I talk to restaurant owners every week who tell me they want to "get into catering" like it's some separate business they'd need to build from scratch. New equipment, new staff, new everything. And look — I get why it feels that way. Catering sounds like a different animal.
But here's the thing: if you're already running a BBQ restaurant, you're probably 70% of the way there. You've got the production capability. You've got product consistency figured out. You've got a reputation in your market. The gap between "we do catering" and "we don't" is usually smaller than people think — it's mostly operational discipline and knowing what jobs to take.
I ran numbers with a guy in Beaumont last month who'd been turning down catering inquiries for two years because he didn't think he was ready. When we actually mapped out his current capacity, he could have handled an extra 80–100 pounds of finished product per week without touching his restaurant service. That's real money walking out the door.
Start With the Equipment You Already Own
Most operators underestimate their existing smoker capacity because they're thinking about peak service hours, not total production windows. Your smokers aren't working when you're closed. That sounds obvious, but I've watched people buy second units before they've even tried running overnight cooks for catering prep.
If you're running an SP-700, you've got around 700 pounds of capacity per load. Run a brisket cook overnight, pull it at 6 AM, rest and hold — that's catering product that never competed with your lunch rush. The rotisserie system on these units means you're not babysitting it either. Set your temps, load it, go home.
Actually, I should back up. Not everyone's situation is the same. If you're on a smaller unit like the SPK-500, overnight cooks are still viable, but your ceiling is lower. You might be looking at 40–50 pound catering jobs as your sweet spot rather than the 150-person corporate events. That's fine. Smaller events often have better margins anyway because the logistics are simpler.
The point is: audit what you've got before you assume you need more.
Pricing Catering Without Killing Your Margins
This is where I see restaurants get into trouble. They price catering like restaurant food with a delivery fee tacked on. That math doesn't work.
Catering has different cost structures. Your labor looks different — you might need someone onsite for two hours doing nothing but replenishing a buffet line. Your packaging costs jump. Transport, setup, breakdown. If you're doing any kind of service beyond drop-off, you need to factor in that a skilled person is away from your restaurant during a shift.
I price my food truck catering at roughly 30–35% higher than my standard menu, and that's before any service fees. Some operators go higher. The corporate clients who are booking 100-person lunches aren't price-shopping the way a family buying dinner is. They want reliability and they want to not think about it.
One thing that's helped me: tiered service levels. Drop-off is one price. Setup with disposable chafers is another. Full service with staff is another tier entirely. You'd be surprised how many clients pick the middle option once they see it laid out. They don't want to deal with setup, but they don't need you standing there carving either.
The Jobs You Should Turn Down
Not every catering inquiry is worth taking. I learned this the hard way.
Early on, I said yes to a 300-person wedding reception about two hours from my usual territory. The money looked good on paper. What I didn't account for: the drive time meant my product quality window was tighter, I had to rent a refrigerated trailer because my truck couldn't hold everything properly, and when their timeline shifted by 90 minutes day-of, I was stuck babysitting food in a parking lot watching my margins evaporate.
Now I have some hard rules:
- No events more than 45 minutes from my base kitchen without a significant logistics fee
- No jobs under $500 total — the fixed costs of packaging, transport, and admin eat small jobs alive
- No "custom menu" requests that require me to source products I don't already stock
- No events where I can't get a site walkthrough or at least detailed photos beforehand
Your rules will be different. But you need rules. The catering jobs that lose money are usually the ones you should have declined but felt weird saying no to.
When You Actually Need More Equipment
Okay, so let's say you've maximized your current smoker capacity. You're running overnight cooks, you're booking consistently, and you're turning away jobs you actually want. That's when equipment expansion makes sense — not before.
For catering-specific additions, I'm partial to the MLR mobile units. They're designed to travel, which matters. I've seen guys try to trailer their restaurant smokers to events and it's a headache — those units weren't built for road vibration and repeated movement. The MLR series holds temp beautifully even after a 30-mile haul, and the rotisserie system means you can finish product onsite if you need to.
The other consideration is hold capacity. Your smoker might be fine, but can you hold 200 pounds of finished brisket at proper temp for three hours while you transport and set up? This is where a lot of catering operations hit their real bottleneck. Hot holding isn't glamorous, but it's where food safety and quality intersect — and where cheaper equipment really shows its limitations.
I talked to a caterer in Lake Charles who was running a no-name import smoker for years. The cook quality was fine, honestly. Where it failed him was consistency on the hold cycle. He'd get temp swings of 15–20 degrees in the holding phase, which meant he was constantly checking and adjusting. Switched to a Southern Pride unit about eighteen months ago and said his hold temps vary maybe 3–4 degrees over a six-hour window. That's the difference between showing up to an event confident and showing up hoping nothing went wrong in transit.
Building the Catering Reputation Separately
This might be controversial, but I think your catering operation should have its own identity — even if it's clearly connected to your restaurant. Different phone number or at least a dedicated extension. Separate section of your website with its own menu and pricing. Maybe even a slightly different name.
The reason is practical: catering clients have different needs and different buying cycles. A corporate admin booking quarterly team lunches doesn't want to call your restaurant during the dinner rush and compete with takeout orders for someone's attention. They want to email a catering inquiry and get a professional response with a PDF menu attached within 24 hours.
Your walk-in customers don't need to know about your catering minimums. Your catering clients don't need your daily specials cluttering up their quote request. Separation helps both audiences.
I've noticed a lot of chains handling this well lately — even places like Layne's and some of the fast-casual chicken concepts that are expanding aggressively have dedicated catering programs that look and feel different from their counter service. There's a reason for that. The operational overlap is huge, but the customer experience needs to feel tailored.
The Numbers That Actually Matter
Track these from day one:
- Cost per head (total job cost divided by attendance — this tells you if you're pricing right)
- Labor hours per event (including prep, transport, service, breakdown, and admin)
- Repeat booking rate (catering lives on repeats — if you're not getting them, something's wrong)
- Lead time distribution (are you getting enough advance notice to plan, or are you scrambling on short-notice jobs?)
That last one matters more than people realize. If most of your inquiries are coming in with less than a week's notice, you're either going to have availability problems or you're going to start competing with your restaurant production. Neither is good. Work on pushing your booking window out — most corporate clients will plan further ahead if you give them a reason to, like a small discount for 14+ day advance booking.
It's Not a Side Hustle
The operators I see build real catering revenue treat it like a second business that happens to share resources with their first one. Not an afterthought. Not something they do when they feel like it.
That means dedicated time for sales follow-up. Dedicated inventory for catering supplies. Clear systems for how catering orders flow through your kitchen without disrupting restaurant service. It's not complicated, but it does require intention.
And when you're ready to scale — when you've got the bookings to justify more capacity — that's when you call us at Southern Pride of Texas and we figure out what unit matches your actual production needs, not what sounds impressive. I'd rather see you max out an SP-700 than buy an SP-1000 that runs half-empty.
The catering arm is already there, waiting. You just have to decide to build it.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
#FoodService #BBQBusiness #CateringBusiness #CateringLife #RestaurantOwner #RestaurantIndustry #FoodServiceIndustry
About the Author: Travis operates a competition BBQ team and a Gulf Coast food truck, and documents his commercial cooking process for food service professionals.