Catering is currently growing faster than the restaurants it often sits inside. The U.S. catering market is projected to grow 5.3% a year through 2032, against roughly 3% growth for the broader restaurant industry in 2025, and operators with established catering programs posted 10–20% year-over-year catering sales growth in the first quarter of 2026 (Food on Demand, July 2026, reporting the 2026 State of Catering study of 100+ brands, 8,000 locations and over $1 billion in annual catering sales).
That gap is the single most useful trend in catering to understand, because it tells you where the next order is coming from, and it is not where it came from in 2019. Below are the shifts actually moving money this year, and then the part most trend roundups skip: the specific publications, reports and internal numbers to watch so you catch the next shift yourself instead of reading about it a year late.
The Bottom Line
- Catering is outgrowing the restaurant industry: 5.3% projected annual growth through 2032 versus about 3% for restaurants in 2025.
- Delivery has moved in-house. Caterers handled 53% of catering deliveries with their own operation in 2026, up from 31% in 2021.
- Workplace food is the strongest demand engine: 91% of workplaces plan to spend the same or more on food in 2026, up from 82% in 2024.
- The 2026 menu story is comfort and value, not novelty. Local sourcing, comfort foods and value options top the National Restaurant Association’s forecast.
- To stay current, follow four things: one trade publication, one annual operator survey, one menu forecast, and your own repeat-order data.
Boost customer satisfaction with just a few clicks
Most-Loved Features:
- On-demand drivers
- Real-time GPS tracking
- Delivery confirmation photos
- Over 50% of customers report a smoother delivery experience
Drop-off and off-premise catering are where the growth is
Off-premise is no longer a channel; it is the default. Nearly 75% of all restaurant traffic now happens off-premises, according to the National Restaurant Association, and 81% of independent operators saw takeout and delivery sales increase in 2025 (TouchBistro’s 2026 State of Restaurants Report, surveying 600+ operators, as reported by Food & Beverage Magazine).
Inside catering, that shows up as drop-off: individually packaged or family-style meals delivered ready to serve, with no staff on site. Drop-off suits recurring weekly programs, which is the part caterers underrate, because it produces predictable revenue between the marquee events rather than replacing them.
The operational consequence is that the delivery is now part of the product. A plated event forgives a late arrival by fifteen minutes; a 12:00 office lunch does not. That is why delivery execution has quietly become a software question as much as a staffing one, and why it is worth comparing routing and driver tracking against your current setup. Our guide to catering software for small businesses covers which platforms actually include dispatch and what the tiers cost.
In-house delivery has overtaken third-party for catering orders
The clearest reversal in the data: in-house delivery handled 53% of catering deliveries in 2026, up from 31% in 2021, while catering-specific delivery providers grew from 4% to 21% of the mix (Food on Demand, July 2026).
Two things drive that. Catering orders are too valuable and too failure-sensitive to hand to a consumer-delivery courier who has never carried a chafing dish. And marketplace orders cost margin: marketplace catering is projected to reach 36% of volume in 2026, up from 12.8% in 2021, with order values 6–8% lower than first-party orders.
The practical read for a small caterer is not “drop the marketplaces.” It is that the marketplaces are a customer-acquisition channel with a known margin cost, and your own ordering page plus your own (or a dedicated) delivery capability is where the repeat business should land. Especially given that 60% of catering orders come from just 5% of customers.
Channel mix at this level is a planning decision, not a weekly one, which is the argument for keeping a current catering business plan rather than a founding document you haven’t opened since the first year. If yours needs rebuilding around drop-off volume and in-house delivery, our walkthrough of how to build a profitable catering business plan covers the numbers to redo first.
Workplace catering is the strongest demand driver in 2026
If you only track one source of demand, track offices. ezCater’s 2026 Workplace Catering Insights, based on Q4 2025 surveys of more than 2,300 people (714 workplace catering orderers, 616 restaurant operators and 1,002 employees), found that 91% of workplaces plan to spend the same or more on food in 2026, up from 82% in 2024, with one in five intending to increase spend by more than 25% (QSR Magazine, 2026).
The same research found daily or weekly employee meal programs up 26% year over year, with 81% of those meals free to employees, and 96% of workplaces trying a new restaurant during 2025. Among employees who first tried a restaurant through a work order, 62% later ordered from it personally and 67% recommended it to family or friends.
That last number is the one to act on. A recurring Tuesday office lunch is not just a standing order; it is a sampling program with 26 people in the room.
What is changing on catering menus in 2026
The menu trend this year is restraint rather than invention. The National Restaurant Association’s 2026 What’s Hot Culinary Forecast, based on a survey of hundreds of culinary professionals conducted in October 2025, ranks local sourcing, comfort foods and value menus as the top three trends, followed by smashed burgers, clear menu labeling and icons, allergen-friendly menus, global comfort foods, cleaner recipes with fewer additives and dyes, proteins as add-ons, and compostable or reusable packaging (National Restaurant Association, November 2025). The association’s chief economist summarized it as comfort and value being “the twin pillars shaping America’s menus right now.”
For a caterer, four of those ten are easy to put into practice:
- Clear labeling and icons on the buffet card and the packaged lid, not just the proposal. It is the cheapest trend on the list to adopt.
- Allergen-friendly options built into the standard package rather than priced as a special request.
- Proteins as add-ons, which lets a value-priced base package survive a client’s budget cut without you discounting the whole menu.
- Compostable or reusable packaging, which has moved from differentiator to expectation in corporate accounts.
Beverage programs are moving in the same direction, with more low- and no-alcohol options alongside the wine list rather than instead of it. If you build pairing menus for clients, the pairing itself is still where the margin and the compliment live; our guide to wine pairing for catering covers how to build one that survives transport and off-site service.
Catering technology trends: ordering, AI and dispatch
Three technology shifts are real enough to plan around, and one is mostly noise.
Self-serve ordering is now the expectation. Marketplaces normalized placing a 30-person order at 4 p.m. without a phone call. If your order path still requires a quote email, you are losing the short-lead-time business that recurring programs are made of.
Dispatch is being brought in-house. Routing, driver apps and proof-of-delivery photos used to be enterprise features. They are now bought by caterers doing a dozen drops a week, either inside a catering platform or through a delivery partner built for local food, floral, catering and wholesale deliveries.
Production tech is getting quietly better. Kitchen display screens, pull sheets and recipe costing that updates with ingredient prices are unglamorous and compound.
AI is mostly still a demo. Platforms have added it to proposal drafting and reporting, and higher AI usage limits are now a paid tier feature on some systems. Useful at the margin; it is not what wins the account.
Sustainability has become a procurement requirement
Sustainability in catering has moved from a selling point to a question on the form. Local sourcing is the top-ranked trend in the National Restaurant Association’s 2026 forecast, and compostable or reusable packaging makes the top ten. In corporate accounts in particular, sustainable packaging and waste handling show up in vendor questionnaires rather than in conversation.
The low-effort version of staying ahead of this: know your packaging’s disposal story in one sentence, know which of your suppliers are within a day’s drive, and keep portion planning tight enough that food waste is a number you can quote.
How to stay updated on catering industry trends
Most caterers follow trends by accident: a vendor newsletter, an Instagram reel, a client asking for something new. A deliberate version takes about an hour a month. Watch four categories, each answering a different question:
| What to follow | What it tells you | How often |
|---|---|---|
| A trade publication (Food on Demand, QSR Web, Nation’s Restaurant News) | Deal news, delivery model shifts, who is entering your market | Weekly skim |
| An annual operator survey (TouchBistro State of Restaurants, the State of Catering report) | Whether your off-premise mix is normal or lagging | Once a year |
| A menu forecast (National Restaurant Association What’s Hot) | What clients will start asking for next season | Once a year, in December |
| Buyer-side research (ezCater’s workplace catering data) | What the people signing your invoices intend to spend | Once or twice a year |
Then add the source nobody else has:
- Your own repeat-order data. With 60% of orders coming from 5% of customers, the most valuable trend report you own is the list of accounts whose order frequency changed in the last 90 days.
- Your declined and lost quotes. The reasons cluster, and the clusters are a trend six months before a publication names it.
- Your drivers and captains. They see the client’s setup, the competitor’s boxes in the lobby, and whether the office is full on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
- One competitor’s ordering page. Not to copy the menu, but to see their lead times, delivery minimums and packaging claims, which is where strategy is actually visible.
A workable cadence: a weekly fifteen-minute skim of one publication, a quarterly look at your own repeat-order and lost-quote lists, and one December afternoon reading the year’s forecasts before you set next season’s packages.
Frequently asked questions about trends in catering
What are the biggest trends in catering right now?
Growth that outpaces the wider restaurant industry (5.3% projected annually through 2032), drop-off and off-premise orders becoming the default format, in-house delivery overtaking third-party for catering orders (53% versus 31% in 2021), workplace and recurring meal programs expanding, and a menu shift toward comfort, value, local sourcing and clear labeling rather than novelty.
Is catering growing or shrinking in 2026?
Growing, and faster than restaurants overall. Catering is projected to grow 5.3% a year through 2032 while the restaurant industry grew around 3% in 2025, and brands with established catering programs reported 10–20% year-over-year growth in Q1 2026.
How do I know if a catering trend applies to my business?
Test it against your own order mix before your competitors’. If drop-off is under a fifth of your volume, the off-premise trends are an opportunity rather than a threat; if it is over half, they are an operations problem. The order data you already have answers this faster than any report.
Where can I follow catering industry trends for free?
Food on Demand and QSR Web publish catering coverage without a paywall, the National Restaurant Association publishes its annual What’s Hot forecast publicly, and ezCater and TouchBistro release summary findings from their operator and buyer research each year. Between them you get the news, the menus and the buyer intent.
What to do with this
The trends worth acting on this year are narrower than the lists suggest: get the off-premise order path self-serve, make the delivery reliable enough to carry a recurring program, add labeling and allergen options that cost almost nothing, and watch the 5% of customers who place most of your orders.
Then pick your four sources, put the December forecast read in the calendar, and stop learning about shifts in your own market from a client asking why you don’t offer it yet.
