Enable Your Catering Business

Catering is one of the highest-margin revenue streams for restaurants, but most POS systems make it painful — phone tag, email chains, manual invoicing. OpenPOS gives you two built-in catering modes that work right from your storefront.

Mode 1: Catering Online Ordering

For standard catering orders with fixed pricing — corporate lunches, office parties, family gatherings. Customers browse your catering-specific menu, select items, choose a date/time, and pay online. No phone calls needed.

How to enable:

1. Go to Settings > Catering and toggle it on.
2. Set your rules: minimum guest count, lead time (e.g., 24 hours notice), and max advance booking (e.g., 90 days out).
3. Configure your catering menu — you can use different items/prices than your regular menu.
4. Choose delivery options: pickup, delivery to their location, or on-site service.

Customers order at /store/your-store/catering/ordering. It works just like regular online ordering, but with catering-specific quantities and scheduling.

Mode 2: Private Events & Custom Quotes

For bigger events that need custom pricing — weddings, corporate dinners, holiday parties, team building events. Customers submit an inquiry form with their event details, and you respond with a custom quote.

The inquiry form captures:

• Event type (wedding reception, corporate dinner, birthday, anniversary, baby shower, and more)
• Date, time, duration, and guest count
• Services needed: catering, bar service (cash bar, hosted bar, consumption-based), AV equipment
• Dietary restrictions, budget range, and special requests
• Venue selection (if you have multiple spaces)
• Full buyout option

When an inquiry comes in, you review it in Dashboard > Catering, create a versioned quote, and send it to the customer. Once approved, it becomes an invoice they can pay online.

The full catering workflow

Inquiry → Quote (versioned) → Invoice → Payment

You can revise quotes multiple times. Each version is tracked. Professional email templates are sent at every step. The customer gets a clean, branded experience from first inquiry to final payment.

Why this matters

Most restaurants handle catering through a mess of phone calls, emails, and manual invoices. OpenPOS turns it into a self-service system for standard orders and a streamlined pipeline for custom events — both from your existing storefront, at no extra cost.