Holiday Catering Checklist
for Restaurants (2026)
From mid-November to New Year's, catering requests pile up: office parties, family gatherings, holiday open houses, "can you do 40 people on the 19th?" If those requests come in by phone and text, they eat your evenings and leave room for mistakes.
Use this checklist in late October or early November to be ready before the first party call.
☐ 1. Build a Short Holiday Catering Menu
Don't offer your full menu for 50 people. Pick the dishes that travel well, hold their temperature, and scale easily — trays, family-style sides, boxed lunches, dessert platters.
Add one or two holiday specials. A seasonal tray gives people a reason to choose you over the place they ordered from last year.
☐ 2. Take Catering Orders Online
The fastest way to stop the phone tag is a catering menu customers can order from themselves. With Gegsy, catering runs separately from your regular menu — with its own eligible items, fees, and locations — for pickup or delivery. Orders land in Square like any other order.
For the bigger picture, see how to accept catering orders online without the headaches.
☐ 3. Set Holiday Lead Times
Lead time is the minimum notice a customer has to give. Your normal 24 hours might not hold up in December, when you're juggling dine-in, takeout, and five parties on the same Friday.
Consider bumping catering lead time to 48–72 hours from early December. You set separate lead times for catering pickup and catering delivery, in days and hours.
☐ 4. Set a Minimum Order
A catering minimum keeps a 6-person "catering" order from tying up your kitchen like a 60-person one. Set it per fulfillment type so delivery minimums can be higher than pickup.
☐ 5. Decide How Catering Gets Delivered
Delivering 40 people's food is different from delivering a burrito. Decide now:
- Your own staff for big, high-value orders you want to set up yourself.
- A courier partner for smaller drops. Courier fees vary with distance, order size, demand, and traffic, and you choose whether you or the customer covers them. Our delivery guide breaks down the options.
☐ 6. Block Out Your Holiday Closures
Nothing's worse than accepting a catering order for a day you're closed. Add restricted dates for Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, and any staff days off. On a restricted date, customers can't pick that location for pickup or delivery — no more awkward cancellation calls.
☐ 7. Let Offices Order as a Group
Not every office party is one person ordering 30 trays. Plenty are "everyone picks their own lunch." Group ordering lets a whole team add to one order and pay for their own items, with one pickup or delivery.
☐ 8. Have Gift Cards Ready
Many companies that cater a party also buy gift cards for staff. Make sure online gift cards are on before the first catering client asks.
☐ 9. Tell Last Year's Catering Customers First
Your best December leads are the people who ordered catering last December. Reach out in early November with your holiday menu and a link to order. Then promote it more broadly:
- A banner on your ordering website
- An in-app notification to your app customers (Pro plan)
- A holiday post on your Google Business Profile
- A printed card in every takeout bag
☐ 10. Plan the Kitchen Side
Online ordering handles intake; your kitchen still has to deliver. Decide how many catering orders you can take per day, who preps them, and when. Put the big days on a calendar the whole team can see.
The Bottom Line
The restaurants that win holiday catering aren't necessarily the cheapest — they're the easiest to order from. Get your menu, lead times, closures, and online ordering set up now, and December becomes your best month instead of your most chaotic.
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