Square's catering feature lets restaurants embed large orders into their existing app and website, so customers can buy catering items without phone calls. Set up takes minutes: mark items as catering, configure lead times and delivery radius, and orders flow through normal checkout.
What if your biggest orders of the month could roll in without a single phone call or back-and-forth email? That's Catering on Per Diem, built right into the app your customers already use. Here's what makes it different. Catering on Per Diem isn't a separate app or channel. It lives right inside your regular ordering experience. Your catering items show up in the same menu alongside everything else. So customers discover your large-format and event offerings naturally. It lets you accept scheduled, higher-ticket orders for events, meetings, and parties, with no extra admin overhead. Customers order through your app or website using the same flow they already know. And you stay in control. Set lead times by category—say, 48 hours for platters, but 20 minutes for regular pickup. Set a separate delivery radius and fees just for catering, and even let web customers place catering orders as guests, no account required. Setup happens entirely in your dashboard. Let's walk it. 1. Mark items or whole categories as catering under Menu Management, Items or Categories. The moment you toggle something to catering, it shows in the menu with a "Catering Only" badge. 2. Open each location under Locations and scroll to the Catering accordion. There you enable catering, set your catering pickup and delivery hours, and add the calendar invite email that should get notified for new catering orders. 3. Set your lead times in Operations, Order Placement, Prep Times, Category Prep Time. Catering uses the same prep time rules as regular orders, So, if you want more lead time, just assign a longer prep time to your catering categories, like platters, trays, and event packages. 4. Configure catering delivery under Operations, Delivery, the Catering tab. Radius, minimum order, and tiered delivery fees here are completely independent from your regular delivery setup. 5. Optional: Create catering-specific service fees under Settings, Service Fee, Advanced, Add rule, and set the fulfillment type to Catering Pickup or Catering Delivery. And 6. Optional. Turn on Catering Guest Checkout under Settings, App Features, Order Preference if you want web customers to order catering without creating an account. So here's the customer side. On both the mobile app and the web ordering site, your catering items appear right in their regular menu categories, marked with a "Catering Only" badge. Customers also get a catering filter—a pill button on web, a category bar icon on mobile—that narrows the view to catering items only. There's no separate catering URL and no hidden menu—it's all one experience. And if you'd rather keep catering on its own, there's a separate catering menu feature flag so you can choose not to display it alongside your regular menu. That's catering. Bigger orders booked through the same app your customers already love with none of the phone tag. Link below to see it live.
