What a catering agency should fix before buying ads

Mid-March is when a caterer’s year turns. December engagements have become January and February inquiries, tastings are filling the calendar, and the summer and fall dates are being decided now. It is also when agency pitches arrive, most of them promising more leads from ads.

For a caterer, ads are rarely the first problem. Zola tells couples to book their caterer about eight months ahead, and it warns them that many venues require a specific caterer. So by the time a couple searches, they often hold a venue’s short list and are comparing four names. What decides that comparison is your reply, your menus and your reviews. An agency that buys clicks before fixing those is paying to send people to the place where you lose them.

Here is what the first month should cover, and what to ask anyone who wants the account, including us.

The quote reply comes before the quote volume

Ask the agency to send you a test inquiry in its first week, through your own form, at a time you are usually working an event. Then time the reply and read it.

The Knot’s 2026 Real Weddings Study found that 52% of couples cited responsiveness as a top deciding factor when hiring a wedding planner, ranking it above reviews. That figure is about planners, not caterers, but a couple who judges one vendor on speed judges the next one the same way. A Saturday inquiry answered on Tuesday is competing with caterers who answered on Saturday.

A good agency comes back from that test with three things: how long the reply took, what it said, and what the couple had to do next. A good reply confirms the date, asks the guest count and venue if the form did not, and offers a tasting slot. A weak one says “thanks, we’ll be in touch.”

Menus written for how couples now serve

The same Knot study found 60% of 2025 receptions featured a buffet or self-serve stations, against 30% with a formal plated meal. Plenty of catering sites still lead with plated photos and a PDF of three-course menus. If most of your weddings are stations, show stations: what a taco or carving station includes, how many guests one serves, how it is staffed.

Dietary detail matters as much. The Knot found 26% of couples prioritize a caterer that can accommodate special requests. A menu page that marks vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free dishes in text, rather than a note saying “we can accommodate most diets,” answers the question before the couple has to ask it.

Ask the agency whether menus will live on the site as text pages or stay as a downloadable file. Text can be read on a phone, found by search engines and quoted by AI assistants. The Knot reports roughly 36% of engaged couples were using AI for wedding planning by the end of 2025, and an assistant can only describe a menu it can read.

Reviews that are recent, and asked for properly

BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, published in February, found 47% of consumers will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 74% only care about reviews written in the last three months. For a caterer that does most of its weddings between May and October, the three-month window is a problem every winter: by March the newest wedding review may be from last fall.

The fix is to ask after every event, including office orders and private parties, so reviews keep landing in the quiet months. The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews, in effect since October 21, 2024, bans incentives tied to positive reviews, so no discount on the next booking for five stars. The FTC also says asking only your happiest clients could violate the FTC Act even though the rule does not name it. Ask everyone.

The profile and the address

Most caterers cook in a commissary or a shared kitchen with no storefront. Google’s Business Profile guidelines say a business without a storefront and signage that travels to customers gets a service-area profile with the address hidden, and service areas should stay within about two hours’ drive. A restaurant that also caters is different and can run a hybrid profile; Google’s own example is a dine-in restaurant that also delivers.

An agency that sets up your commissary as a storefront is putting the profile at risk. Ask how they will set it up and why.

Five questions for every agency at the table

Will you treat office orders and weddings as separate work? The office manager ordering Thursday’s lunch and the couple booking next October search differently, decide on different clocks and need different pages. One campaign and one form for both is the most common shortcut we see.

Will you run Local Services Ads for us? The right answer is no, because Google has no catering category. Dining runs only as a pilot in five cities, without the Google Verified badge. An agency that offers it has not looked.

How will you get us onto more venue lists? Honest answer: mostly through your own sales work with coordinators. What marketing adds is proof, such as a page for each venue you have worked, photos from events there and reviews that name the venue.

What will the monthly report show? Booked events by source, with weddings, private parties and office orders counted apart. Inquiries alone mean little when one wedding is worth a season of box lunches.

Should we show starting prices? Your call. WeddingPro’s coaching on the 2026 study called price transparency a massive differentiator, and The Knot’s 2025 venue report advised vendors to share starting prices and packages on their sites. A good agency lays out the trade-off and leaves the decision with you.

What to do this month

• Send yourself a test inquiry on a Saturday afternoon and time the reply.
• Move your menus onto the site as text, with station and buffet formats shown and dietary options marked.
• Ask every client from the last three months for a review, office orders included.
• Check your Google profile: service area or storefront, address shown or hidden, and service areas inside two hours of your kitchen.
• Make a list of the venues you have worked in the past year, and the photos you have from each.

None of that needs an ad budget, and all of it makes the ads work better when they start. How we approach the trade as a whole is on our page for caterers, and what we change on a site to turn visits into inquiries is on our websites page.