The QSR Catering Boom: How Chains Like Chipotle, Panera, and Chick-fil-A Built Billion-Dollar Catering Programs

The $73 Billion Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight For decades, catering was an afterthought for most quick-service restaurant chains - a laminated menu tucked behind the register, a phone number scrawled on a flyer. The real money, conventional wisdom held, was in the drive-thru lane and the lunch rush. That calculus has changed dramatically. The U.S. catering market reached an estimated $72.67 billion in 2024, according to Expert Market Research, and is projected to grow at a 6.2% compound annual growth rate through 2034, when it could surpass $132 billion. The corporate segment is expanding even faster, with some analysts pegging workplace catering growth at 7% annually. For restaurant operators watching same-store sales flatten and consumer spending tighten, those numbers represent something rare: a growth channel with higher average tickets, more predictable demand, and built-in customer acquisition. And the chains that figured that out early - Panera, Chick-fil-A, McAlister's - are now reaping the rewards, while late entrants like Chipotle and Dave's Hot Chicken race to catch up. ## The Return-to-Office Tailwind The post-pandemic return to office didn't just bring workers back to their desks. It brought their lunch budgets with it - and those budgets increasingly flow through corporate catering programs rather than individual expense reports. Data from ezCater, the largest workplace food platform in the U.S., paints a striking picture of the acceleration. In a May 2025 survey of more than 2,300 workplace food stakeholders, the company found that 43% of organizations now have a recurring meal program in place - up 17% from the prior year. Average order values on the platform climbed 12% to $420, while average headcount per order rose 9% to 25 people. The financial case is hard to argue with. Restaurants with established catering programs experienced a 5.1% increase in overall revenue from 2023 to 2024, according to ezCater's data, comfortably outpacing the 3.3% average revenue growth rate for restaurants and bars tracked by Technomic. Among corporate orderers, 60% said they planned to increase their workplace food spending in 2025, with nearly a third expecting budget increases of 25% or more. "Workplace catering has always been a big opportunity for restaurants, but now it's bigger than ever," said Cindy Klein Roche, ezCater's Chief Marketing Officer. "Organizations are ordering for more occasions and bringing in food from local restaurants on a programmatic, recurring basis." Perhaps most compelling for brand marketers: 70% of employees who first try a restaurant through an employer-provided meal go on to order from that restaurant personally - a 49% increase over the prior year's figure. Catering, in other words, isn't just a revenue stream. It's a customer acquisition channel. ## Panera: The Pioneer That Proved the Model No chain deserves more credit for legitimizing QSR catering than Panera Bread. Long before "workplace food" became a boardroom buzzword, Panera was building dedicated catering infrastructure - separate ordering systems, specialized packaging, catering-specific menus designed for boardroom tables rather than drive-thru windows. Pre-pandemic, approximately 10% of Panera's total business came from catering, according to reporting from Restaurant Business Online. For a chain that generated $4.69 billion in revenue in 2024, that represented a catering business approaching half a billion dollars annually from a single brand. The pandemic devastated that channel, but Panera's response was instructive. Rather than waiting for offices to reopen, the company launched virtual catering options and individual boxed meals designed for hybrid work environments. It invested in a catering rewards program - $20 back for every $500 spent - that incentivized repeat orders from office managers and executive assistants who control corporate food budgets. Now, as parent company Panera Brands pursues a strategic plan to reach $7 billion in systemwide sales by 2028, catering is positioned as a central growth lever. The brand's menu - sandwiches, salads, soups, pastries - maps naturally onto the corporate catering occasion, and its café-bakery positioning carries a perceived quality that makes office managers comfortable putting it in front of clients and executives. ## Chick-fil-A: The Tray That Built an Empire Chick-fil-A doesn't break out its catering revenue, but the chain's catering tray program has become one of the most recognizable corporate catering formats in the country. The Nugget Tray, the Chick-n-Strips Tray, the Fruit Tray - these are fixtures at office parties, church events, school functions, and corporate meetings across the South and increasingly nationwide. The scale is staggering. Chick-fil-A generated $22.75 billion in total U.S. systemwide sales in 2024, with stand-alone locations averaging $9 million in annual unit volume. Even a modest catering mix - industry analysts estimate it at 5% to 8% of sales for well-run Chick-fil-A locations - would place the chain's catering business comfortably above $1 billion annually. What makes Chick-fil-A's catering model distinctive is its simplicity. The tray format requires no specialized packaging or complex logistics. It use the same kitchen operations and the same product that customers already know. A Chick-fil-A Nugget Tray for 16 people runs roughly $50 to $65 - an accessible price point that lowers the barrier for first-time catering orderers. The chain's legendary operational consistency is equally important. When an office manager orders 15 Nugget Trays for a company-wide meeting, they know exactly what they're getting. That reliability, combined with Chick-fil-A's fanatical customer service culture, creates the kind of repeat catering business that compounds over time. ## McAlister's Deli: Catering as a Core Identity When McAlister's Deli became the first brand in the GoTo Foods portfolio (formerly Focus Brands) to cross $1 billion in systemwide sales in 2024, company leadership pointed directly to catering as a key driver of that milestone. The deli chain, which operates roughly 560 locations, reported an average unit volume exceeding $1.9 million for traditional locations - a figure that leadership attributed in part to what they described as "massive improvements year over year" in catering operations. McAlister's manages 11 distinct revenue channels, including catering, curbside pickup, and digital ordering, but catering occupies a privileged position in the brand's growth strategy. The format lends itself naturally to the occasion. McAlister's sandwich trays, boxed lunches, soup-and-salad combos, and its signature sweet tea by the gallon are designed for the kind of working lunch meetings that dominate corporate catering demand. The brand has invested heavily in making catering ordering frictionless - online platforms, dedicated catering coordinators at the store level, and loyalty programs that reward repeat catering customers. For GoTo Foods, McAlister's catering playbook is now a template being studied across the rest of the portfolio. When a 560-unit chain can attribute a meaningful share of a billion-dollar revenue milestone to catering, the economics demand attention. ## Chipotle: The Late Mover With the Biggest Upside Perhaps the most fascinating catering story in QSR right now is Chipotle's belated but aggressive push into group occasions. For a $11.3 billion brand with more than 3,600 locations, Chipotle's catering penetration remains remarkably low - just 2% of all transactions come from groups of four or more, and combined catering and group order sales represented only about 3% of total revenue as recently as late 2025. CEO Scott Boatwright has been blunt about the magnitude of the opportunity. On the company's Q4 2025 earnings call, he said that group occasions "could be a double-digit percentage of overall sales over the long term" - a statement that, applied to Chipotle's current revenue base, would imply a multi-billion-dollar catering business. The company is attacking the opportunity from multiple angles. In August 2025, Chipotle launched "Build-Your-Own Chipotle," a format designed for small groups of four to six people that recreates the burrito-bar experience at home or in the office. The product allows a host to order a spread of proteins, rice, beans, and toppings that guests assemble themselves - essentially a miniature version of the Chipotle makeline delivered to a conference room. For larger events of 10 or more, Chipotle offers a traditional catering menu with spreads priced per person. And the chain's Group Order feature on its mobile app lets one person create a shareable link so that multiple colleagues can add individual meals to a single consolidated order. The challenge for Chipotle is operational. The chain's made-to-order model, which is central to its brand promise, creates throughput constraints that make large catering orders logistically complex. Building dedicated catering prep capacity without cannibalizing the in-store experience is an execution challenge that Panera and McAlister's solved years ago - and that Chipotle is still working through. But the ceiling is extraordinary. If Chipotle can move group occasions from 3% to even 10% of sales, that's roughly $800 million in incremental revenue at current volumes, with potentially higher margins than individual transactions. ## The New Entrants: Dave's Hot Chicken, Sweetgreen, and Crumbl The catering gold rush isn't limited to established players. A wave of fast-growing chains launched catering programs in 2024 and 2025, betting that workplace food demand has permanently expanded. Dave's Hot Chicken, the 200-plus-unit hot chicken phenomenon, debuted its first-ever catering program in February 2025 through a partnership with ezCater. The company projected that catering could represent as much as 10% of its business within a year of launch - a remarkably ambitious target for a brand that had never operated in the channel before. "This partnership will help us capitalize on the growing demand in workplace catering while also opening up a new revenue stream for our franchise owners," said Jim Bitticks, the chain's President and COO. Crumbl, the cookie chain with more than 1,000 locations, partnered with ezCater in December 2024 to bring its rotating menu of oversized cookies into offices and workplaces. The move was a natural fit for a brand whose product is inherently shareable and occasion-driven - few foods travel better to an office party than a box of cookies. Sweetgreen took a more ambitious approach in February 2026, launching its "Sweetgreen Bar" catering format designed to serve groups ranging from 10 to 10,000 people. The concept creates an off-premise version of Sweetgreen's in-store makeline, allowing guests to build their own bowls from a spread of bases, proteins, and toppings. It's the fast-casual salad chain's most flexible catering format to date, and a direct play for the corporate wellness-oriented lunch occasion. ## The Operational Playbook: What Separates Winners From Also-Rans Launching a catering menu is easy. Building a catering business that meaningfully moves the revenue needle requires a different set of capabilities entirely. The chains that have succeeded share several common traits. First, they've invested in dedicated ordering infrastructure - separate websites, specialized apps, and integrations with platforms like ezCater that handle the complex logistics of large-format orders. Panera's dedicated catering site, Chick-fil-A's tray ordering system, and McAlister's multi-channel approach all reduce friction for the office manager who needs to feed 30 people by noon tomorrow. Second, successful catering operators have solved the packaging problem. Individual meals designed for walk-in customers don't translate directly to catering occasions. Panera's boxed lunch format, Chick-fil-A's trays with built-in serving utensils, and McAlister's gallon-format sweet tea all demonstrate thoughtful packaging design that makes setup effortless for the customer. Third - and perhaps most critically - the winners have built catering into their labor model rather than treating it as an add-on. Preparing a 50-person catering order during the lunch rush is a recipe for operational disaster if the kitchen isn't staffed and scheduled for it. McAlister's dedicated catering coordinators and Panera's separate catering production workflows are competitive advantages that took years to develop. Finally, the marketing sophistication matters. The best catering operators have recognized that the catering customer is fundamentally different from the walk-in customer. The decision-maker is often an office manager or executive assistant who controls a recurring budget. Loyalty programs, dedicated account managers, and B2B marketing campaigns that target these gatekeepers generate repeat business at a scale that consumer marketing simply cannot match. ## The Stakes: Why Catering Could Reshape QSR Economics The catering boom isn't just a revenue story. It's potentially a margin story as well. Catering orders tend to be larger, more predictable, and more efficient to produce than individual transactions. A single 50-person catering order generates the revenue equivalent of dozens of individual transactions, with fewer labor touchpoints per dollar of sales. For franchise operators, catering can also smooth out the revenue volatility that plagues traditional QSR operations. Corporate catering demand peaks on Tuesday through Thursday - complementing the consumer-driven weekend business - and recurring meal programs create a base of predictable weekly revenue that makes staffing and inventory planning more manageable. The risk, as always, is execution. Catering orders that arrive late, incomplete, or poorly presented don't just lose that order - they lose the recurring relationship with the office manager who controls a four- or five-figure monthly food budget. The operational bar is higher, and the consequences of failure are steeper. But for the chains that get it right, the math is compelling. In a $73 billion market growing at better than 6% annually, the question isn't whether QSR brands should be investing in catering. It's whether they can afford not to.#

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