Caterers NAICS 722320

Sep 6, 2025 - Return to Office Supporting Contract-Catering Revenue

• Stricter return-to-office policies and the high cost of eating out are driving more workers to corporate cafeterias, Bloomberg reported in August. “The return-to-office trend may still have room to run, potentially offering further volume upside for contract-catering providers,” Bloomberg Intelligence senior analysts Stuart Gordon and Evgeniy Batchvarov said. That’s boosting volumes and growth prospects for caterers, including industry heavyweights Aramark, Compass Group Plc, and Sodexo SA. Higher traffic can lift organic growth by as much as 1% in the next 12 months, per Bloomberg Intelligence data. In major cities including New York, London, and Paris, fewer employees expect to work remotely in the next 12 to 24 months, the latest BI Real Estate survey shows. Notably, in New York, where 15% of workers had the option to work fully remotely over the past year, only 11% did.
• Caterers are facing new competition from restaurants, especially fast-casual chains that launched drop-off or pickup catering during the pandemic to boost business, The Wall Street Journal reports. “Caterers do have a challenge to compete with restaurants who have brick-and-mortars and storefronts and brand-name recognition,” Alex M. Susskind, professor of food and beverage management at Cornell University told WSJ in June, adding “That may negatively affect traditional caterers, so they need to pound the pavement and really sell how they are different and more personalized than a fast-casual restaurant that can drop off a self-serve taco bar.” As more companies host catered meals to lure employees back to the office, competition for corporate catering jobs is heating up. And as post-pandemic pent-up demand for weddings and bar mitzvahs has waned, the big growth area for caterers is corporate spending, Susskind says.

• Tariffs on imports are poised to have a negative impact on the catering industry, Catersource reported in May. While caterers themselves generally do not import products directly neither are they end users. As such, a 25% tariff will typically raise the prices caterers pay for imports, not by the full 25% but by somewhat less, assuming that importers absorb some of the tariff-based increase. However, since caterers are value-adding intermediate consumers of imports, these tariffs will likely impose substantial cost increases in the industry, according to Catersource. Mexico and Canada, both targets of Trump administration tariffs, are major suppliers of perishable foods to the US, including much seasonal produce (Mexico) and seafood and pork (Canada). A 15% increase in prices of these products based on a 25% tariff would make a sizable impact, possibly as much as 2–3% food cost on food revenue, per Catersource.
• Employment by caterers grew to a new high in June, rising 6.1% compared to a year ago, while the average industry wage rose 1.7% over the same period to $23.09 per hour, according to the latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Catering companies added jobs for the fifth consecutive month in June as the industry staffed up for the peak wedding and event season. Looking ahead, the projected catering staff job growth rate is 2% from 2018-2028, according to the career platform Zippia. That’s about 17,700 new jobs for catering staff over the decade. With more than 72,000 active catering staff job openings in the US, caterers still need to hire workers.