I talked to a guy last month who's been running a solid BBQ joint in Beaumont for eleven years. Packed house on weekends, decent weekday lunch traffic, the whole thing. He asked me about catering and I figured he'd been doing it for years. Turns out he'd turned down every catering request that came in. Hundreds of them, probably.
His reason? "I don't have the equipment for that."
He was running an SP-1000 with room to spare most nights.
Look, I get it. The mental leap from "I run a restaurant" to "I also cater events" feels bigger than it actually is. You're imagining renting trucks, buying a whole separate trailer setup, hiring dedicated catering staff. And sure — that's one version of it. But most operators who build profitable catering arms don't start there. They start by saying yes to the requests they're already getting and figuring out the logistics after.
The Math That Changes How You Think About This
Restaurant revenue is constrained by your seat count and your hours. That's just physics. You can only turn tables so many times before you're asking people to eat standing up. Catering doesn't work that way.
A 200-person corporate event might gross you $4,000–$6,000 depending on your market and your menu. That same Saturday, your restaurant might do $3,500 if you're really moving. The catering job uses product you were already going to smoke — probably brisket and pulled pork — and the labor is concentrated instead of spread across a full service shift.
Here's the thing most people miss: your food cost percentage on catering should actually be lower than your restaurant operation. You're quoting a fixed menu at a fixed price. No substitutions, no half-portions, no "can we get extra sides." You know exactly what you're producing and you price accordingly.
I ran numbers with a guy in Lake Charles who started doing about six catering jobs a month. His blended food cost across the whole operation dropped from 34% to 29%. That's not nothing.
What You Actually Need (And What You Don't)
You don't need a dedicated catering kitchen. You don't need a box truck with your logo on it. You don't even need dedicated staff — at least not at first.
What you need is production capacity you can scale and holding equipment that doesn't let you down on-site.
Production capacity is usually less of a problem than people think. Most restaurants aren't running their smokers at full tilt every single day. If you've got an SPK-1400 or one of the larger SP-series units, you've probably got 30–40% headroom on a typical Thursday. That's your catering capacity. You run your catering production during off-peak hours — overnight cooks for weekend events, early morning pulls — and your regular service never knows the difference.
Now, holding is where I've seen people get burned. You smoke beautiful product, drive it across town in some janky setup, and by the time you're serving it's dried out or the temp has dropped into the danger zone. Embarrassing at best. Health code violation at worst.
The SC-100 and SC-300 cabinet units from Southern Pride work as finishing ovens but they're also legitimately excellent holding cabinets. I know operators who run a dedicated SC-300 just for catering holds — keeps product at service temp for hours without cooking it further. The humidity control actually matters here. You're not just keeping things warm, you're keeping them right.
Pricing Without Leaving Money on the Table
I'm going to contradict something I said earlier. I said catering should have lower food costs than your restaurant. That's true. But — and I should've been clearer about this — that only works if you price correctly, which almost nobody does when they're starting out.
The mistake I see constantly: pricing catering like you're just selling bulk restaurant food at a slight discount. "Well, brisket is $24/lb at the restaurant, so I'll do $20/lb for catering orders over 50 people." That's backwards.
Catering isn't restaurant food sold in bulk. It's a different service with different costs. You're providing:
- All the food, obviously
- Transport and setup
- Serving equipment (chafing dishes, serving utensils, disposables)
- Staff time on-site — often your best people
- Coordination and communication with the client
- Flexibility for their event, which has value
You should be charging more per pound for catering, not less. Your per-person price needs to cover all of that plus profit. I typically see successful operations landing somewhere around $25–$45 per person for full-service BBQ catering depending on the menu complexity and service level. Drop-off is less, obviously, but don't undercut yourself there either.
The Equipment Conversation Nobody Wants to Have
If you're going to scale catering past occasional jobs, you will eventually need more smoker capacity. I'm not trying to sell you something you don't need — but I've watched too many operators try to bootstrap catering on equipment that wasn't designed for the volume they're chasing.
The question isn't whether you need more capacity. It's whether you need it now or six months from now.
One guy I work with in the Houston suburbs started with a single SP-700 handling both restaurant and catering. Worked fine until he booked three weekend events in a row and realized he was choosing between his catering clients and his Saturday night dinner rush. He added an MLR-850 specifically for catering production and it changed everything. The rotisserie system on that unit — honestly, the rotisserie system on any of the Southern Pride units — means he can load it overnight, set his temps, and pull consistent product at 5 AM before his catering team even shows up.
I've seen guys try to expand catering capacity with cheaper imported smokers. The logic makes sense on paper: "It's just my backup production unit, it doesn't need to be premium." But then the thermostat drifts 40 degrees overnight and you're re-smoking briskets at 6 AM for an 11 AM event. Or the door seal fails and you don't notice until the bark is wrong on everything. Parts take six weeks to arrive from wherever.
Southern Pride units are built in the US with domestically stocked parts — I've gotten replacement components from Southern Pride of Texas in two days when something needed attention. That matters less when you're running a restaurant with some margin for error. It matters a lot when you've got a wedding for 300 people on Saturday and your smoker is down on Wednesday.
Starting Without Overcommitting
You don't need to hire a catering manager. You don't need dedicated catering equipment. You don't need a separate menu or a new website.
What you need is a simple catering inquiry form, a basic pricing sheet, and a willingness to figure it out as you go.
Start with drop-off catering only. Client picks up or you deliver, set up, and leave. No on-site service, no staffing complications. Get comfortable with the production scheduling and the client communication. Build some repeat customers.
Then add full-service for clients who want it, once you've got the systems down. Charge appropriately. Hire staff as the volume justifies it.
The Beaumont guy I mentioned earlier? He finally said yes to a corporate lunch for 75 people about two months ago. Used the same SP-1000 he's been running for years, same staff, same kitchen. Cleared about $2,200 profit on a Tuesday afternoon that would've otherwise been dead.
He's got four more booked for next month.
Your restaurant probably already has most of what you need. The production capacity is there. The recipes are dialed. The customer base is already asking. You're just not saying yes.
That's the part that actually needs to change.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
#RestaurantIndustry #SouthernPride #RestaurantOwner #CateringBusiness #RestaurantOps #CateringLife
Photo by Mad Knoxx Deluxe on Pexels.
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.