Email the person who actually books lunches, usually an office manager or executive assistant, with a short message and a one-page proposal: three priced options, a dietary grid and delivery windows. Follow up three times over about two weeks, each with a new reason to reply. AI drafts the messages from your menu; you check prices and allergens.
Templates are the easy part of corporate catering. Winning depends on the sequence: who you write to, what the first email asks for, and what the second and third add. An office manager is judged on lunch arriving on time and nobody being served something they cannot eat, so those two worries should shape every message. An assistant writes faster than you do, but it knows nothing about your kitchen's capacity, and that is where outreach goes wrong.
Who books office lunches, and what each of them worries about
Most proposal templates assume you already have a contact. The harder job is finding the right person, and the right person is rarely the one with "director" in their title.
| Who books | Judged on | Lead with |
|---|---|---|
| Office manager at a firm of 20 to 80 staff | Lunch arriving on time, no complaints, easy invoicing | A delivery window and one named contact |
| Executive assistant to a partner or managing director | Client lunches that look right, last-minute changes | A same-day change rule and a platter option |
| People or culture lead | Team lunches and all-hands days, inclusion | The dietary grid and portion sizes |
| Facilities or building manager | Access, set-up, waste, clear-down | Where the van parks, packaging, tray collection |
| Practice manager at a small professional firm | Long meeting days and client hospitality | A menu with premium options and exact timings |
| Team lead in an agency or recruiter | Spontaneous team lunches, pitch days | Same-day lead time and simple ordering |
Four example prospects run through the rest of this tutorial: a recruitment agency, a marketing agency, an architecture practice and a law firm with four fee earners. They want different things from the same menu. The recruitment agency wants Friday team lunches, the marketing agency workshop days, the architecture practice client lunches on review days, and the law firm meeting-room lunches when clients visit.
Build a list of 40 offices in one sitting
Start with a delivery zone you can actually serve. Draw the line at the distance your van can cover inside the lunch window, say 25 minutes door to door, and list offices inside it. Good sources are map searches for the sectors above, the directory boards in buildings you already deliver to, business-park listings, and your own customers: a wedding or party client will usually tell you where they work if you ask. For each office record the company, type, building, a headcount guess, the likely contact's role, where you found them and the website.
An assistant can help you sort the list, though not find the people. Paste 40 company names with one line each from their website's about page, and ask it to rank them.
Below are 40 offices with a line from each website. Sort them into three groups: likely to order regular team or client lunches, maybe, and unlikely. Give one short reason per office, based only on the line I gave you. If the line does not say enough, put it in "maybe" and say what is missing.Read the reasons rather than the groups. When the model says "likely, because law firms host clients" it is guessing from the sector. That is fine for deciding who to email first, and it is not evidence that the firm buys lunches. Aim for 10 to 15 emails a week, so that every reply gets a quick, personal answer.
The first email: 90 words and one ask
The ask is a tasting box, not a contract. Nobody signs a lunch contract with a stranger, but plenty of people will say yes to six free portions delivered to their desk. Give the assistant the facts about you and about them, and forbid it from adding anything else.
Write a first email from a caterer to an office manager. 90 words maximum. One ask: a free tasting box for six people, delivered at a time that suits them.
Use only the facts below. No flattery, no claims about quality, no invented clients or testimonials, no allergen statements, no "I hope this finds you well".
About us: [business name]; two-person kitchen team; delivers office lunches within our delivery zone; minimum 10 people; 48 hours' notice; options from $13.50 a head; dietary grid on the one-page proposal.
About them: marketing agency of about 25 staff; its website says it runs client workshops on Thursdays.
Tone: plain and specific. Sign off with [your name].An illustrative reply, which came in at 86 words:
Subject: Thursday workshop lunches for your team?
Hi [first name],
I run [business name], a small kitchen that delivers office lunches within a short drive of your building. Your website mentions client workshops on Thursdays, and I wondered who looks after lunch for those.
I'd like to send a tasting box for six, free, on a day that suits you. The attached page has three options and a dietary grid; nothing else to read.
Would Tuesday or Wednesday work? If someone else books lunches, a name would help just as much.
[your name]What to check before it goes. The line about workshops must come from their site; if you cannot point to it, delete the sentence, because false familiarity is worse than none. Look for the lines a model adds when the prompt lets it, such as "we have catered for hundreds of offices", and cut them. Make sure "free" has a limit you can afford: one tasting box per office, six portions, inside your delivery zone. Keep the subject line as plain as the example; "Tasting box for your team" is fine, and anything with an exclamation mark is not.
Send this to four offices of the kinds above and the emails differ. The marketing agency gets the workshop line. The recruitment agency gets a line about Friday team lunches, but only if you have seen evidence, such as a careers page that mentions team events. The architecture practice and the law firm may have nothing public to quote, so they get the plain version: who you are, what you offer, the tasting box. A shorter, honest email beats a personalised one built on a guess.
A one-page proposal an office manager can forward
The proposal exists so that the person you wrote to can send it to whoever approves spend without explaining anything. It needs to fit on one page and say, in this order: what you offer and at what price, who it suits, how ordering works, and what you do about allergens. The template tutorials cover layouts in depth; see a catering proposal template with packages, prices and terms. What follows is the filled-in content that does the selling.
| Option | Per head | Includes | Minimum | Notice |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Desk lunch | $13.50 | Sandwich or wrap, salad, fruit, drink | 10 people | 48 hours |
| Hot lunch | $19.00 | One hot main, two sides, dessert, serving utensils | 15 people | 72 hours |
| Client platters | $24.00 | Mixed platters with premium fillings, desserts, napkins and plates | 6 people | 72 hours |
These prices are illustrative. Yours come from your own costing sheet, and a cost-per-person pricing sheet shows how to build one. Under the table, print the delivery rule (say free above $200, otherwise $15), the delivery window you promise (for example arrival between 11:45 and 12:15), payment terms, the cancellation rule, and who to ring on the day. Paste these in from your own terms; an assistant should never invent them.
Then the dietary grid. Here is the layout, with made-up dishes. Fill it from your recipes and supplier labels, never from the assistant's idea of what a dish contains.
| Dish | Vegetarian | Vegan | Contains gluten | Contains nuts | Contains dairy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roast vegetable wrap | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Chicken and herb sandwich | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Quinoa and herb salad | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
A grid like this answers the second worry on an office manager's list before they ask. Add one honest sentence about your kitchen, for example that it handles gluten, nuts and dairy, because a dish that contains no nuts can still be made on shared surfaces. For how a menu cycle carries allergens through from recipe to label, see a four-week menu cycle with costs and allergens.
Three follow-ups, each with a different job
Most people who ignore a first email are busy, not uninterested. Follow-ups work when each one gives a reason to reply that the last one did not. Give the assistant the first email and the three jobs, and keep each message short.
Here is my first email to an office manager (pasted below). Write three follow-ups.
Day 3: add something useful, the dietary grid, and offer a same-afternoon quote if they give me a headcount and a day.
Day 8: offer a specific tasting slot, so a one-word yes is enough, and ask who books lunches if it is not them.
Day 15: close politely, say I will stop emailing, and leave the one-page menu and my phone number.
Each under 60 words. No pressure, no new claims, no "just checking in".Edited into shape, the three look like this.
Day 3. Hi [first name], one thing I should have attached: our dietary grid for the three options, with what each dish contains. If you tell me a headcount and a day, I can send a quote the same afternoon. [your name]
Day 8. Hi [first name], I have a delivery slot on [day] and could bring six tasting portions to your office at 12:15. A yes is all I need and I will sort the rest. If someone else looks after lunches, who should I ask? [your name]
Day 15. Hi [first name], I will stop emailing after this one. If lunches come up for a workshop or a client day, the one-page menu is attached and I am on [number]. Thank you for reading. [your name]
Check that "I have a delivery slot on [day]" is true when you send it, and that the day-3 grid is the one currently in use. To keep the rhythm without sitting at the keyboard, write all three in one session and use Gmail's schedule send. Gmail lets you hold up to 100 scheduled emails at once and sends each in the time zone you chose when you scheduled it, so a Sunday evening session can queue a whole week. Cancel the queued follow-ups for any office that replies: open Gmail's Scheduled folder, open the message and choose Cancel send, and it goes back to your drafts. Knowing which ones to cancel is why the tracking sheet below matters. For general guidance on cadence without sounding pushy, how to automate sales follow-ups without being pushy is a good companion.
The tracking sheet: twelve columns and one formula
A single sheet with one row per office is enough. Without it, the third follow-up goes to someone who replied on day four and was never marked.
- Company and Type (agency, practice, law firm and so on).
- Contact role, not a name you cannot confirm.
- Source: map search, building board, referral.
- First email: the date sent.
- Stage, a dropdown: Listed, Emailed, Follow-up 1, Follow-up 2, Follow-up 3, Replied, Tasting booked, Trial order, Won, Stopped.
- Next due, a formula.
- Tasting date, Est. weekly value, Last reply, Stop reason and Notes.
With First email in column E and Stage in column F, this formula in column G shows when the next message is due:
=IF(F2="Emailed",E2+3,IF(F2="Follow-up 1",E2+8,IF(F2="Follow-up 2",E2+15,"")))Three illustrative rows show how it reads:
| Company type | Contact role | First email | Stage | Next due | Est. weekly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing agency, 25 staff | Office manager | 3 Nov | Follow-up 1 | 11 Nov | $270 |
| Law firm, four fee earners | Practice manager | 3 Nov | Tasting booked | $120 | |
| Architecture practice | Executive assistant | 4 Nov | Emailed | 7 Nov |
On Monday morning, and on any day a reply arrives, filter for Next due on or before today, check that each scheduled message went out (or send it), and move each stage on. Twenty minutes is enough for 40 rows. Four rules keep it honest. A reply of any kind moves the office to Replied and stops the sequence. "Not now" becomes Stopped, with a date to try again in three months. A bounced address is fixed or the row is stopped. And a "wrong person" reply is the best result you can get, because it usually comes with the right name.
The tasting box: what goes in it and what happens next
A tasting box has a second job beyond the food: it starts a conversation with the person who books. Build it so that conversation is easy to have.
- The food. Six portions that sample all three options, each labelled with the dish name.
- The paper. The one-page proposal and an allergen card listing every item in the box, printed from the same grid you emailed.
- The question. A short note: "Tell me the one thing you would change." People answer a specific question when they would ignore a general one.
- The handover. Arrive ten minutes before the time you promised, ask for the named contact at reception, and hand it over rather than leaving it on a desk.
The same afternoon, send two lines: delivered at 12:05, and what would they change? The next morning, send the quote. Draft it with the assistant if you like, but paste the numbers in yourself:
Hi [first name], thanks for trying the box. For 20 people on the desk lunch option, a delivery comes to $270, delivery included. I'd suggest a trial of four Thursdays from [date], no minimum term, with the menu confirmed by Tuesday each week. Shall I pencil in the first one? [your name]
Treat the first paid delivery as an audition. Arrive early, label every tray, bring spare plates, and send a message afterwards asking whether anything was missing. The tracker moves to Won when the office has ordered three times or agreed a standing order, not when they first say yes.
What an account is worth, and the sum for the tasting boxes
A 20-person office ordering the desk lunch once a week shows what an account is worth. All figures are illustrative; use your own costing.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Revenue: 20 people at $13.50 | $270 |
| Food and packaging at $4.90 a head | $98 |
| Delivery: fuel and driver time | $30 |
| Left per lunch, before overheads | $142 |
Over 48 delivery weeks that is $6,816 before overheads. A tasting box costs about $42 in food and packaging plus $15 for delivery, so $57. Five boxes cost $285, and if two lead to standing accounts, each account cost about $143 to win, roughly one lunch's contribution. The sum is why a free tasting is affordable and a discount on the first order is not.
Now a plan to test, with planning assumptions rather than benchmarks: list 40 offices, email all of them over three weeks, get 7 replies, send 5 tasting boxes, win 3 trial orders and end up with 2 standing accounts. Run it for a month and compare. If you get far fewer replies than the plan, change the first email before anything else. If replies are fine but trials are few, the tasting box or the quote needs work. If trials are fine but standing orders are few, look at how the first deliveries went. Time cost is about three hours to build the list, two hours to draft and schedule, then 90 minutes a week.
Where AI drafts go wrong in catering outreach
- Allergen and dietary claims. A model will call a dish "gluten-free" because the name sounds like it. Tell it never to state or imply allergen information, and paste your own grid.
- Invented credentials. "Trusted by over 200 companies", "award-winning" and "locally sourced" are the sort of lines a draft supplies unprompted. Delete any claim you cannot prove on the spot.
- Prices and notice periods that drift. A draft may round $13.50 to "about $14" or turn 48 hours' notice into "same-day". Compare every number with your sheet before sending.
- Over-personal openers. Stick to what a business publishes about itself. A line built on a person's private social posts is unsettling, even if it is public.
- Promises about capacity. "We can cater any size" is false for a two-person kitchen. State your maximum per day and per delivery window in the proposal, and tell the assistant that number is fixed.
Sending rules for cold email
At 10 to 15 emails a week you do not need a bulk tool; send from your own business mailbox, one at a time. Put your business name, a phone number and a plain opt-out line in the signature, such as "If lunches are not for you, tell me and I will not email again". Honour that request the same day. Rules on emailing businesses differ between places, so if you plan to scale up or buy lists, ask a data-protection adviser before you do. For wider advice on keeping first emails out of spam folders, see writing cold emails with AI that stay out of spam.
Six weeks from blank page to the first standing order
- Week 1. List 40 offices, build the tracker, write the one-page proposal and have your cook check the dietary grid line by line.
- Week 2. On Monday, send 15 first emails and schedule their follow-ups, so the day-3 message lands on Thursday. Prepare a tasting box kit: labels, cards, bags, the note.
- Week 3. Send 15 more on Monday. The first batch gets its day-8 follow-up on Tuesday. Deliver the first tasting boxes.
- Week 4. Send the last 10. The first batch gets its day-15 close and the second batch its day-8 follow-up, and a quote follows each tasting. Aim for your first trial order.
- Week 5. Closes go to the second batch and day-8 follow-ups to the third. Read every reply for what it tells you about the first email.
- Week 6. The third batch gets its closes. Compare results with the plan, change one thing, and start the next 40 offices.
If an office replies asking for a formal tender, treat that as a separate job with its own rules. Until then, the sequence above is the whole job: one list, one page, one tasting box and three honest follow-ups.
Questions caterers ask about office outreach
Should the proposal be a PDF or the email body?
Put the three options and prices in the email body so they read well on a phone, and attach a one-page PDF for whoever approves spend. The email should make sense without opening the attachment. Keep the PDF to one page with your phone number and allergen policy on it, because that is the page that gets forwarded.
How many follow-ups should I send before I stop?
Three over about two weeks is a sensible limit for a cold sequence: something useful at day three, an easier next step at day eight and a polite close at day fifteen. Stop at once if anyone replies, even to say no. After the last message, leave the office alone for a season and return with something new, such as a seasonal menu.
Is it acceptable to cold-email an office manager?
Writing to a business about a business service is common, but rules differ between places and some treat a named person's work address as personal data. Identify yourself, keep the subject line accurate, offer an easy opt-out, honour it quickly and keep a record. If you are unsure what applies, ask a data-protection adviser before sending in bulk.
Should I discount the first order to win the contract?
Offer the tasting box instead. A free tasting for six lets the office judge the food at a cost you control, while a price cut on the first order sets a price you will struggle to raise. If you must discount, make it a stated introductory offer with an end date and the standard price printed beside it.
Can AI write the allergen information for me?
No. Allergen statements come from your recipes, supplier labels and kitchen practice, maintained by the person who cooks. Paste your own allergen grid into the proposal and tell the assistant not to add or alter a claim. A wrong gluten-free or nut-free label is a safety problem, not a wording problem, so every claim needs a person's sign-off.
Further reads
- Catering Quote Software: Which Tools Turn Enquiries Into Quotes? — Tools that turn enquiries into quotes quickly
- Can AI Write a Catering Tender Response? What to Keep Confidential — What to do when an office issues a formal tender
- Wedding Catering Proposals: Tastings, Quotes and Follow-Ups With AI — The wedding version of tasting and follow-up
- Headshot Photography Business: Reach Corporate Clients With AI Outreach — Another trade that sells to offices
- Following Up Silent Quotes With AI: A Decorator's Playbook — Following up quotes that go quiet
- Corporate Gym Memberships: Pitch Local Employers With AI-Drafted Offers — A sister pitch to employers, from a gym owner
- Does a Coffee Shop Need an AI Receptionist? When It Pays — A payback sum for an AI receptionist in a coffee shop, using missed large-order calls, plus the case where you should not buy one.
- Stationery Shop Marketing Ideas: School and Corporate Orders With AI — A step-by-step plan for winning school and small-office orders: the price sheet, the buyer list, AI-drafted emails, follow-ups, samples and quotes.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Gmail Help (schedule send). Prices, costs and conversion figures in the worked examples are illustrative assumptions, not benchmarks.