Nobody books a caterer without a date in hand. Someone has a Communion in May, a fortieth in the back garden, a funeral on Thursday or a Christmas lunch for thirty staff, and they search “caterers Dublin” or “party food delivered” at nine at night. What they want from websites for caterers in Dublin is quick: do you do our kind of event, roughly what does it cost a head, will you deliver and set up, and can we see what the food actually looks like. If the answer to any of those is “ring for details”, a fair share of them ring somebody else.
We build and run the site, set up the email and the payments, and send you the numbers each month. You cook.
Menus people can price in their heads
The sample menu does the selling. Cold platters for the office, a hot buffet for a family party, canapés for a drinks reception, afternoon tea, a barbecue, and the funeral spread done quietly and on time: sandwiches, soup, tea and scones. Each one gets a from-price per head and a minimum number. Caterers worry that a from-price pins them down, and the opposite is true. It filters out the people whose budget was never close, and it gives the rest the confidence to send the enquiry instead of wondering.
Say what the price includes, because that is always the second question: delivery, set up, disposables or crockery, staff for the evening, collection the next day. If staff are extra or hot food needs a kitchen on site, say so.
Photographs should be of your food on real tables at real events, and of platters before they go into the van. Not stock; a customer can tell in half a second.
The enquiry that arrives ready to quote
Most catering enquiries start a chain of emails that should have been one. What date? How many? Where? Buffet or served? Any coeliacs? The form on your site asks all of it up front: event type, date, guest numbers, venue and county, serving style (drop-off, buffet, plated), dietary needs and a budget band. It lands in your email and on WhatsApp, and you reply with a quote rather than with a question.
The quote itself should come from an address on your own domain. A company office manager comparing three caterers notices which one wrote from a free email account. Complete includes email on your domain, and there is a guide to business email on your own domain if you want to know how the pieces fit.
Deposits, balances and the week before
Catering is paid in two parts: a deposit to hold the date and the balance in the days before. Both can be paid by card on your site, with Apple Pay and Google Pay for the people who pay for everything on their phone, and the money goes to your account. That means no card numbers read out over the phone, no “did the transfer go through” the night before, and a receipt that sends itself. We wrote up how deposits work online in Ireland, including what Irish consumer rules expect of the wording.
The dietary question deserves its own paragraph on the page. Coeliac, nut allergy, vegan, halal: say what you can do and what you cannot promise about a shared kitchen. Honest wording here saves a difficult phone call later, and the chat box on Complete answers the same questions at eleven at night from the details you gave it.
Confirmations, Communions, Christmas and the call that cannot wait
The catering calendar is busy in bands. Confirmations from February, Communions every Saturday in May, barbecues through the summer, office lunches again in September, and Christmas parties from late November to the last working day. A “booking Christmas dates now” line in October and a “fully booked for the May bank holiday weekend” line when it is true both belong on the page, and both are yours to change from your phone.
Funerals do not fit the calendar. The call comes the morning of the removal and the answer has to be yes or no within the hour, so the call button sits at the top of every page and the sympathy menu is plain, priced and easy to find.
What you hand over
Your sample menus with from-prices and minimum numbers, your service area and delivery charges, your deposit and cancellation terms, your lead times, your dietary policy in your own words, twenty photos of real jobs and who answers the phone. Ten minutes on the phone or at your kitchen covers the rest.
Which plan, and what it costs
Complete is the right plan for most caterers, at €1,499 to set up and €100 a month, because the deposits, the business email, the chat box and the review request after each event are the parts that pay for themselves. A caterer doing drop-off platters by phone can start on Essentials at €499 and €50 a month and move up later. Both plans are compared on the pricing page. If cakes are part of what you do, the cake makers page covers the order and deposit side for that trade.