Corporate dining is leading to sustainable restaurant growth at a time when 71% of restaurants report profitability declining. Owners who want to turn the tide and start increasing revenue and foot traffic must consider this growing trend.
And where is restaurant growth from corporate dining increasing the most?
According to the 2026 State of Business Dining Report, 72 percent of spending isn’t going to chains. Instead, it’s going to:
- Small restaurants
- Regional eateries
- Independent owners
Corporate dining trends are in your favor if you’re a small restaurant, but you also need to be ready to capture these sales and maximize them.
This is where a solid dining strategy can mean the difference between sustainable profit growth and just staying afloat.
How to Create a Business Dining Strategy
Intentional strategies drive business dining. Corporate client dining is already coming through the door, but what you do next matters most. Experience must be the focal point of your strategy, yet add the following elements:
- City experience, if you’re choosing a new location
- Quality and consistency must remain top of mind at all times
- Deliver exceptional service and quality each time to keep customers coming back
But don’t stop there.
Consider Your City’s Atmosphere
Your city can dictate your restaurant’s vibe and feel. For example, if you’re in an upscale area of the city, such as Manhattan, you’ll want to focus on fine dining. College towns will have a different feel, such as an interior filled with sports memorabilia and the local college sports team on the television.
Researching the local dining culture and expectations allows you to have a better understanding of who you will be serving.
Local market expectations allow you to adapt your dining strategy to match business dining trends.
Consider the Customers You’ll Serve
Law firm corporate dining is different from a warehouse owner who brings their employees out to eat. If you live in an area where accounting or law firms are prevalent, then you may want to add:
- Upscale wines and alcohol
- Steaks and high-end meats
- Signature dishes that cost more but taste great
If your corporate clients have lower budgets, then you’ll need to adjust your approach to offer more affordable options. For example, boneless chicken wings with fries and drinks as a package may be a better option than $50+ steaks.
One other area to consider is dining time .
New York is known for power lunches, which may last up to 90 minutes while executives or higher-ups spend time discussing contracts and networking. You’ll want to account for this with your pricing and what you have to offer diners.
But in other cities, they expect dining to take all of 45 minutes, which means you’ll need to avoid dishes that take more than 10-15 minutes to cook.
Work with local professionals and marketing experts in your area who can help you navigate the nuances of your market.
Once you have the basic dining strategy in place for corporate events, it’s time to focus on maximizing your dining tickets.
Maximizing Corporate Dining Tickets
Business meals are an expense - and it goes on the company card. Patrons aren’t afraid to spend the “boss's money.” Restaurants can leverage these corporate dining tickets to be their highest-value revenue.
If you’re not maximizing these tickets, you’re leaving money on the table.
You can begin by doing the following:
Train Your Staff to Read the Room
Corporate clients sealing a deal spend differently than those entertaining employees for a birthday celebration. For example, when sealing a deal, your staff may recommend:
- Upsells
- More drinks
- Larger meals
An entertaining group may prefer shared appetizer courses and avoid the more expensive drinks or meals because there’s less financial incentive involved for them.
What we recommend is that you spend a considerable amount of time trying to find ways to maximize ticket value, which means:
- Dedicated points of contact: Corporate dining brings in a lot of money, and you want to treat the experience as upscale as you can. Add a dedicated point of contact whom the corporate organizers can reach out to for their current and future events.
- Pre-set menus: Creating new menus all the time takes a lot of work and effort. Instead, make pre-set menus that your chefs master and guests appreciate. Of course, you can sprinkle in seasonal items or specialties over time to make a menu that people love.
- Post-meal invoicing: If the corporate customer is more of a regular or one that you have a deeper relationship with, you might want to consider invoicing them after the meal to make it a “cleaner” experience for them. You can also skip the invoicing if the group is smaller and the bill is more modest.
Internal corporate account sales and revenue must be tracked. You want your sales pipeline to remain filled, allowing you to shuffle in more corporate clients to generate new business.
Sales teams that target corporate customers must build on what has already worked and make changes along the way as trends change.
Present and Future Growth Opportunities
Corporate dining is a landscape that continues to change. Restaurant managers need to shift their focus from chasing large parties to becoming an integral part of the city’s infrastructure. In-house dining is an obvious choice, especially for eateries that have a competitive advantage of being in a bigger city.
But don’t forget that a lot of companies are still following hybrid work environments, which means that there are opportunities for end-of-quarter celebrations where everyone gets together at once.
Now is also a good time to streamline your catering and off-premise corporate dining.
Restaurants are used to investing in marketing and capturing customers using proven methods that are ideal for regular patrons. Corporate dining “winners” will be the restaurants that invest in networking rather than one-off advertisements and flyers in people’s mailboxes.
You want your business to become an asset to your city, a place where corporations come to gather, make deals and know that the experience will remain consistent.