Last updated 15 October 2026
Bark prices catering at £12 a head. Bridebook's couples spent £87. Same food, different wedding budget.
Caterers get bookings from wedding directories, event marketplaces and their own adverts, and each one brings a different customer. Bridebook lists caterers from £20 a month plus VAT, Bark and Add to Event charge credits to quote, Poptop keeps 12% of the booking, and Togather takes a commission on the whole event. Search ads for couples cost £3.88 a click. Ads for office managers cost up to £18.92.
This guide is for caterers doing weddings, private parties and corporate events. Food vans and private chefs come up as jobs a caterer sells, and the wedding suppliers you'll quote alongside are covered in wedding photographer leads and videographer leads.
Who answers the search
"Leads for Catering Businesses | Zapo Ads"
That was the top result for "catering leads" on 2 October 2026, with Bark's caterer sign-up page third. Most of the rest were American guides priced in dollars. About 10 people a month search the phrase, while "catering" gets 18,100 and "caterers near me" 2,400. The people looking for a caterer outnumber the caterers looking for leads by a long way. Even "catering jobs", people after work in a kitchen, gets 8,100.
Where we stand
We don't sell catering leads. We help you get your own.
This guide is the honest version of what buying catering leads costs, and who else gets them. What we do instead is build caterers a website that turns visits into calls, and run Google Ads in an account in your own name, so every lead that comes in is a customer who found you, and nobody else was sold it.
What a booking is worth
The price per head depends on where the enquiry came from.
Bridebook's 2026 report, from 7,000 couples, puts average wedding catering at £5,406 for the reception and £2,002 for evening food. Its catering guide calls that £7,408 for an 80 to 90-guest wedding, around £87 a head. The marketplaces publish far lower averages:
| Source | What it measures | Per head | Kind of figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bark | Average price, wedding caterers | £11.45 | Marketplace average |
| Bark | Average price, all caterers | £12.00 | Marketplace average |
| Poptop | Wedding catering, per guest | £21 | Marketplace average |
| Add to Event | Wedding breakfast, 646 caterers quoting | £30 to £35 | Quotes sent |
| Hitched | Couples surveyed, 2023 | £80 | Couples' spend |
| Bridebook | Reception and evening, 80 to 90 guests | £87 | Couples' spend |
From Bark's caterer pages, Poptop, Add to Event's quote data (March 2024 to March 2025), Hitched's survey and Bridebook. Bark and Poptop give no date on theirs.
A couple who books through a marketplace that averages £11 a head isn't shopping for the same wedding as one spending £87. Here is each job at Poptop's commission, and at a lead from your own ad on the search its buyer would type, if you book one lead in 3.
| Booking | Typical UK price | Poptop, 12% of it | Your own ads, matching search |
|---|---|---|---|
| Street food at an event | £350 to £745 | £66 a booking | £92 a booking, 17% of it"party catering", £31 a lead |
| A buffet for 50 guests | £750 to £1,000 | £105 a booking | £76 a booking, 9% of it"buffet catering", £25 a lead |
| A hog roast at an event | £800 to £1,008 | £108 a booking | £82 a booking, 9% of it"hog roast catering", £27 a lead |
| Corporate catering for 50 guests | £950 | £114 a booking | £408 a booking, 43% of it"corporate catering", £136 a lead |
| A 40-guest wedding | £3,480 | £418 a booking | £159 a booking, 5% of it"wedding caterers", £53 a lead |
| An 80 to 90-guest wedding, reception and evening | £7,408 | £889 a booking | £159 a booking, 2% of it"wedding caterers", £53 a lead |
| A 160-guest wedding | £13,920 | £1,670 a booking | £159 a booking, 1% of it"wedding caterers", £53 a lead |
Street food and hog roast are Poptop's per-event ranges. The buffet row is 50 guests at Add to Event's £15 to £20 a head, and the corporate row 50 guests at Poptop's £19, both our arithmetic. The wedding rows are Bridebook's totals by guest count. Ranges are worked at their middle. One win in 3 is MyJobQuote's figure for its own trades; no body publishes one for caterers. Poptop's fee includes VAT. The ads column divides each click by WordStream's conversion rate for home improvement search ads, explained further down.
On our rough rule, winning a job should cost about 10 to 15 percent of what it pays. Every wedding sits well under that from your own ads: 2% of an average one, 5% of a 40-guest one. A buffet for 50 lands at 9%. The corporate job is the one that breaks: 43% of the booking off "corporate catering", and 81% off "corporate event catering".
A big wedding swallows a flat fee
Poptop's 12% on a 160-guest wedding is £1,670, taken from the deposit. Bridebook's Classic plan billed yearly is £1,033.50 plus VAT, about 14% of one average wedding. A commission grows with the job. A subscription doesn't.
Staff decide the margin, not the menu
Bridebook recommends one waiter for every 11 guests at a sit-down meal. A per-head price that looks healthy on a buffet can be thin on a served wedding breakfast once that many staff are on the day, so price the service before you price the lead.
Your numbers
What can a catering lead cost before the job stops paying you?
Choose the job you sell most, say how many leads it takes to land one, and type in what a platform or a click costs you per lead. It opens on an average wedding. Switch to the corporate job with the same lead price to see why caterers can't pay the same for every kind of enquiry.
WHAT CAN YOU PAY FOR A CATERING LEAD?
Pick a job, or type in what yours are worth
Starts on one in three, the figure MyJobQuote tells its own trades to expect. Put in yours.
You can pay up to about
£370
a lead, winning one in 3
- Healthy range, per won job
- £741 to £1,111
- Which per lead is
- £247 to £370
Put a seller's price in the last box and this will tell you what each won job would cost you.
That 10 to 15 percent band is our rough rule of thumb for any service business, and nobody has measured it for catering.
Who sends you leads
Ten places sell caterers enquiries. Four of them won't say what they charge.
We took each price and quote off the platform's own pages; where a cell reads "Not published", the platform doesn't say.
| Platform | Price | How you pay | In their words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hitched | Not published | Yearly package, renews itself | "from the 1st position" |
| Bridebook | £20 or £99 a month + VAT | Subscription | "Reveal Couples' Phone Number" |
| Bark | Credits at £1.80 | Per lead, up to 5 quote | "Only pay to contact leads that you choose" |
| Add to Event | Credits from £55 for 50 + VAT | Per quote sent | "This is the ONLY fee you'll pay us" |
| Poptop | 12% of the booking, inc VAT | Commission from the deposit | "non-negotiable" |
| Togather | Not published | Commission on the whole event | "applies to the full event spend" |
| UKbride | £49 to £99 a month | Listing, 12 months minimum | "Advertise from £49 per month" |
| Eventsense | Not published | Per lead | "small fee to contact customers" |
| Zapo | £400 to £1,600 + VAT a month | Search ads run for you | "exclusive catering leads" |
| Just Eat for Business | Not published | Commission per office order | "a commission fee on each order" |
Hitched and Bridebook: couples with the biggest budgets
Hitched showed 2,000 wedding caterers on the day we looked. A free listing sends enquiries to your email and phone. The paid tiers start you from the 1st, 13th or 22nd place in search, and Hitched publishes no price for any of them. Its terms of purchase lock a paid package in for the first 12 months and roll it on unless you write in 28 days before the year ends.
Bridebook's caterer pricing is £20 a month plus VAT for Basic, which reveals couples' phone numbers, or £99 for Classic, which adds priority in search and a featured spot on a venue profile you choose. Its search showed 1,201 caterers. These two are where the £87-a-head couples are, because those figures come from their own surveys.
Bark and Add to Event charge you to send the quote
Bark works out each lead's credit price from "the service, the value of the job, and the supply and demand in the area". Credits last 3 months and up to 5 professionals can answer one customer. Its caterer sign-up page offers a starter pack with enough credits to respond to about 10 customers, and gives the credits back if none of them hires you. Add to Event sells 250 credits for £212.50 plus VAT, charges more credits for more valuable requests, and refunds them only if the organiser never opens your quote within 14 days. Neither says how many credits a catering job costs. How the Bark model plays out across trades is in is Bark worth it.
Poptop and Togather take a cut of the booking
Poptop's terms set its 12% fee, VAT included, as "non-negotiable" and let it take the fee straight from the deposit, with a £16.80 minimum on some bookings. It lists 2,368 caterers. Togather, where Feast It now redirects, is free to join, accepts about one supplier application in 20, and charges a commission that "applies to the full event spend, inclusive of all services and charges". Its terms say it keeps that commission "in full in the event of a cancellation", and the rate itself arrives in a schedule sent by email.
UKbride and Eventsense sell the listing
UKbride charges £49 a month for a listing covering 25 miles, £69 for its Pro tier and £99 a month after a £399 first fee for an Exclusive Partner spot with "no local competitors", each on a 12-month minimum. It doesn't say whether VAT is on top. Eventsense is free to join with "no commission, small fee to contact customers" and lists 143 caterers, but doesn't publish the fee.
Offices order through apps that take a commission
CityPantry now redirects to Just Eat for Business, which charges caterers a commission on each order's subtotal, pays monthly, and says its customers spend £300 an order on average. Feedr lists over 200 vendors in London. Neither publishes its rate. Private chefs have their own marketplaces: Yhangry charges 20% when a booking is made.
Zapo buys the clicks for you
Zapo sells "exclusive leads to catering companies, caterers and private chefs" from search adverts, promising leads "within the next 14 days". Its cheapest plan is £400 a month plus VAT, £200 of which goes on the ads, with 10 leads forecast. That is about £40 a lead if the forecast holds, which would put a won average wedding at 2% of the job and a corporate lunch for 50 at 13%. It's bidding in the same Google auction you can enter yourself.
The trade lead sellers have no catering category
Checkatrade has a Catering Services category, and its UK search read "Find 0 Catering Services in Uk". Rated People, MyBuilder, MyJobQuote and TrustATrader have nothing for caterers. A couple who sends the same enquiry to five caterers is the case the shared-lead trap works through.
Everything here about Poptop's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 2 October 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
Rather have catering leads that are yours alone?
That's what we do. We don't sell leads. We build the website and run the Google Ads that bring customers straight to you, in an ad account in your name that stays yours if you ever leave.
See pricingWant to know how many people near you search Google for what you do each month? Message us your town and we'll send you the real numbers.
Check my areaBuying the click yourself
A couple costs £3.88 a click. An office manager costs £18.92.
The plain "catering" search gets 18,100 searches a month at £3.93 a click, and it mixes every kind of buyer. Split them and the gap is plain: "wedding caterers" costs £3.88 across 1,900 searches, while "office catering" costs £15.05 and "corporate event catering" £18.92. To turn a click price into a lead price we divide by 7.33%, WordStream's conversion rate for home improvement search ads. That rate was measured on American campaigns, so compare rows with it rather than budget by it.
| Search | Searches a month | Per click | Per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| corporate event catering | 480 | £18.92 | £258 |
| office catering | 320 | £15.05 | £205 |
| corporate catering | 590 | £9.96 | £136 |
| wedding caterers london | 390 | £6.51 | £89 |
| asian wedding caterers | 140 | £5.49 | £75 |
| canapes catering | 210 | £5.19 | £71 |
| event catering | 880 | £5.04 | £69 |
| indian wedding caterers | 210 | £4.70 | £64 |
| catering companies | 1,000 | £4.05 | £55 |
| catering | 18,100 | £3.93 | £54 |
| wedding caterers | 1,900 | £3.88 | £53 |
| catering london | 2,900 | £3.72 | £51 |
| funeral catering | 390 | £3.36 | £46 |
| wedding buffet | 720 | £3.29 | £45 |
| wedding caterers near me | 480 | £3.16 | £43 |
| wedding catering prices | 260 | £2.60 | £35 |
| party catering | 1,000 | £2.24 | £31 |
| caterers near me | 2,400 | £2.14 | £29 |
| hog roast catering | 880 | £2.00 | £27 |
| buffet catering | 590 | £1.85 | £25 |
| buffet catering near me | 1,600 | £1.47 | £20 |
Google Ads data for the UK, pulled 2 October 2026. Click prices are bid-based estimates, so the real cost lands near them rather than on them. Google gives one figure to "catering" and "caterers", and to "wedding caterers" and "wedding catering", so the table carries each once.
The cheapest buyers are the ones closest to booking. "caterers near me" costs about £29 a lead, "wedding catering prices", a couple already comparing quotes, about £35, and "funeral catering" £46 for 390 searches, work no wedding directory lists. "asian wedding caterers" costs £5.49 a click, so a caterer with a cuisine of its own can bid on it by name. "catering advertising" gets 20 searches at £10.09 a click: that's the lead sellers bidding for you. Every search in the table lands between £20 and £258 a lead. What you get for that:
- Separate budgets for weddings, parties and offices
- Your menus and prices on the ad
- Bids on the venues and towns you cater
- Nobody else quoting the same couple
- Google's click price, with no mark-up
- The ad account stays yours if you leave
Match types, budgets and the account itself are explained for small firms in our Google Ads guide, and the monthly sum in how much to spend on Google Ads.
Before you quote
A couple can look up your hygiene rating before they ring you back.
Every food business has to register with the council at least 28 days before trading, and that includes home kitchens and mobile units. It is free and can't be refused, and if you cook at home the council will arrange to inspect your kitchen. The hygiene rating that follows, 0 to 5, is published on the FSA's ratings site for anyone to search, home caterers included. Showing the sticker is the law in Wales and Northern Ireland and voluntary in England.
Allergens on every dish
The FSA's guidance covers 14 allergens, and at a buffet you give the information for each item separately, never for the buffet as a whole. If they order by phone or online, they need it before they pay and again on delivery. Food you pack before anyone orders, even from a marquee, needs a full Natasha's Law label.
The bar needs a licence
Selling drinks at an unlicensed venue needs a Temporary Event Notice: £21, 10 clear working days ahead, 499 people at most. Only an individual can give one, 5 a year, or 50 with a personal licence. If you buy the alcohol and sell it on, the Home Office guidance says you need an authorisation where that sale happens.
VAT is on the lot
HMRC treats food supplied under a catering contract as standard-rated, at 20%, service charge included. You have to register once 12 months' turnover goes over £90,000. At an average £7,408 wedding, that's about a dozen bookings, so price it in before you get there.
A dated booking has no 14-day cooling-off
Regulation 28(1)(h) of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 takes catering out of the cancellation rules "if the contract provides for a specific date or period of performance". A wedding or party booked by phone or email has a date. What happens if the couple pulls out is down to your own terms, so put the deposit and cancellation terms in writing with every quote.
The lead nobody sells
More than half of venues come with food. Get on their list.
Hitched found 54% of the venues its couples hired "included food and or some form of catering in their fees". Those couples may never search for a caterer at all. Bridebook's report adds that where the couple had to pick from the venue's required list, combined venue and catering spend came to £159 a head, against £112.50 where they chose freely.
Those figures cover the venue as well as the food, so they don't say what a caterer on the list takes home. They do say the list is where the dearest weddings get booked, and no directory sells a place on it. That's why Bridebook's Classic plan, with its spot on a venue profile you choose, is worth pricing up if most of your weddings happen at a handful of venues.
Through the year
Couples search in autumn and January. Barbecue searches peak in May.
No platform publishes when people look for a caterer, so this is our own pull of Google search data. "wedding caterers" peaked at 2,900 in September, bottomed out at 1,300 in December and climbed back to 2,400 in January, a swing of about 2.2 times.
UK searches for "wedding caterers", by month
September 2025 to August 2026. Google Ads keyword data, rounded bands.
| Month | "wedding caterers" | "bbq catering" | "corporate catering" |
|---|---|---|---|
| September | 2,900 | 590 | 1,000 |
| December | 1,300 | 260 | 590 |
| January | 2,400 | 720 | 590 |
| May | 1,600 | 1,300 | 390 |
| August | 1,600 | 720 | 210 |
Party food runs a summer season
"bbq catering" went from 260 in December to 1,300 in May, about 5 times as many. If you sell both, spend on weddings through the winter and switch the budget to parties from March.
Treat the office numbers with care
"corporate catering" fell from 1,000 in September 2025 to 210 in August 2026. One year of data can't say whether that's a season or a slide, so don't plan a budget around either.
Before you sign up
Ask what a platform's customers spend a head before you pay.
The same wedding can be worth £11 a head or £87 depending on who sent it. Pin down what you're buying:
- What do its customers spend per head?
- How many caterers see each request?
- What does a catering lead cost in credits?
- Is the commission kept if they cancel?
- When does the contract renew?
A platform that won't publish its commission rate can still be worth it, but you'll only know after the first booking, so get the rate in writing before you accept one.
Which way to go
Directories for weddings. Venue lists for the dearest ones. Your own ads for the rest.
A wedding directory if
- Weddings are most of your work
- You cater 80 guests or more
- The renewal date is in your diary
- Your hygiene rating is a 5
Think twice if
- Most of your jobs are small parties
- Up to 5 others quote the same job
- The commission rate comes by email
- It keeps its cut when they cancel
Run your own ads if
- You want parties and offices too
- You can split the budgets
- You want the lead to yourself
- You want the ad account in your name
Weddings have the directories and the biggest bookings. Parties are cheap clicks with a short season. Office work has the dearest clicks, so it pays only where one lunch turns into a regular order. Whoever the buyer is, they read the reviews first, so getting more Google reviews pays on every kind of job. Every other business we've covered, from roofers to videographers, is indexed in the trade leads hub.
Our sources
Where every catering figure here came from.
We sell caterers their own website and ads, which is one of the routes this page weighs up. So every platform speaks in its own words here, including Zapo, whose forecast lead comes in far cheaper than a corporate click you'd buy yourself.
Seller pages and terms were read on each firm's own site on 2 October 2026, and the UK search and click data was pulled from Google Ads the same day. Wedding catering spend comes from Bridebook's 2026 report, its catering guide and Hitched; marketplace prices from Bark, Poptop and Add to Event. Food registration, hygiene ratings and allergens are from the Food Standards Agency; alcohol from gov.uk and the Home Office; VAT from HMRC; and cancellation from the Consumer Contracts Regulations. We have left out the commission rates Togather, Just Eat for Business and Feedr don't publish, and any price for Hitched's paid tiers.
Questions caterers ask
Catering leads, answered.
- How much do catering leads cost in the UK?
- Bridebook lists caterers from £20 a month plus VAT, Hitched sells yearly packages without a published price, Add to Event sells credits from £55 for 50 plus VAT, Bark charges credits at £1.80 each, Poptop keeps 12% of each booking and Togather takes a commission it sends you by email. Zapo runs search ads for caterers from £400 a month plus VAT. A click on your own ad costs £1.47 to £18.92.
- Why does Bark price catering so much lower than Bridebook?
- They measure different things. Bark's £12.00 a head is the average price on its caterer category pages, and Poptop's wedding figure is £21 a guest. Bridebook's £87 a head is what 7,000 couples said they spent on reception and evening food. The platform an enquiry comes from tells you a lot about the budget behind it.
- Can a couple cancel a catering booking within 14 days?
- Not under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. Regulation 28(1)(h) takes catering out of the cancellation rules "if the contract provides for a specific date or period of performance", and a wedding or party booking has a date. What happens if they pull out is whatever your own terms say, so put the deposit and cancellation terms in every quote.
- Do I need a licence to run a bar at a wedding?
- If you sell alcohol somewhere that is not licensed, yes. A Temporary Event Notice costs £21, has to be given at least 10 clear working days before, covers fewer than 500 people including staff and lasts up to 168 hours. Only an individual can give one, up to 5 a year, or 50 if they hold a personal licence. If you buy the alcohol and sell it on to the client, the Home Office says you need an authorisation where that sale is made.
- Do I have to show my food hygiene rating?
- In Wales and Northern Ireland the law says you must. In England it is voluntary, but every rating is published on the Food Standards Agency website, including home caterers, who are listed by the first half of their postcode. In Scotland ratings are Pass or Improvement Required. Couples and office managers can look you up before they ring.
- Does Natasha's Law apply to event catering?
- It applies to food that is packed where it is sold, before anyone orders it, including food packed and sold from a marquee or a mobile site by the same business. That food needs its name and a full ingredients list with the allergens emphasised. Food packed after it is ordered is not covered, though you still have to give allergen information, and at a buffet the FSA wants it for each dish separately.
- When do people search for a caterer?
- UK searches for "wedding caterers" peaked in September at 2,900 and were lowest in December at 1,300 over the last 12 months. "bbq catering" ran the other way, from 260 in December to 1,300 in May.
- Does Checkatrade send catering work?
- No. Checkatrade has a Catering Services category and its UK search read "Find 0 Catering Services in Uk". We found no catering category on Rated People, MyBuilder, MyJobQuote or TrustATrader either. Catering enquiries go through wedding and event marketplaces instead.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Weddings, parties and office orders from people who searched for you.
We build your website and run Google Ads from an account in your own name, with the wedding, party and office searches kept apart so each budget goes where it pays. See what it costs, then tell us about your business and we'll build the campaign around the events you want more of.