Digital Marketing for Cafes That Wins Catering and Office Orders
Walk-ins pay the rent. Catering, office and partner accounts fill the slow hours. We target the office managers and businesses who order, and keep locals finding you on the map.
A coffee walks out the door. An office account comes back every week.
Most cafe marketing chases the first. Digital marketing for cafes earns its keep on the second: bigger orders, placed ahead of time, in the hours your kitchen would otherwise be waiting.
Busy at 8am, quiet by 2pm
Orders you can plan prep around
The people a few streets away who buy catering
They aren’t searching for the best flat white nearby. They’ve just booked a meeting room and need lunch for twelve. With 3rd party B2B data we can reach them by role and industry, in the suburbs you deliver to.
Office managers & receptionists
Run the kitchen budget, the birthday morning teas and the lunch for the monthly meeting. They want it on time, labelled and easy to order again.
EAs & event coordinators
Book client lunches, board meetings and training days. Dietary requirements are their biggest worry, so a clear, labelled menu wins the order.
Building & coworking managers
Run tenant events, member breakfasts and launches, and need a food and coffee partner close enough to walk the order over.
Gyms, studios & clinics
Share your local customers. A member offer, or coffee after the early class, gives both businesses a reason to send people next door.
Catering ads aimed at whoever books the meeting room
Angles we’d test, not past campaigns. Filmed in your kitchen in 4K, one message per ad, in square and vertical formats. The final versions come out of research with your team and your best catering customers.
Finding the businesses that need you, then going to them
We haven’t published a cafe case study. Aussie-Link is a Sydney visa services firm, a long way from food. Its B2B relationships had started to run dry, and its Google Ads brought mostly time-wasters, free advice seekers and unqualified leads.
What we did: we researched which industries needed visa services as a key, required fit with a justifiable cost, and identified the recruitment sector. Then we built ad creative around those firms’ problems and solutions, targeted recruitment firm decision makers with 3rd party audience data, and synced new leads to consultants’ mobile phones for instant contact. In the first 30 days the client reported multiple qualified leads, with real relationships developing with key decision makers, on minimal ad budget.
From a first platter to a standing weekly order
A catering customer is only worth chasing if they order again. Each step below is built to get the second order, not just the first.
A catering page that answers everything
Menu, per-head pricing, minimum order, lead time, delivery area and dietary labels on one page, with one order or quote button.
The enquiry hits your phone
Date, headcount and dietary needs go straight to whoever runs catering, so the reply goes out while the organiser is still sorting the meeting.
Delivered, then followed up
An automated email or SMS the next day asks how it went and makes ordering again simple.
Turned into a regular order
Repeat customers get a weekly or monthly order offer, plus a reminder ahead of end-of-financial-year and end-of-year events.
Found on the map by people already nearby
Local Google Maps rankings for the coffee, breakfast and lunch searches in your suburb, and Google Ads in a tight radius on the searches worth paying for, like catering searches during business hours. Both send people to a page with your menu, hours and one clear action. It’s the same Maps, Ads and landing page setup behind our local marketing work.
Shot where the food is actually made
On-site 4K video and photos of your team, your kitchen and your real food, scripted around one message per ad and refreshed every month. A stock photo of a latte sells every cafe equally, which means it sells none of them.
Questions from cafe owners
What does digital marketing for a cafe actually involve?
For us it’s two jobs. Local Google Maps rankings and Google Ads so people nearby find you when they’re hungry, and a B2B campaign that uses 3rd party data to reach the office managers, EAs and coordinators who order catering. Both send people to focused pages, and every catering enquiry gets followed up automatically.
How can a cafe get more catering orders?
Go to the people who order instead of waiting for them to find you. Target office and practice managers, EAs and event coordinators in your delivery area by role, show them a labelled spread filmed in your kitchen, and send them to a catering page with pricing, minimums and lead times. Then follow up after every first order to turn it into a regular one.
Is Instagram enough to market a cafe?
It’s good for keeping existing customers interested. It’s weak at reaching new ones nearby, who usually decide from Google Maps, and it can’t pick out the office manager two streets away who orders lunch for twenty every month. That takes targeting by role and location.
What should a cafe catering page include?
Your catering menu with per-head pricing, minimum order, how much notice you need, your delivery area, clear dietary labels and photos of real orders. Then one button to order or request a quote. If the organiser has to email you to find out the basics, many won’t bother.
What should a cafe track besides foot traffic?
We report catering enquiries, orders and repeat orders separately from walk-in activity, with the cost per enquiry for each campaign, and review it with you on regular strategy calls. If a channel isn’t bringing orders, the budget moves.
Do you also work with restaurants?
Yes, but the job is different. Restaurants are filling tables at night and selling functions and group bookings. See our page on digital marketing for restaurants, or how we approach events businesses.
Ready to Fill the Quiet Hours With Orders?
Free 30-minute strategy session · No obligation