Google Ads for caterers: the build order

For caterers the conversion that matters is a signed proposal with the deposit paid, and it lives in your catering software (Tripleseat, Caterease, Total Party Planner, or HoneyBook for smaller teams) — not in the ad platform. Google can only optimize toward what you send it, so whatever you pick here decides what the algorithm spends the next ninety days chasing. Pick the wrong one and every later step in this playbook is executed perfectly in the wrong direction.

This is the step we get called about most. If you do not have a developer for it, that is the normal situation rather than the exception — it is most of what we do, and it is worth fixing before the spend rather than after.

Google enables these on every new Search campaign, and none of them are keyword decisions — they are switches on the settings screen that decide where the money goes before a single keyword applies. Everything else in this playbook operates on whatever is left after they have taken their cut, so a reader who skips this step spends the rest of it optimizing a remainder.

For Catering · Run weddings and private events in a different campaign from corporate drop-off, each with its own ZIP list, schedule and budget. Presence-only targeting keeps office-lunch clicks inside the delivery window.

Catering margin depends on the drive and the kitchen. A drop-off order has to arrive hot and on schedule, so corporate delivery belongs in a tight area around the kitchen at late-morning traffic. A full-service wedding carries a staffing and rental bill large enough to justify a longer drive, especially to venues you already know. Target the two businesses separately, and draw the event area from where you have actually served.

Catering calls split two ways. Corporate buyers call to order: an office manager wants lunch for a meeting this week and will call the next caterer if nobody answers. Event buyers call to ask: is the date open, do you do tastings, can you work at this venue. The people who answer are often on-site running an event at the busiest calling hours, so the call conversion has to describe what a qualified inquiry sounds like, and the signed proposal decides what was worth paying for.

One flat keyword list is why most accounts in this vertical cannot tell which half of the budget works. Sorting terms by the intent behind them means you can bid, write and judge each group on its own terms — a problem-aware search and a competitor search convert at rates that have nothing to do with each other, and averaging them hides both.

Exact match includes close variants — misspellings, plurals, reordered words, dropped function words. Phrase match now behaves roughly like the old broad-match-modified. Broad match reaches as far as Google judges useful, which with a good conversion signal is genuinely valuable and without one is an open tap. Start narrow, prove the signal, then widen — in that order, because widening is reversible and a mistrained bidding algorithm is not.

For Catering · Broad match on 'catering' drifts into catering jobs, supply stores, grocery platters and food trucks for sale. Keep wedding and corporate terms on exact and phrase until tastings and deposits are importing.

Every vertical has a set of searches that look commercial and are not. In caterers those are job seekers, students, people looking for free help, and DIY researchers. Broad and phrase match will find all of them for you. Add this list at the account level on day zero — the first week of an unfiltered account is the most expensive week it will ever have.

Ad groups exist so the ad can match the search. The moment a group holds two intents, the ad has to be vague enough to cover both, and vague ads lose the auction on relevance before budget ever enters the picture. Build these groups, each with its own ads and its own landing page.

Google rewards assets that match the search and the page behind it. It penalizes — and increasingly disapproves — copy that promises something the page does not deliver. Every line below is written to be provable on arrival. Character counts are shown because assets over the limit are rejected at upload, which is where most copied-from-a-blog ad copy dies.

Catering has no Local Services Ads category, so nothing sits above your text ads charging per lead on catering searches. The space around you belongs to marketplaces and directories instead: ezCater takes corporate orders, The Knot and WeddingWire take wedding inquiries, and restaurants with catering menus bid on the same office-lunch terms. Those sources produce real events, but the order or inquiry happens on their site, so each needs its own source in the catering software and none belongs in your Google Ads conversion import.

Catering runs on two calendars. In much of the country weddings and large private events cluster in the warm months and around graduations, with inquiries arriving many months ahead, often after holiday-season engagements. Corporate demand follows the office calendar: steady on weekdays, quieter in late summer and the last weeks of December, with holiday parties booked in the fall. A quiet inquiry month for weddings can simply be the month every Saturday is already sold.

Position is not bought, it is earned and then paid for. Google ranks you on your bid multiplied by how good it expects your ad and landing page to be, plus your assets — so a relevant advertiser at half the bid outranks a vague one, and then pays less per click at the same position. This is the mechanism underneath everything above: tight ad groups and honest ad copy are not tidiness, they are the discount.

For Catering · ezCater and the wedding directories sit beside you on many catering searches, and restaurants bid on office lunch. Win on the event type and date the buyer typed rather than on the broadest terms.

Start on Maximize Conversions with qualified quote requests as the primary conversion, one action for events and one for corporate orders, because signed deposits are too few at first for bidding to learn from. Import tastings held as a middle stage for weddings, and the signed proposal with its contract value from the catering software as soon as it can be sent. Weddings booked a season ahead can sign after Google's 90-day import window closes, so for those the tasting is the signal bidding actually learns from. Move wedding campaigns to value-based bidding once contract values flow, and keep corporate on its own budget, valued by the repeat orders an account brings rather than the first one. Smart bidding is a data problem before it is a strategy problem: with thin or wrong conversion data it will confidently optimize toward noise, and it does that faster than a manual account can lose money.

For Catering · Move off quote requests once tastings and signed proposals import from Tripleseat, Caterease, Total Party Planner or HoneyBook, and give wedding campaigns contract values so a plated dinner counts for more than a sandwich tray.

Most accounts are killed or rescued on evidence that could not have meant anything yet. The bidding algorithm is fitting a model, and a model fitted on two weeks of data is fitted on noise. This is the shortest honest schedule: what to look at each stretch, and — more usefully — what to ignore.

For Catering · Read every quote request and listen to a sample of calls in the first month. If many ask about booked dates, are existing accounts reordering, or are suppliers, fix the conversion before judging any campaign.

An account left alone drifts toward the cheapest clicks it can find, because that is what the system is built to do when nobody corrects it. This is the shortest routine that keeps it honest. It takes about an hour and it is the difference between an account that compounds and one that plateaus at month three.

For Catering · Compare quote requests with open dates, and tastings with signed deposits, by campaign. A campaign full of inquiries for sold Saturdays has a calendar problem before it has a keyword problem.