sign. This is the step that sets your go-live date.
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Week 3
Payments connected
Your Square account and dual-priced invoicing go live: the per-head proposal template with e-signature, the deposit that fires off the signature, the milestone schedule, and text-to-pay links on every reminder. A reader for tasting fees and day-of tabs if you want one.
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Week 4
The countdown is armed
Your deposit percentage, guarantee lock window, final-payment lead time, tasting policy and referral reward are set to your contract — then every event you book from that day forward schedules its own milestones and runs them whether or not anyone remembers.
In this business the payment schedule is the product.
A countdown that ends in “I'll send an invoice” is half a system. Your account runs on Square for processing, with dual-priced invoicing on top — the cash price is the price, and a client paying by card sees the card price beside it and chooses.
Milestone invoicing, anchored to the event date
Retainer at signing, the milestone at T-90, the balance at T-14 — three or four separate invoices per event, each with its own due date and its own reminders, all scheduled off the date rather than off somebody's memory. This is the whole sale.
Signing is billing
A per-head, per-package estimate the client e-signs, that becomes the invoice schedule the moment they sign it. Proposal, contract and deposit collapse into one motion instead of three emails a week apart.
Dual pricing at catering ticket sizes
~3% on a private event running a few thousand dollars is real money; on a five-figure wedding it's several hundred. Dual pricing hands that cost back — and the clients who already pay large balances by check or transfer simply get the cash price, visibly.
Text-to-pay on every reminder
The deposit chase, the T-90 milestone and the final balance each carry a pay link in the message. The client pays from their phone when the reminder lands, instead of “I'll mail a check” opening a two-week hole in exactly the week you're locking the count.
Saved packages, so quotes go out in minutes
You sell the same shapes over and over — plated per head, buffet per head, bar packages, drop-off trays. Saved packages drop into an estimate in seconds, which is how a same-hour quote actually happens, and how the anniversary rebook arrives carrying last year's order instead of a blank page.
The counter side, included
A reader for tasting fees at the consultation — collect the fee on the spot, that's what makes it a qualification gate — day-of bar tabs, and next-day deposits, so the T-14 balance is in your account before event week rather than clearing during it.
Two plans. Month to month.
Everything above is included in both — the boards, the countdown engine, the payment rails. The difference is how much marketing and reporting surface you want on top.
- CRM and both pipelines
- Unified inbox — text, email, chat
- Calendars and online booking
- Website and funnels
- Forms and surveys
- AI lead follow-up
- Payments and invoicing
- Everything in Starter
- Full marketing suite
- Reputation management
- Social planner
- Memberships
- Documents and contracts — the e-signed proposal and BEO templates
- Advanced reporting
- Priority support
Fair questions.
My clients will not accept a card fee on a wedding invoice this size.
It isn't a fee — it's a cash price. Every price in the system is the cash price and the card price is derived from it, and the client sees both and picks, every time. On big event balances this lands better than in retail: plenty of your clients already pay by check or transfer, and now doing so visibly saves them money instead of being an unrewarded hassle. Nobody is surprised at checkout, because both numbers were on the estimate they signed months earlier.
Square is for coffee shops. My average ticket is five figures.
Square processes the invoice side just as well as the counter side, and this setup is built around invoices — milestone billing, estimates with e-signature, text-to-pay on every reminder. The counter side comes free with it: a reader for tasting fees at the consultation, day-of bar tabs, and next-day deposits so the balance is in your account before event week.
My contracts already have a payment schedule. I don't need software for that.
The schedule isn't the gap — the enforcement is. Your contract says the milestone is due at ninety days; whether that invoice goes out on time depends on a human scanning a spreadsheet in the right week. Your contract says the guarantee is the billing minimum; enforcing it is a phone argument seven days before the event. This takes the schedule you already wrote and makes it self-executing. The paperwork doesn't change; the chasing disappears.
We already run a catering-management system. I'm not ripping it out.
Don't. Your event-management and kitchen tools stay the source of truth for production, staffing and BEO detail — that split is the documented best practice in this industry, and menu and pricing content stays yours. What moves is the marketing, the follow-up, the countdown and the money.
Is this just a generic CRM with a catering sticker on it?
No. The stage names above are the stages your board actually opens with. Three separate guest-count fields, a guarantee due date, a BEO lock flag, the T-90 milestone and the July holiday push are in the build because this trade runs on them — they are not settings you have to discover and configure yourself.
Corporate holiday shortlists close in early October.
The research and the RFPs happen in July and August. Board now and this year's holiday season runs on the new rails — countdown, deposits and all.
Automate With Us provides software and configuration services. Figures shown are published industry research or illustrative examples — they are not projections, guarantees, or representations of the results you should expect. Individual results depend on your market, pricing, capacity and execution. Processing costs vary by card mix and volume; the ~3% figure is illustrative and your effective rate will differ. Payment processing is provided through Square and is subject to Square's approval and terms. Text-message and email sending are subject to carrier and regulatory registration. Terms · Privacy