Feed a Crowd with ezCater
Using ezCater to Grow Catering Sales
ezCater is an online marketplace that connects restaurants with businesses and organizations looking to order food for meetings, events, team lunches, and special occasions. For Dave's Hot Chicken franchisees, it's a valuable way to reach new customers and generate incremental sales from offices, schools, hospitals, and other local organizations.
Maintaining an active, well-optimized ezCater listing, providing excellent operations, and responding quickly to inquiries help keep your restaurant competitive within the platform and increase visibility to potential customers. Positive reviews also play an important role, so after successful catering deliveries, thank customers and encourage them to leave a review on ezCater.
While ezCater helps customers find your restaurant online, local marketing efforts can significantly increase catering orders by putting Dave's Hot Chicken in front of the people who regularly place group meal orders, including office managers, executive assistants, HR teams, schools, hospitals, real estate offices, and event planners.
Some of the most effective grassroots tactics include:
- Hot Box Drops: Each week, identify 10–20 nearby businesses such as medical offices, corporate offices, car dealerships, manufacturing facilities, schools, and government offices. Deliver Hot Boxes with localized ezCater flyers to introduce your restaurant and catering offerings.
- Build Relationships: The person ordering lunch is often an executive assistant, office coordinator, HR manager, or receptionist. Visit local businesses, introduce yourself, and leave catering menus or flyers.
- Partner with Local Businesses: Develop referral relationships with hotels, event venues, coworking spaces, real estate offices, and local business networking groups. Leave catering materials and explore referral opportunities where appropriate.
- Attend Business & Community Events: Participate in Chamber of Commerce meetings, business expos, networking breakfasts, and job fairs. Providing samples is a great way to introduce Dave's catering to new organizations.
- Reconnect with Past Catering Customers: Repeat catering customers are often the most valuable. Send periodic emails highlighting new catering packages, seasonal promotions, holiday ordering reminders, or appreciation offers.
- Support Community Organizations: Cater teacher appreciation events, youth sports banquets, hospital appreciation days, nonprofit meetings, PTA events, and other community gatherings to build awareness and generate future business.
- Plan Around Seasonal Occasions: Promote catering ahead of high-demand events such as the Super Bowl, March Madness, graduation season, Teacher Appreciation Week, Nurses Week, back-to-school, Halloween office parties, Thanksgiving office lunches, and holiday celebrations.
When paired with proactive local outreach, ezCater becomes more than an online ordering platform- it becomes a consistent source of new catering customers and an effective way to introduce Dave's Hot Chicken to businesses throughout your community.
Bonus Tip: Franchisees can also partner with Field Day to hire local teams that distribute customized ezCater flyers throughout the trade area. Flyers can be personalized with your restaurant's information and direct ezCater ordering link. Contact Traci Misquez at traci.misquez@daveshotchicken.com for more information.
ezCater Flyer
See below for examples of Dave's Hot Chicken Catering!
Click here for more ideas on Feed a Crowd Catering
