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What’s Driving Restaurant Catering Growth in 2026 | DeliverThat

DeliverThat — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

As investment in catering grows, so does the need to understand what turns that investment into lasting growth. With more restaurants to choose from and more ways to order, customers have higher expectations for the entire experience. Earning their repeat business means making each order easy to place and dependable from preparation through delivery.

How to Build a More Reliable Catering Packaging Process

DeliverThat — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Key Takeaways

Build the process before changing everything at once. Identify where packaging and handoff issues are happening so you can address the root cause.
Source packaging that can hold up through delivery. Choose quality containers, bags, and transport supplies that fit the food, travel time, and handling requirements of your catering orders.
Standardize how catering orders are packed and checked. Clear pack-out guidelines and a final handoff check help reduce spills, missing items, and other avoidable mistakes.
Create consistency and improve over time. Use approved supplies, clear standards, and delivery outcomes to strengthen the process as your catering program grows.

A reliable catering packaging process gives your team a consistent way to prepare every order for a smooth delivery from kitchen to customer. Without that structure, small packaging issues can quickly become bigger delivery problems, from temperature loss and spills to missing items and frustrated customers.

As catering volume grows, having a repeatable process becomes even more important. Clear packaging standards help protect food quality, reduce avoidable mistakes, and make every order easier for restaurant teams, delivery drivers, and customers to manage.

Find Where Your Current Packaging Process Can Improve

Before changing containers or ordering new supplies, take a look at how your current packaging process is performing. Review recent catering orders and customer feedback to identify areas that could be more consistent or efficient. Are certain items losing temperature during delivery? Are drivers having to reorganize orders before leaving the restaurant?

Even small packaging and handoff issues can create higher operational costs over time, including remakes, refunds, guest complaints, and additional work for restaurant teams. Identifying where the process could be stronger gives you a clearer starting point for improvement.

From there, you can make targeted changes to packaging, supplies, or procedures based on what your operation actually needs instead of changing products or processes without a clear reason.

Match Your Packaging to the Food and the Delivery

Not every catering order should be packed the same way. The right packaging depends on what you are serving and what has to happen between your kitchen and the customer. Think of factors like temperature, moisture, weight, portion size, travel time, ventilation, and whether containers need to be stacked.

A hot pasta tray traveling 30 minutes has very different needs than an individually boxed lunch going five minutes down the road. Cold sides may need to be separated from hot entrées, while sauces and liquids need secure containers that can stay upright throughout the trip.

For restaurants using self-delivery, think beyond the container itself and consider how the full order will be transported. Insulated bags, sturdy carriers, and other delivery-specific supplies can help protect food quality in transit, especially for larger orders or longer delivery distances.

Branded Packaging Creates a Stronger Customer Experience

Great Lakes Brewing Company Catering Packaging

Standard tin trays and plain brown bags may get the job done, but they do little to connect the order back to the restaurant. Catering orders are unpacked in offices, meetings, and event spaces without a restaurant employee around to represent the brand. Customized packaging helps carry the restaurant experience beyond its four walls by giving the entire order a more polished, cohesive look while reinforcing the brand.

Standardize How Different Orders Are Packed

Once you identify the packaging that works, turn it into a standard. Your team shouldn’t have to decide how to package a common catering order from scratch every time it comes through. Create simple guidelines for your most frequent menu items and order types.

This becomes especially valuable for restaurant brands operating across multiple locations. Standardized catering packaging helps reduce the risk of one store using different containers, supplies, or pack-out methods than another.

Pack for the Entire Trip, Not Just the Kitchen

A container can work perfectly fine on the prep table and still not hold up once the order is on the move, especially when you consider how many steps it has to go through before it’s ready to eat:

Prepared and packaged in the kitchen
Labeled, organized, and staged for pickup
Checked and handed off to the delivery driver
Loaded and arranged inside the delivery vehicle
Transported to the customer
Unloaded and carried into the delivery location
Unpacked, arranged, and set up for service

Build the pack-out around stability and ease of handling. Keep liquids secure and separate when needed, avoid overloading boxes or bags, and group related items so the order is easier to check at pickup and unpack at the destination. The goal is to reduce unnecessary movement, confusion, and rehandling once the order leaves the restaurant.

It also helps to pack with the final setup in mind. Items that will be needed first should be easy to find instead of buried underneath the rest of the order.

Make Orders Easy to Identify and Verify

Good labeling can prevent a surprising number of catering mistakes. A consistent system should make it easy for restaurant employees and drivers to understand what belongs with an order without opening every container.

Depending on the order, labels may include:

Customer or order name
Order number
Package count, such as “2 of 5”
Contents
Hot or cold designation
Special instructions
Setup information
Allergen or modification information when appropriate

Package counts are particularly useful for large orders. If an order is labeled “1 of 6” through “6 of 6,” the restaurant and driver have an easy way to confirm the entire order is ready.

Add a Final Packaging Check Before Handoff

Before an order leaves the restaurant, assign someone to verify that the packaging is secure and the full order is ready for transportation.

A simple catering packaging checklist might include:

All containers are accounted for.
Lids and seals are secure.
Hot and cold items are appropriately separated.
Beverages are secured.
Sauces and liquids are upright and protected.
Packages are clearly labeled.
Serving utensils, cutlery, and condiments are included.
Any required setup supplies are packed.
The order can be safely carried and transported.

This check doesn’t need to take long. The purpose is to catch small problems while the order is still inside the restaurant, where they’re much easier to fix.

Want a ready-to-use version for your team?

Download the Catering Packaging Handoff Checklist and use it as a final step before every catering order leaves the restaurant.

Get the Checklist

Treat Setup Supplies as Part of the Order

Catering packaging isn’t just the boxes and bags the order goes into. A customer may also need serving utensils, napkins, cutlery, wire racks, heat sources, condiments, or other setup supplies. If those items are handled as an afterthought, they’re easier to forget.

Instead, build them into the standard pack-out for the appropriate order type. If every hot buffet package requires serving utensils and a specific setup kit, make those items part of the checklist rather than relying on an employee to remember them at the last minute.

It can also help to standardize where these supplies come from and which products are approved for use. Keeping a consistent set of setup materials on hand makes it easier for teams to know what to grab, simplifies reordering, and helps reduce last-minute substitutions that can create an inconsistent customer experience.

Create Consistency Across Restaurant Locations

For multi-location restaurant brands, it doesn’t take much for packaging processes to start to look different from store to store. One location may use a different container, another may make a substitution when something runs out, and another may have its own way of packing the same catering order. Those differences may seem minor, but they can add up to a less consistent experience for the customer.

Creating basic standards for approved packaging SKUs, acceptable substitutions, reorder points, minimum inventory levels, and pack-out instructions can help bring more structure to the process.

That kind of consistency becomes especially important as catering programs grow. Clear packaging standards make it easier to scale without creating unnecessary variation from store to store, while still helping to protect both profitability and the guest experience.

Better Catering Packaging Creates a Better Handoff

Reliable packaging isn’t about finding one perfect container; it’s about creating a system that helps your food move from the kitchen to the customer with fewer opportunities for something to go wrong.

When the right supplies are paired with clear standards, labeling, quality checks, and reliable transportation, your team spends less time improvising and more time executing a process everyone understands.

Looking to standardize your catering supplies? Reach out. DeliverThat can help you source the packaging, setup supplies, and delivery equipment you need to build a more consistent catering process.

How to Grow a Catering Business Without a Corporate Playbook

DeliverThat — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Corporate support can make it easier to grow a catering business, but a missing corporate playbook doesn’t have to mean a missed opportunity. For franchisees, catering can create a valuable revenue stream using many of the resources already inside the restaurant. The opportunity is figuring out how to turn that existing operation into a catering program that can reliably handle larger orders without creating chaos for the store.

That is exactly what Nick Panos and the Panos Restaurant Group have done across their seven Mellow Mushroom locations in the Atlanta area. During an episode of Delivering More, Nick shared how his team continued building its catering business even when there wasn’t a fully developed corporate program to follow. Over time, they created their own processes for menu planning, customer communication, staffing, delivery, and technology.

Start with what your restaurant already does well

Building a catering program doesn’t necessarily mean building an entirely new menu. In fact, trying to make your restaurant look like a traditional catering company can create more problems than it solves. When Mellow Mushroom made an earlier push into catering, Nick recalled seeing menu options like pasta salad and chicken salad sandwiches. The problem was that those weren’t necessarily the foods customers associated with the brand.

Nick decided that to be successful, he needed to build a catering program around food the Mellow Mushroom restaurants were already equipped to make and actually aligned with the brand. That same principle can work for almost any restaurant concept.

Look at your current menu and ask:

Which items travel well?
What can your kitchen produce efficiently in larger quantities?
Which foods are easiest for groups to serve and share?
Where can bundles or packages make ordering easier?
Which menu items give you enough margin to support the extra work involved in catering?

Create an operating process before volume creates one for you

Without a clear process, catering can quickly turn into another responsibility that gets dropped onto whoever happens to be working that shift. In those situations, growth can quickly start creating more work instead of more opportunity, which is why it helps to define ownership early. Determine who receives and confirms the catering order, communicates with the customer, prepares the kitchen, and checks that everything is ready before the driver arrives.

As Panos Restaurant Group grew its catering operation, it eventually developed a hub-and-spoke model. One restaurant became a central operations and training hub, with catering managers supporting surrounding locations.

Your structure may look completely different, but what matters is that you grow a catering business your team can repeat. If something works at one location, document it. Then determine what needs to stay local and what could eventually be standardized across your other stores.

Separate selling from executing when you can

Another lesson from Nick’s operation is that selling catering and executing a catering program require different skills. One person may be great at building relationships with office managers, finding new customers, and growing accounts. Someone else may be much better at making sure every order is prepared correctly and reaches the customer exactly as promised.

Smaller programs may need one person to wear both hats at first. As volume increases, however, separating those responsibilities can keep day-to-day execution from consuming all the time that should be spent growing the business.

Make customer communication part of the catering experience

A customer can place a regular takeout order without ever talking to someone at the restaurant, but catering is different. They may be ordering lunch for an entire office, feeding dozens of employees, or coordinating an important event, which means there is often more money and pressure involved. In those situations, a little communication can go a long way.

Nick’s team contacts catering customers before their orders to confirm the details and provide a direct point of contact. After the delivery, they follow up to make sure everything went well. This gives customers confidence that someone is paying attention, makes it easier to handle updates, and creates an opportunity to build a relationship instead of treating every order like a one-time transaction.

Catering growth often comes from repeat customers. Nick describes it as a compounding business: earn one customer, execute well, give them a reason to order again, and build from there. Over time, you are not starting from zero each month. You are growing a catering business on top of the relationships you have already built.

Remember that delivery is still your customer experience

If an order shows up late, telling the customer that the problem came from a delivery provider usually won’t change how they feel about the experience. They ordered from your restaurant, so as far as they are concerned, the restaurant owns the outcome.

That makes delivery more than just getting something from point A to point B. It makes it part of the customer experience. Consider what should happen from the moment an order leaves your kitchen to the moment the customer begins eating.

What should the driver know before pickup?
How should the food be handled?
Where should they park?
Who should they contact upon arrival?
Is the order simply being dropped off, or does it need to be set up?

The more specific your standards are, the easier they are to repeat and maintain.

Nick’s team has chosen to build its own internal driver operation, giving the group more control over training and execution. For other franchisees, maintaining a dedicated driver team may not make operational or financial sense, and that’s okay. The important decision isn’t whether delivery is handled internally or through a partner; it’s whether the model you choose can consistently meet the standard you want associated with your restaurant.

Use technology to remove work from the process

As the business grows, manual processes that once felt manageable can become bottlenecks. Someone has to track orders, communicate with customers, assign deliveries, manage updates, keep notes, and make sure the right information reaches the right people.

Technology should make those jobs easier, so start by looking for repetitive work: Where is your team entering the same information twice? Where are people relying on texts or spreadsheets to keep track of important order details? Where does one employee hold information that the rest of the operation needs?

Nick has taken this idea particularly far, building custom technology to support parts of his catering operation. Not every restaurant needs to go to the same lengths; the important takeaway is to use technology when it removes friction from the operation, whether that means connecting ordering and delivery systems, improving visibility into order status, or creating a better way to document delivery information. The best technology should give your team less to manage, not another system to babysit.

Build consistency first, then scale what works

You don’t need to know what your catering operation will look like five years from now before you start building it today. Instead, start with one location or one clearly defined operating model. Learn which menu items work, find where the kitchen gets slowed down, pay attention to the questions customers ask, and document delivery problems and what caused them.

From there, you can improve the process before adding more volume. As the program becomes more consistent, you can begin expanding it across locations, adding sales resources, introducing new technology, or pursuing larger catering opportunities.

Hear more from Nick Panos on how to grow a catering business

Want to hear how Panos Restaurant Group built its approach firsthand? Watch the full Delivering More conversation with Nick Panos for more on growing catering across seven Mellow Mushroom locations, building customer relationships, managing delivery, using technology, and finding new opportunities in the catering market.

And when delivery becomes one of the pieces you no longer want your restaurant team managing alone, DeliverThat can help. Our professional delivery network, technology, and hands-on support are built to help restaurant operators grow catering without adding more operational strain.

How Better Restaurant Delivery Management Can Reduce Catering Refunds

DeliverThat — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Catering refunds are expensive, and the lost revenue is only part of the cost. Each refund can create a ripple effect across your operation, adding time and complexity as your team works to understand what happened and resolve the issue. For restaurant brands managing catering across multiple locations, those losses can quickly cut into catering profitability.

A refund is usually the final result of something that happened earlier in the fulfillment process. Maybe the order wasn't ready when the driver arrived, or maybe the driver ran into a difficult drop-off location without the information needed to navigate it successfully. More precise restaurant delivery management helps operators identify those breakdowns and reduce the likelihood that the same problems keep turning into refunds.

Key Takeaways

Catering refunds are often caused by delivery breakdowns earlier in the fulfillment process, including kitchen delays, poor handoffs, fulfillment gaps, and delivery issues.
Strong restaurant delivery management combines consistent handoff procedures, better delivery visibility, and the right fulfillment strategy to prevent issues before they become refunds.
Delivery orchestration and performance data can help multi-location brands coordinate providers, establish backup fulfillment rules, and identify recurring problems by location, market, or provider.

Start With the Reason Behind the Refund

A refund report can tell you how much money you lost, but it can't tell you what to fix unless you understand why the refund happened in the first place. If an entrée was never packed, the issue began inside the restaurant. If the full order left the restaurant on time but arrived late, that's a different problem. If an order arrived at the correct time but the driver couldn't find the right entrance to a large office complex, you've uncovered another type of delivery breakdown.

Start by grouping refunds and delivery incidents into categories. Depending on your operation, those might include:

Missing or incorrect items
Kitchen delays
Late driver arrival
Late delivery
Unfulfilled delivery
Pickup or drop-off confusion
Equipment or vehicle capacity issues
Setup or presentation problems
Communication breakdowns

Then, add context. Which location prepared the order? Who fulfilled the delivery? What market was it in? How large was the order? Was there a setup requirement? Was the order ready when the driver arrived?

That's how you get from "We're issuing too many refunds" to "Most of our refund-related delivery issues are coming from late pickups in these four locations."

Don't Overlook What Happens Before the Driver Leaves

It's easy to look at a late catering delivery and assume the driver was late, but that isn't always what actually happened. Food readiness is one of the most common sources of downstream delivery problems. A driver can arrive exactly when expected and still start the delivery behind schedule if the order isn't ready to leave.

For operators, that means on-time delivery shouldn't be evaluated in isolation. Instead, look at the full timeline:

Order ready → driver arrival → pickup → departure → delivery

If the driver arrived on time for an 11:00am pickup but couldn't leave until 11:20am, changing your delivery provider isn't going to change the outcome. The real question you need to ask yourself is why the order wasn't ready.

On the other hand, if the order was ready at 10:50am and the driver didn't arrive until 11:20am, you have a different issue to address. This is why consistent timestamps and handoff procedures are critical. They help operators understand where time is being lost instead of treating every late delivery as the same problem.

Urbane Cafe's experience shows how much delivery reliability can affect refund exposure. Before partnering with DeliverThat, the brand's previous delivery fleets were operating at an 84% on-time rate. After integrating DeliverThat into its catering operation, on-time delivery increased to 95.9%, while DeliverThat-fulfilled orders maintained a 1% refund rate.

Make the Catering Handoff Repeatable Across Locations

A strong catering handoff shouldn't depend on which manager happens to be working that day. That's why multi-location brands need a consistent process that can be followed across every restaurant without adding unnecessary work for restaurant teams.

Your handoff process should make it clear:

When an order is complete
When an order has been verified
When the driver arrived
When the order officially left the restaurant

It should also account for the details that make catering different from an everyday food delivery. A $1,000 order going to the 20th floor of an office tower needs more planning than a small drop-off at a residential address. The driver may need additional vehicle space, a cart or dolly, specific parking instructions, building access information, or extra time for setup.

Those details need to travel with the order. Otherwise, a delivery can technically be "on time" and still create a poor customer experience if the driver arrives unprepared for what happens after they reach the address. The smoother the handoff between restaurant and driver, the fewer opportunities there are for important information to disappear along the way.

Match the Delivery Method to the Order

One of the biggest mistakes a restaurant can make is treating every catering delivery the same. Orders have different stakes and different fulfillment requirements. A lower-value order with a simple drop-off may not need the same delivery experience as a high-value catering order requiring equipment, complicated building access, and a branded setup.

Consider factors such as:

Order value
Order size
Pickup complexity
Drop-off complexity
Delivery distance
Setup requirements
Equipment needs
Delivery window
Provider performance in that market

Instead of asking, "Who do we normally send deliveries to?" operators should consider which provider or delivery method best matches the order's value, complexity, distance, setup requirements, and timing, recognizing that the right answer may not be the same for every order.

Build a Backup Plan Before a Delivery Is at Risk

Even a strong primary delivery strategy needs a backup. Drivers drop orders. Capacity changes. A provider may not have coverage in a particular market at the exact moment you need it. If restaurant teams have to figure out the backup plan after something has already gone wrong, valuable time disappears fast.

A more resilient delivery program establishes those rules ahead of time. If the preferred fulfillment option is unavailable, where should the delivery go next? Are there orders that should never be sent to a particular type of provider? Should higher-value or more complex orders follow different backup rules?

Rather than forcing a store manager or catering sales manager to manually review deliveries and decide where each one should go, delivery orchestration can apply predetermined fulfillment rules and move orders to the appropriate provider based on the conditions of the order. It can also provide an overflow option when the preferred provider can't take the delivery.

The result isn't just less manual work; it's less time spent improvising when an important catering order is already at risk. That faster response can help protect the customer experience, preserve food quality, and give restaurant teams a clearer process for handling unexpected changes. Over time, it also creates a more consistent approach across locations, so the outcome doesn't depend on which manager happens to be handling the issue.

Give Your Team Time to Fix Problems Before They Become Refunds

There is a big difference between knowing that a delivery failed and knowing that a delivery is about to fail. Traditional delivery tracking may tell you where the driver is, but stronger restaurant delivery management should help you understand what is happening around the delivery.

Did the driver arrive for pickup?
Is the food ready?
Has the order left the restaurant?
Is the delivery trending late?
Is there something unusual about the destination?

A corporate office tower, hospital campus, convention center, or large industrial facility can add significant time between "arrived" and "delivered." Parking, loading docks, elevators, security desks, and finding the correct contact all come into play.

That operational information becomes even more valuable when it can be learned and applied to future deliveries. The goal is to give the people responsible for the order enough information to act while there is still time to change the customer experience. Sometimes a phone call or escalation made 20 minutes earlier is the difference between an inconvenience and a refund.

Tocaya is a good example of what stronger delivery visibility can look like at scale. After implementing centralized delivery tracking and visibility with DeliverThat, the brand reduced delivery-related incidents by 47%, from 19% to 10%. At the same time, its catering refund and compensation rate fell from more than 2% of orders to 0.3%, an 85% decrease.

Reduce the Number of Delivery Partners Your Team Has to Manage

Using multiple delivery service providers can create flexibility, but it can also create another kind of operational problem. Your team may have multiple dashboards, support contacts, billing processes, service standards, and sources of performance data.

For an individual restaurant, that might be manageable, but across dozens or hundreds of locations? That administrative burden becomes much more significant. Instead of requiring restaurant teams to operate separate relationships with every fulfillment provider, a centralized delivery layer can coordinate how orders are routed while giving the brand one place to manage the broader delivery operation.

The restaurant can still use different delivery providers when they make sense for a particular order, market, or fulfillment need. The difference is that individual stores don't have to manage those providers, coordinate handoffs, or troubleshoot delivery issues on their own. A centralized delivery operation can handle that complexity while giving each location a simpler, more consistent way to manage catering deliveries.

Use Delivery Orchestration to Reduce Refund Risk

Delivery orchestration is ultimately about determining who should take a delivery, under what conditions, and when. That decision can have a direct impact on whether a catering order arrives successfully or becomes a refund.

For a restaurant brand, orchestration can mean setting rules for which orders should go to a catering-focused delivery provider, which can use another DSP, and what happens if the preferred option isn't available. DeliverThat's approach combines that technology with the operational side of actually completing catering deliveries.

Orders can be orchestrated according to a restaurant's fulfillment strategy while DeliverThat's team provides a consistent support layer across the deliveries it manages. That gives restaurant brands a way to use multiple fulfillment options without asking individual locations to manage every provider relationship themselves.

The model also creates a clearer view of delivery performance. Instead of looking at isolated orders from separate systems, operators can begin comparing what's happening across locations, markets, and fulfillment methods. That makes it easier to identify the delivery conditions most likely to lead to late arrivals, failed handoffs, or customer complaints and adjust the strategy before those issues turn into bigger problems.

Taco Cabana saw the impact after implementing DeliverThat's delivery orchestration. The brand reached a 98.8% fulfillment rate, reduced its delivery incident rate to 0.48%, and saw a 20% decrease in customer-reported issues related to late or incorrect orders. These results show how a centralized approach can make it easier to coordinate fulfillment, protect the customer experience, and maintain more consistent delivery performance.

Fewer Catering Refunds Start With Fewer Delivery Breakdowns

No delivery operation will eliminate every refund. Some issues will happen inside the restaurant; others will happen during fulfillment. Some will be outside of anyone's control. The goal is knowing why problems are happening and making sure the same preventable failures don't keep repeating across your catering program. That requires more than finding someone to drive an order from point A to point B.

It requires reliable handoffs, smarter fulfillment decisions, backup coverage, useful delivery visibility, consistent support, and performance data you can act on. When those pieces work together, fewer delivery problems have the chance to become customer complaints and refunds in the first place.

Want more control over how your catering deliveries are fulfilled? Explore DeliverThat Delivery Orchestration

How to Fix Catering Delivery Breakdowns in 2026 | DeliverThat

DeliverThat — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

A single late catering delivery can cost more than the order itself: a corporate account, a referral network, your reputation as a reliable partner.

For multi-location restaurant operators, these breakdowns multiply across regions, quietly eroding trust and margin. DeliverThat helps restaurant brands eliminate these failures with dedicated catering logistics technology and a professional driver network built specifically for high-value orders.

This guide covers the most common causes of catering delivery failures, how to diagnose them in your current system, and what to look for in software that actually solves the problem instead of moving it around.

Key Takeaways

Catering breakdowns typically stem from coordination gaps, driver inconsistency, and lack of real-time visibility across locations.
Diagnosing root causes requires tracking specific metrics: on-time rates, setup quality scores, and complaint patterns by location.
DeliverThat's professional driver network and centralized dashboard give you visibility into every delivery with photo verification and timestamps.
The right catering delivery software integrates with your existing POS, online ordering, and catering management systems.
Multi-location operators need standardized delivery protocols that scale without adding headcount at each site.

Common Catering Delivery Points of Failure

Catering for most restaurants meals corporate lunches, board meetings, healthcare meals...all settings where one misstep reflects on your brand in front of an entire room, not just one customer.

At multi-location scale, each site faces different local conditions: driver availability, traffic patterns, customer expectations. Without standardized protocols and centralized oversight, inconsistency becomes inevitable.

Common root causes:

Poor timing coordination between kitchen completion and driver dispatch. Food sits waiting, or drivers arrive before it's ready, and both quality and schedules suffer.
Driver inconsistency. Generalist delivery drivers are often unfamiliar with catering setup, leaving food in bags rather than arranging it to brand standard.
Lack of brand transparency. If your delivery provider doesn't know your brand, that standard has no way of reaching the driver at the door.

How to Diagnose Delivery Failures in Your Current System

You can't fix what you're not measuring, and counting complaints isn't a diagnostic system.

On-time delivery percentage, tracked separately from standard delivery metrics, and under YOUR definition of too early and too late
Set up quality assurance via photo verification, so you can assess presentation after every delivery, not just when a customer complains.
Complaint patterns by location. A single high-complaint site suggests a training issue; the same pattern across multiple sites points to a process or technology gap.

How DeliverThat helps:

Our centralized dashboard gives catering owners a single view across every location: on-time rates, setup photos, driver performance in one place, live delivery tracking, and more.

All customers of DeliverThat have access to the Dashboard. Need help logging in? Checkout these instructions.

What Causes Driver-Related Failures?

Drivers represent your brand at the moment of delivery. Late arrivals, poor presentation, or unprofessional communication all become the customer's experience of your restaurant, not the delivery provider's.

Catering drivers need different skills than standard delivery: handling large orders without damaging presentation, setting up buffet stations to spec, communicating professionally with corporate clients. Vehicle requirements differ too; adequate space and temperature control are non-negotiable for catering-quality transit.

DeliverThat's platform puts your brand standards directly in drivers' hands:

communication preferences
presentation setup and packaging
professionalism expectations

How to Set Up Drivers for Success

The most active drivers on our network are interacting with upwards of a dozen brands per day. By sharing what is most important to your brand's off-premise program, we can power the drivers with the information they need to show up prepared and deliver with confidence.

Standard and escalation points of contact: some brands want the driver to call the guest if something happens on the road, others don't, and both are acceptable. By documenting your preference, the drivers can react according to your preference.
Set up diagrams and rules for no-setup drop-offs: let us know how you'd set up on-site and that information gets shared with the drivers. Customer is declining a setup? That's OK! Help us prepare every driver in any scenario.
Secure packaging, made to move. Every driver has a story about a bag of chili or a tray of beans leaking in their trunk. Your packaging should be branded for visibility, designed to fit in common catering bags, and secure enough to handle heavy food and stacking in transit.

How Much Should I Tip a Catering Driver?

Drivers are independent contractors who are economic agents. Gratuity on the order up front directly affects fulfillment and driver satisfaction, but we have found it also decreases the overall cost of delivery by eliminating on-demand platforms for last-minute rescue deliveries.

Brands that approach tipping as a strategic lever to ensure their orders are the best in the area see far higher order coverage and repeat drivers.

The DeliverThat Gratuity Lift Program is built with mutual wins for the drivers and the restaurants. Better-compensated drivers stay longer and deliver more consistently, which is exactly what multi-location brand standards depend on.

How Does Technology Drift Create Delivery Breakdowns?

Many operators piece together solutions from multiple vendors: one for orders, another for marketplace dispatch, another for catering management. These disconnected tools create gaps where information falls through, and the administrative burden scales with every location added. If delivery data lives in one system and tracking lives in another, connecting problems to root causes becomes nearly impossible.

This is the core problem DeliverThat's delivery orchestration solves: a single point of control across dispatch, tracking, and reporting, so brand standards and performance data live in one system instead of being reconstructed after the fact across five different tools.

What to Look for in a Delivery Tech Stack

Evaluate on integration, visibility, and reliability impact, not feature lists.

Integration capability. Software should pull order data directly from your existing POS and catering management systems, not require duplicate entry.
Real-time delivery tracking. Visibility into kitchen completion, pickup, and setup, with timestamps and photo verification at each step.
Automated driver assignment based on proximity, vehicle type, and past performance.
Centralized reporting across all locations, without requiring individual check-ins per site or platform
Reduce support burden on your staff. A good technology provider should be pulling your staff out of the support ticket blackhole and offering, well, support.

DeliverThat's platform is integrated with over two dozen ecosystem partners, spanning point of sale, online ordering, catering management, and specialty catering marketplaces.

See it in action: DeliverThat's Delivery Orchestration helped Taco Cabana save 30 minutes every day by eliminating DSP support burden and regain 2% of margin upon pilot; Urbane Cafe improved their on-time delivery by 14% via DeliverThat + Monkey integration.

The Bottom Line

Catering delivery breakdowns rarely come from one dramatic failure, and the fix isn't more oversight from your team. It's technology and a network built specifically for catering, so brand consistency doesn't depend on which location, which day, or which driver picked up the order.

See how DeliverThat's dedicated catering network and centralized visibility can eliminate delivery breakdowns across your locations. Talk to our team.

FAQ

What is delivery orchestration software?

Delivery Orchestration is DeliverThat's delivery logic system that decides how every order gets fulfilled, based on your rules, your thresholds, and real delivery conditions. Integrated with popular platforms like Olo, Monkey, Toast, Cartwheel and more, your deliveries are routed to DeliverThat's fleet, your own drivers, DoorDash Drive, Uber Direct, or any combination. Automatically.

How does DeliverThat ensure consistent catering delivery quality?

Our platform connects every part of your delivery program: the orders coming in, the rules that decide how they're fulfilled, the brand knowledge needs to execute on-site, and the data that tells you how your program is actually performing.

What should I look for when evaluating catering delivery software?

Integration with your existing POS and catering systems, real-time tracking, driver quality and training, and scalability across locations. Ask for a demo using your actual order scenarios, not a generic walkthrough.

How can I reduce driver-related delivery problems?

Work with a delivery partner who invests in driver success, fair compensation to the drivers, and that empowers drivers with your brand's values and priorities.

Off-Premise Catering Delivery: A Restaurant Operator's Guide

DeliverThat — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

You've decided to launch catering delivery. Good move. Off-premise catering is one of the highest-margin revenue channels available to restaurants right now, but it's also one of the easiest to get wrong in ways that quietly damage your brand.

The kitchen work is the part you know. What happens after the food leaves your building is where most first-timers lose control. This guide covers everything from how to package your orders to how to set your driver up for a clean, professional delivery.

Improve Catering Delivery Fulfillment Rates: DeliverThat Gratuity Lift Program

DeliverThat — Tue, 12 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

If your catering or high-value delivery program is experiencing inconsistent coverage, particularly on orders where gratuity is low or absent, the cause is likely structural, not operational.

This article explains how our Gratuity Lift Program works, why it directly impacts fulfillment rates, and how to think about setting it up for your account.

How Delivery Gratuity Drives Fulfillment

DeliverThat's DSP fulfillment data tells a clear story: there is a measurable, consistent relationship between gratuity and the likeilihood a catering driver will accept an order .

Orders with no gratuity are fulfilled at approximately 85%. Orders with even modest gratuity, $10 or more, are fulfilled at approximately 95% or higher.

That 10-point gap represents real risk to catering programs relying on DSPs for catering delivery. For a program running dozens of deliveries per week, a consistent 10-15% shortfall on no-tip orders means missed events, late arrivals, and guest experience failures that are difficult to recover from.

The driver population on any delivery platform is making rational economic decisions in real time. A $0-tip delivery competes against every other available job; on high-demand days, a $0 or low tipped delivery often loses to more attractive offers.

What Gratuity Lift Actually Does

The Gratuity Lift Program allows brands to select a gratuity methodology that ensures ensuring every completed delivery carries a gratuity payout for the driver. The methodologies vary, but the core mechanics are the same:

All completed DeliverThat deliveries within the configured program receive a minimum or pre-determined gratuity, even those that received $0 in direct customer gratuity
Drivers see gratuity in the offer stage and receive the gratuity in their usual payout, with no change to your billing cycle.
Split deliveries-- the largest orders that require multiple drivers-- are included; each job in a split receives a distribution

The result: No delivery in a participating account reaches drivers with $0 gratuity. Every delivery has a floor that aligns with your area, which means every delivery is attractive to drivers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is DeliverThat's Gratuity Lift Program?

DeliverThat's Gratuity Lift Program is a data-driven strategy that sets a gratuity on every catering delivery order. Rather than leaving tip amounts to customer behavior, the program ensures every order goes out with a gratuity that drivers in that market will actively choose. The result is higher fulfillment rates, more consistent driver assignment, and lower reliance on overflow delivery providers

Q: How does DeliverThat handle gratuity transparency with the drivers?

Gratuity Lift is designed with driver trust in mind. Drivers see always see gratuity offered on the spbefore they accept a job. Drivers know what they're taking on before they commit.

Q: How does the Gratuity Lift Program improve catering delivery fulfillment?

Catering drivers make real-time economic decisions when accepting orders. When a catering delivery carries the same gratuity as a simpler standard order, most drivers decline , pushing brands into overflowing DSPs that add cost and inconsistency. The Gratuity Lift Program sets gratuity making a brand's orders consistently among the most attractive on the platform. On the DeliverThat network, orders with competitive gratuity are fulfilled at 95% or higher.

Q: Is the Gratuity Lift Program the same for every restaurant brand?

No, and that's intentional. DeliverThat works directly with each operator to analyze their market, order volume, and fulfillment history before setting a gratuity structure. What makes an order competitive for a driver in Austin differs from Denver or a suburban market. The discipline is consistent; the number is specific to the brand.

How to Get Started

The Gratuity Lift Program is available to DeliverThat account holders. Configuration is handled by your account team. To discuss whether our Gratuity Lift Program is the right fit for your delivery operation, reach out to your DeliverThat account manager or contact us.

The Gratuity Problem Hurting Your Catering Delivery Fulfillment Rate

DeliverThat — Tue, 12 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT

For catering operators running high-value delivery programs, fulfillment reliability is everything. But one structural problem, how gratuity flows to independent drivers, often undermines coverage rates at the worst possible moments.

Walk into almost any restaurant, hotel, or bar in America, and gratuity is a shared resource. It flows through the team — from the server who took the order to the busser who cleared the table, to the bartender, the back-of-house crew. That system is in place because hospitality figured out a long time ago that the guest experience is a team effort, and compensation should reflect that.

For the past decade, third-party delivery platforms have operated under a one-to-one delivery gratuity model: one order, one tip, one driver. On the surface, that seems fair, and it works reasonably well for in-house driver staff. In the world of restaurant catering delivery and other partners with a fleet of independent contract drivers, it creates volatility in driver acceptance and inconsistent catering delivery performance at the exact moment restaurants need reliability the most.

Why Catering Delivery Drivers Pass Low-Tip Orders

Drivers — independent contractors who are economic professionals — gravitate toward better-paying jobs. A $0-tip delivery doesn't just sit at the bottom of the queue; on a busy night, it might not get covered at all. If you run a catering program or high-value delivery operation, you already know this problem intimately. Orders with low or no gratuity get deprioritized.

The result is a fulfillment gap that erodes the guest experience. Guests who ordered from you for an important event — a business lunch, a team catering order, a client dinner — arriving without their food, or waiting far longer than they should have.

And the frustrating part? It often has nothing to do with how well your kitchen executed.

What Predictable Driver Coverage Means for Your Catering Program

When every delivery coming out of your restaurant carries a market-average gratuity, driver behavior changes. Coverage rates improve. Drivers show up again and again, becoming familiar with your operation. The gap between your best-performing and worst-performing jobs narrows. Your catering delivery program becomes more predictable.

For catering-forward brands and high-value delivery programs, predictability is the foundation your guest experience is built on.

Delivery has been treated as categorically different from the rest of hospitality for too long. The tools are finally catching up to the standard the industry already knows works.

How DeliverThat's Gratuity Lift Program Stabilizes Catering Delivery Fulfillment

DeliverThat's Gratuity Lift Program gives brands the ability to ensure gratuity is applied to every order for DeliverThat drivers — without changing customer behavior-- across all delivery jobs. The goal: stabilize the gratuity standard so every delivery is worth taking.

What it means in practice:

Every delivery has a gratuity applied, eliminating $0-tip outcomes for DeliverThat drivers
Restaurants save margin by reducing reliance on second or third-choice DSPs
Drivers return to your location time and time again, building familiarity with your staff and consistency for your customers
Catering managers report reduced refunds due to late or missed deliveries

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is DeliverThat's Gratuity Lift Program?

Q: How does the Gratuity Lift Program improve catering delivery fulfillment?

Q: Is the Gratuity Lift Program the same for every restaurant?

Interested in learning how the Gratuity Lift Program can improve fulfillment rates for your catering delivery program? Contact Us!

POS Integrated Catering Management Software for Modern Catering

DeliverThat — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Off-premise continues to grow and catering remains one of the highest-margin channels for restaurant brands. But as order volume and guest expectations rise, operators face a familiar challenge: fragmented catering delivery workflows.

When POS systems, dispatch tools, drivers, and support channels operate independently, the result is unpredictable. Manual entry, inconsistent handoffs, and a delivery experience that varies by day, shift, or location.

For brands trying to scale catering, this fragmentation creates a ceiling. Integration is how operators break through it. A connected POS-to-delivery workflow takes catering from unpredictable to operationally sound. It’s different than running delivery “off to the side” because it:

Centralizes all catering orders in one place
Creates reliable, repeatable execution across locations
Drives measurable financial upside through fewer errors and better guest experience

Why a POS-Connected Delivery Workflow Matters

Most delivery failures don’t happen on the road...they happen in the handoff between systems or people. Missing fields, incorrect timing, unclear provider selection, or a lack of visibility can derail an otherwise well-executed catering order.

A POS-connected workflow eliminates those gaps by ensuring:

Orders flow directly into the delivery system
Data stays consistent across locations
Dispatching is based on rules and your preference, not guesswork

Integration doesn’t just reduce friction. It reduces cost, time, and risk.

What the DeliverThat's Integration on Toast Unlocks for Operators

1. One Connected Platform Experience

Toast captures the order as usual. DeliverThat fulfills it. The systems sync automatically, keeping the workflow clean and predictable. No duplicate entry. No toggling between tools or tablets. No risk of missing key delivery details. No training on a new system or log ins to manage.

2. Operational Control Without Added Complexity

Operators can control how catering delivery works across all locations without increasing labor or adding new platforms for teams to learn.

3. Consistent Delivery Execution, Every Time

DeliverThat's catering-focused drivers, real-time tracking, and standardized processes create the reliability enterprise brands depend on. The result is fewer service issues, fewer refunds, and higher repeat order frequency from corporate catering clients.

4. Faster, Cleaner Market Expansion

Whether opening new stores or launching catering in new regions, integrated delivery systems eliminate the manual setup that typically slows growth. Brands scale without expanding their internal delivery team or tech stack.

“DeliverThat has been a reliable partner and truly an extension of our brand when delivering catering orders. The direct integration with Toast has been a standout; simple to configure and completely seamless for our teams.”

— Jackie Gilardi, Marketing Manager, Kobé Japanese Steakhouse

The Future of Catering Delivery Is Connected

As catering delivery grows into a core revenue stream for restaurants, operators need systems that match the scale and sophistication of the channel itself. The DeliverThat on Toast gives brands a connected workflow and a more consistent path to profit.

DeliverThat Leadership to Accelerate Restaurant Delivery Infrastructure Platform

DeliverThat — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The Delivery Industry's at a Breaking Point

Marketplace platforms are raising fees. Service quality is declining. Brands that built their off-premise strategy around third-party delivery are waking up to a hard truth: restaurants no longer own their guest experience. Someone else does. And that someone else is getting more expensive by the quarter.

We’ve been saying this for years and because we've grown DeliverThat specifically to solve it. DeliverThat was built to give restaurant brands the infrastructure to control their delivery experience end-to-end.

Not just a driver network.

Not just a dispatch tool.

Infrastructure.

The kind that extends brand standards beyond the kitchen, keeps guests loyal, and makes delivery a profitable channel. The market is finally catching up and focusing on first-party enablement, and we’re accelerating to meet it.

Delivery As Infrastructure

DeliverThat operates a full delivery solutions suite covering execution, control, connectivity, and support, giving control back to restaurants, rather than renting delivery from a marketplace.

Delivery Orchestration tools power threshold-based dispatching, hybrid decision rules, and full brand control over every variable. Fulfill deliveries with our drivers, yours, or another DSP.
A Dashboardthat gives brand and location teams centralized visibility to delivery performance and live order tracking across their entire delivery program.
A best-in-class self-delivery app that standardizes on-the-road execution, helps brands manage in-house drivers and give those drivers the same technology of a third-party fleet. Our nationwide delivery fleet uses it daily for 100% of deliveries, and your in-house drivers can, too.
Over two dozen integrations with the online ordering, point of sale, and regional or speciality marketplaces already live in most restaurants. Our goal is to build technical bridges to connect to the restaurant's existing tech stack.
And finally, but certainly not least: a nationwide driver fleet to expand your delivery capabilities. With drivers in all 50 states and every major metro, DeliverThat drivers can be your primary fulfillment method or help supplement other DSPs and internal staff drivers.

And we’re not slowing down. Our 2026 roadmap includes Advanced Performance Analytics with smarter routing and fleet intelligence, a Unified Operations Hub for operators, and Autonomous Delivery Solutions. We are building for where this industry is going, not where it’s been.

What’s Next

To execute on this-- to build the platform and win the market simultaneously-- we need two focused leaders at the top.

Effective immediately, Aaron Hoffman, co-founder of DeliverThat, is stepping into the CEO role. Aaron has been the driving conviction behind what DeliverThat is: a belief that brands deserve to own their delivery experience, not rent it. He will focus on platform, product, operations, and long-term strategy, making sure the infrastructure we’re building is the best in the industry.

DeliverThat was built on a core belief: brands should control their guest experience through delivery. Not hand it to a platform; not hope for the best. Own it. The market is validating that belief in real time, and I’m stepping into this role to build on that momentum and execute on the opportunity in front of us at full speed.

— Aaron Hoffman, CEO

Darien Terrell, who has led DeliverThat with distinction as CEO, becomes Head of Partnerships. Darien built the enterprise relationships and commercial foundation that define our company today. In this new role, he’ll be singularly focused on revenue, enterprise partnerships, and market expansion, the most important growth opportunity in our company’s history.

We’ve built a platform, a fleet, a team, and a track record that’s unmatched in this space. My focus is ensuring every enterprise brand realizes the full value of what we’ve built, and that our partners have the control and capability to make delivery truly profitable. The timing couldn’t be better.

— Darien Terrell, Head of Partnerships

Two leaders. Two mandates. One mission.

Return Hospitality to Your Delivery Program

If you're an restaurant brand evaluating how to reduce dependence on third-party delivery marketplaces — or you're ready to move immediately — DeliverThat is the infrastructure platform built for you. Contact us for a pitch-free delivery program consultation.