Catering is won on the reply.
We build the system that answers every enquiry the moment it lands, asks what you would ask, and hands you a brief worth quoting. Then you close it, the way you always have.
Where the work leaks.
Not marketing. Almost every caterer we have looked at has more enquiries than they convert, and loses them in the same four places.
The enquiry lands while you are serving
Saturday afternoon, mid-service, hands full. The couple planning a wedding has messaged four caterers this evening and the first useful reply is the one that gets to quote.
The brief arrives half-finished
No date, no guest count, no venue, no idea of budget. Pinning it down takes four emails across a week, and by email three they have gone quiet.
The quote takes three days to build
Pricing a bespoke menu by hand, in the evening, after the day job of actually cooking. The caterer who sent theirs the same afternoon has already been booked.
Then there is the staffing
Who is on which event, who turned up, who worked what hours, and a payroll figure assembled from a group chat and a paper sheet.
It qualifies. You close.
This is the part people expect to be the other way round, and it is the reason it works for a business built on relationships.
6
exchanges, typically, before the owner steps in
114
new enquiries handled for one caterer since June 2026
7 in 10
handovers where four or more exchanges were already done
Those are real numbers from a working system, not a projection. You can read how it was built on the Caterman case study.
However it arrives
- Website form
- Phone
One enquiry, understood
- Event
- Wedding
- Date
- 12 September
- Guests
- 120
- Service
- Sit-down
- Venue
- Barn, north Essex
- Dietary
- Vegetarian options
On your desk
A brief you can price, with the questions already asked and the answers already in it. You quote, and you close.
Qualified
Example of Pala at work: someone messages "hi do you do weddings? looking at june next yr for about 90" on WhatsApp at 21:40, typo and all. Pala understands, replies in four seconds, asks whether it is sit-down or buffet and whether the venue is booked, and captures the answers. You get a notification saying wedding, June, 90 guests, with the date, venue and service style already gathered, and a brief ready to quote from in the morning.
The questions caterers actually ask.
I do not want a robot talking to my clients. +
Neither do we, which is why it does not close. It replies the moment an enquiry lands, asks the things you would ask, and hands you the brief. You step in on the jobs worth your time, with the qualifying already done. Your customers keep talking to you.
What if it says something wrong about a menu or a price? +
It answers from what you tell it about your business, and it hands over rather than guessing when a question goes past that. You can also switch it off on any single enquiry, which is what our own clients do on the jobs they want to run personally.
Do I have to replace my website? +
No. This can sit on the website you already have. Some clients rebuild later because they want to, not because the system needs it.
How long before it is working? +
Weeks, not months, because we start with the bit costing you the most and put it in production. You are not signing off a six-month project before anything works.
What does it cost? +
It depends on what you need it to do, so we scope it before quoting rather than giving you a number we would have to change. A half-hour call is enough for us to tell you roughly where you would land, and whether it is worth doing at all.
We are a small team. Is this overkill? +
Small teams are who it is for. When there are two of you doing the cooking, the quoting and the chasing, the admin is the thing capping how much work you can take.
Tell us where your enquiries go.
Half an hour is enough for us to say whether this is worth building for you, and we will tell you if it is not.