In my experience, in order to get the big catering orders you 1st have to build up trust with many little ones by getting them right and being on time over and over again. The saying goes, “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much." If you can’t get a single pizza to the secretary on time, she is unlikely to suggest you for a larger “important” order.
How to get those business workers to order from you? Hopefully they are already customers at night with their families, so advertising your lunch-time business to existing customers with a blurb on your menu, box top flyers, a notice on your website, Facebook posts & ads, etc… Better yet, you can also walk in (or have your nicest employee do it if you’re an introvert), drop off menus and offer to feed the office for free. Schedule one of those every weekday during the summer and get your food into the many mouths of potential customers. Invest and build into the business slow and steady.
As you are building those relationships, you need to organize your catering. We offer a 20/50 Deal: 20% off the menu price of orders over $50. Stock up some paper plates and napkins to send along with those orders. It’s lazy, but it works well for us. Another option would be to make a catering menu with ordering suggestions (i.e. one large pizza feeds 3 people), multi-pizza pricing, and bulk food items (1/2 pan or full pans of salads, wings or breadsticks that feed x people). Set up a way to take timed orders in advance (we use 7 hanging wall files, one for each day of the week), work out your cook times on multi-pizza orders and plan ahead to bring in extra employees so that you are never late with a timed order as nothing is worse for the person who placed that order!
We also allow certain businesses (i.e. - the hospitals that Paul mentioned) to pay later via a purchase order. That’s a whole 'nother pain-in-the-backside and a bridge you can cross if you come to it.
