The right catering event management software can make an enormous difference to your operations and event planning. Whether you’re a busy caterer or an event planner, having powerful catering software programs available can help you save time, maximize efficiency, provide a better customer experience, and ultimately, boost your bottom line.
There’s a lot that goes into catering and event planning, which means you need to use a software platform with all the right features and functions to handle the job.
To help you get started, this guide explores the top catering event management software platforms that food service companies can use.
What is Catering Event Management Software?
Catering management software refers to platforms that can help you organize, manage, and process different activities related to your catering and events business.
If you run a catering business, there are many details to stay on top of when planning an event. This includes dealing with clients, getting event inquiries, creating and managing menus, organizing recipe costs, managing the event budget, creating packing lists, staying on top of the event budget, and more.
Using the right catering management software will help you manage and streamline these processes. Many catering software tools can even automate many time-consuming tasks for you.
While different catering management software solutions work in their own unique ways, these platforms are all designed to help catering businesses stay more organized, work more efficiently, and improve their overall catering business operations.
Catering Event Management Software Top Picks
If you run an events and catering business, then you’ll be faced with many different catering management software tools. Finding the right one for your business can be tricky, as different solutions offer their own functions, features, pros, and cons.
To help you make the right choice for your catering company, here are some of the best catering event management software solutions available.
1. Perfect Venue
Perfect Venue is an all-in-one catering event management system for hospitality venues. The platform is designed to streamline event management while helping to maximize clients and profits. It’s the ideal toolset for any busy venue manager looking to optimize their processes.
Perfect Venue includes tools for automating time-consuming tasks (like generating BEOs), streamlining communications with email templates and automation, generating digital proposals, and more. The platform also includes detailed event analytics and is built around a central events calendar.
If you run an events venue, then Perfect Venue is the ideal solution for maximizing process efficiency and improving each customer’s experience. The system also integrates with all the software your venue already uses, making it easy to get started.
Main Features
- Email template library
- Automatically generated event documents
- Collect deposits and payments
- Digital proposals
- Real-time event analytics
2. Tripleseat
When it comes to catering and event management software, Tripleseat is always one of the most popular choices. This event management platform includes a wide range of features, like solutions for restaurants, hotels, and an online venue listing directory.
As catering management software, Tripleseat offers some useful tools for increasing bookings and streamlining planning processes. This includes things like a booking calendar, branded document creation, automated tasks, catering sales and event reporting, and payment processing.
While the platform has not been designed specifically as catering software, it does offer a solid range of features to improve productivity and organization within a catering business.
Check out our full Tripleseat review for more details.
Main Features
- Centralized booking and management platform
- Streamlined booking and sales tools
- Lead forms
- CRM
- Customizable proposals and invoices
3. Infor
Infor offers cloud hospitality software that helps businesses scale. The platform includes a wide range of solutions that can help manage guest experiences, revenue, event coordination, and more.
As a catering management software solution, Infor is particularly useful in helping manage food and beverage costs. The platform provides great control over expenses and labor for events and lets you access detailed customer history from the main dashboard.
This all adds together to help you deliver streamlined communication with your guests, monitor workloads in real time, manage your team members, and reduce operational friction when planning and managing catering events.
Main Features
- Enterprise resource planning
- Supply chain management
- HR and talent management
- Workforce management
4. Thynk
Thynk is a CRM designed for the hospitality and hotel industry. While it’s not a complete catering event management software solution, Thynk can be a great addition to catering companies looking to improve their sales process.
The platform offers automation, letting you send automated emails to leads and clients. This helps improve communications while saving time. You can also access detailed insights into the guest journey to help your catering company close more deals.
Whether you’re a corporate catering company or a DTC business, Thynk can be a useful tool for managing your customer acquisition, helping you save time and provide better client experiences.
Main Features
- Group sales and CRM
- Groups and events management
- Guest journey management
- Data insights
5. Caterease
Caterease is an event planning and catering software solution designed specifically for the catering industry. The platform includes a wide range of features for improving event planning and catering management.
This includes tools like an event booking wizard, staff and venue selection tools, automated recipes and packing lists, custom event prints, and more. The platform also includes everything you need to take your catering event management mobile.
You can also use Caterease to access detailed analytics and event reports via the custom business metrics, as well as gain insights into each customer’s history and details.
Overall, Caterease is a useful platform for helping your catering and events business save time on repetitive tasks while gaining greater insights into your event performance. This can help catering businesses drive up profits and enhance their overall performance.
Main Features
- Automatic reminders and checklists
- Event booking tools
- Recipes and packing lists
- Event staff selection tools
- Client history and correspondence tools
6. Event Temple
Event Temple offers hotel and venue management software with some useful features for caterers. The catering management system helps you send digital proposals, contracts, and invoices with ease. Some great communication features let you respond to inquiries faster. This can help event planners and catering services secure more bookings.
Event Temple is a robust catering system for managing sales and event planning. The platform’s catering software solutions include a sales CRM, a smart mail feature, invoicing and payment tools, automated workflows, eProposals, an events calendar, and more.
Any event planners that want to stay organized with efficient workflows could find value in this system.
Main Features
- Pipeline and sales CRM
- Invoicing and payments
- Event scheduling and calendar
- BEO creation
- Automated workflows
Conclusion
There’s a lot to consider when choosing catering event management software. You can look for a tool that focuses on powerful sales abilities and customer experience management. You can focus on a platform that helps with admin, document creation, recipe costing, and more.
Whatever the case, make sure the solution fits into the existing systems and software of your business.
If you run a venue that needs additional event management software, consider Perfect Venue. The platform includes everything you need to attract more customers and improve operations. Try it for free!
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