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Function and catering enquiries land on a Friday night, mid-service, when nobody can stop to quote them. We build the system that gets the quote drafted and followed up without you, so the deposit comes to you instead of whoever replied first.
Capture the details and keep event quotes moving while you work.
Answer a few questions and try the response on your own phone.
See what happens when an enquiry gets a reply while you're busy with the job. Add your details and watch the response arrive on your phone.
It's the same system we use in our own business, built around the way you work.
People plan a function in their own time, which means evenings and weekends. Those are your service hours, so the enquiries worth most tend to arrive when you can do least about them.
Friday, mid-service
Someone fills in the functions form for a 60th in March. Forty guests, a budget worth having. The one person who knows the packages is on the pass, and the floor staff couldn't price a function if they tried.
Even if someone spots it, the best they can send is that the manager will be in touch. That's a holding message, and the customer can tell.
Monday afternoon
Monday is the first quiet hour, so that's when the quote gets built, from scratch, out of a packages PDF and last season's menu.
On Wednesday they say thanks, they've gone with a venue that replied on Saturday morning. Price barely came into it. The other venue got a quote in front of them while they still cared.
A function enquiry arrives while you’re in the middle of service.
The functions form arrives with an enquiry for a 60th birthday, forty guests and a Saturday in March. A reply goes back within a minute, in your words, asking what you would ask about dietary needs, drinks and a rough budget.
They reply. Everything lands on one record, and the date is checked against the functions calendar. It's free, so it's pencilled in.
The menu is matched to your packages for forty, with two vegetarians and one coeliac guest noted. A quote is drafted from your template.
Service winds down. You open the quote on your phone, swap one canapé, and approve it.
The quote goes out on Friday night, while the enquiry they sent the venue down the road is still sitting in an inbox.
A short check-in asks whether the quote arrived and whether they have questions about the menu.
A reminder confirms how long the date is being held. They reply that they'd like to book.
The deposit request goes out through your own payment tools, with a reminder set if it hasn't arrived in two days.
Deposit paid, date locked in. You approved the quote on your phone after service.
Every message is written with you and approved before it goes live. Pricing and minimum spends stay your call, and any reply that needs judgement comes straight to you with the whole thread attached. The follow-up messages, in full
A restaurant and catering business we built for, de-identified because their results are their business.
leads in a year, turned into hundreds of new customers
in ad spend for a mobile bar whose calendar fills with weddings, engagements and 50ths
That growth came from systems and processes behind the scenes, rather than the owners working longer hours or hiring an office full of admin staff to keep up.
It's what quoting without the owner looks like at volume. The enquiries still arrive during service. They just stop waiting for service to end.
Most service businesses get a quiet moment to deal with enquiries. A tradie can ring back from the ute. A venue can't step away from a full dining room.
Customers often plan weddings, birthdays and work functions in the evenings, on weekends and around holidays. Those are the exact hours your kitchen and floor are flat out. The timing will never line up, because it's the same timing.
So the deposit usually goes to whoever quotes first, and whoever quotes first is rarely the owner running service. It's the venue with someone on a functions desk, or the caterer whose quote was half written before anyone read the enquiry.
The answer is to stop the quote waiting for you. The details get captured, the date gets checked against the calendar, the menu gets matched to your packages and the quote gets drafted while you're still on the pass. Your part is approving it when you've got two minutes.
In most hospitality businesses we meet, one person can quote a function, and that person is also running the kitchen or the floor.
The packages live in their head and a PDF from two seasons ago. The calendar lives in a diary behind the bar. So every quote is rebuilt by hand, and it waits for their quiet hour, which in a busy week is Monday or never.
Getting that knowledge out of one head is the actual work, and it's the part we do with you. We write down your packages, your minimum spends, the dates you'll hold and the questions you always ask, so a quote can be drafted the way you'd draft it. You still approve every one. You just stop building them.
It also shows you at a glance which enquiry is a peak-season wedding and which is Tuesday drinks for twelve, so you can choose the jobs you want on purpose.
It's the system that takes a catering or function enquiry from first message to paid deposit without relying on anyone's memory. Every enquiry lands in one place and gets a fast reply, the details are captured once, and the quote goes out quickly and is followed up until the date is locked in.
It drafts them from your packages and the details the client has already given, and you approve every one before it goes out. The judgement about pricing and minimum spends stays with you.
Usually, yes. Reservations platforms are built for tables at a time slot. A function is a different job, with a quote, a deposit, final numbers and dietary requirements stretched over weeks. That's the part we build, and your reservations platform keeps doing regular service.
The system requests the deposit when the client accepts, reminds them if it hasn't arrived, and tells you when a held date is at risk. The money goes through your own payment and accounting tools. We never hold client funds.
It's scoped to your business after a systems map, with a fixed price in writing before anything is built. Caterers, function venues and mobile bars all follow the same path from enquiry to deposit, so the map is where we work out which part of yours to build first.
The enquiry record should hold the date, venue, guest count and package requirements before anyone prepares a proposal. An accepted proposal then needs a deposit status, a detail-collection deadline and a handover to the team delivering the event.
We map those steps around the booking and payment tools you already use. A proposed booking stays provisional until your agreed checks are complete. Sales systems manage the proposal, and onboarding manages what the event team needs next.
Try the enquiry follow-up system on your own phone. Add your details, answer a few questions and see the response arrive.
