Can I get funding for a single event if my catering business is new?

Six months of deposits is the usual floor, and a new caterer with a big contract and thin history will be offered less than the event needs. The deposit and a pre-event balance are the levers at that stage; the contract makes them normal to ask for.

Do funders treat catering differently from a restaurant?

Catering deposits are lumpier — large payments on event dates rather than daily settlements — and a funder will see that. Twelve months of statements show the pattern; three months can look like a business with a slow month.

Should I charge a card processing fee to get paid faster?

Many caterers accept the card fee on the final balance for the sake of being paid on the day rather than in sixty. On a large event the fee is real money; so is a sixty-day wait. Price both.

Guide

You booked a 300-person event. Food, rentals and staff are due before the client's final payment. What bridges it?

Take the largest deposit the client will sign for — 25 to 50 percent at booking is normal, with the balance due days before the event — and bridge the rest with a working capital loan sized to the ingredient order, the rentals and the event staff, funded in one to three business days on your deposits with the signed contract attached. Corporate clients often pay 30 to 90 days after the event; if that is your book, a line of credit is the shape for it.

Submit an Application2 minutes · no obligation

Why catering cash runs backwards

A restaurant is paid at the table. A caterer buys the food, rents the tables and the linens, hires the servers and pays them the same week, and then invoices — and a corporate client's accounts payable pays 30 to 90 days after the event. A single large event can mean an outlay in the thousands to the tens of thousands, all of it before the final check. A caterer with three big events in a month is profitable and short at the same time.

Application to funded

Drawn to elapsed time rather than as three evenly spaced steps, because the gaps are the point. Decisions usually land inside 24 hours and funding in as little as 72 hours — timings depend on the funder and on how quickly statements arrive.

First, the contract

The deposit is the cheapest financing in this business and it is negotiated, not given. A quarter to a half at booking, a further payment when the headcount is confirmed, and the balance due five to seven days before the event is a normal structure that clients accept when it is in the contract from the start. The clients who cannot pay before the event are the ones with a procurement process, and those are the ones to price the wait into.

Then the bridge

A working capital loan or a cash advance on your last three to six months of deposits, sized to what the deposit does not cover: the ingredient order, the rental company's invoice, the event staff and the transport. Decision in about a day, funding in one to three business days. Send the signed event contract with the statements; a funder reading a dated event with a named client and a balance due is reading a receivable, and sizes the offer to it.

Amounts run half to one and a half times a month's deposits. Borrow the event's gap, not a round number, and ask for weekly payments that stop being painful the week the balance clears.

Equipment, vehicles, and the line

A catering van, a mobile kitchen, holding cabinets, a walk-in for the commissary: equipment. Financed over two to five years with the asset as security, cheaper than any working capital product, and not to be funded on the same advance as the shrimp.

And if your book is corporate and every event is a sixty-day wait, the shape is a business line of credit sized to a month of event costs: drawn for each event, repaid as each client pays, costing nothing in the quiet weeks. It is harder to qualify for and takes weeks to set up. Apply for it in a strong season.

More on if you need money this week

See all →

Sources

U.S. Small Business Administration — LoansFederal loan programmes, eligibility and what the SBA does and does not guarantee.

You booked a 300-person event. Food, rentals and staff are due before the client's final payment. What bridges it?

Why catering cash runs backwards

First, the contract

Then the bridge

Equipment, vehicles, and the line

More on if you need money this week

Between closings

Customer went bankrupt

Workers' comp audit bill

Lease balloon due

What is the fastest way to get working capital?

Payroll is Friday and you are short. What funding arrives that fast?

Related questions.

Find out what you qualify for before you need it.