Every Caterer in America

There are 181,848 businesses on Google Maps related to catering. Here's the breakdown.

Six kinds of caterer

"Catering" on Google is not one industry. We split every row into one of six groups:

• Mobile caterers and private chefs: 54,289. Food trucks, mobile bars, hibachi chefs, home kitchens. Sample
• Chain restaurant locations: 49,173. Locations of brands with 25 or more sites. Sample
• Independent restaurants: 40,150. Local restaurants that will cater if you ask. Sample
• Catering companies: 24,643. A kitchen, a storefront, catering as the business. Sample
• Event venues: 9,199. Banquet halls, wedding venues, conference space. Sample
• Grocery and institutional: 4,394. Deli counters, clubs, campus dining. Sample

Each sample is a random 250 rows from that group.

The largest group has no address

54,289 of these businesses publish no street address. That is 30% of everything Google tags as catering, and it is the single biggest group in the file.

They are not missing data. Google lets a business hide its address when it travels to the customer, and it marks those listings. The rate follows who goes where. Across all 307,962 businesses in Texas, 5.5% publish no address. For mobile caterers it is 63%.

For example, Mobile Hibachi 4U has 19,786 reviews and no address. Its own description reads "We Come to You!".

18,772 of them are Subway

One brand is 10% of everything Google tags as catering in the United States.

The chain group has 49,173 locations across 143 brands, and the five largest account for 63% of them. Subway, Jersey Mike's, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle, Panda Express. Every one of those stores carries a Caterer tag because the brand sells office trays.

Filter the chains and the local restaurants out and the catering industry proper is 78,932 businesses: the mobile caterers and the catering companies. 85% of them are independent, single-location operations.

How Ora built it

Ora sweeps every Google-listed food business across all 50 states and DC. Catering runs at 7.1% of everything.

A place is in this file when its Google categories or its business name say catering. 96.8% carry one of Google's own catering tags: Caterer, Mobile caterer, Catering food and drink supplier.

A row in this file is a starting point. The Ora API can enrich every location with 14 more fields:

• Ordering and tech: POS provider, delivery and pickup providers, first-party online ordering, online reservations, loyalty program and provider, gift cards
• People and contact: owner names, owner LinkedIn, verified emails, website, Facebook, Instagram, social links.
• Menu and operations: full menu with items, kitchen complexity, hero items, merchant type

Ora also tracks the permit and license filings that precede an opening, which is the only way to catch a new caterer that will never accumulate a first review.

The dataset

Every row carries a name, city, state, zip, address where the business publishes one, phone, website, the Google catering categories, review count, rating, and the Google Maps listing. Phone on 94.6% of rows, website on 76.4%.

Download the full dataset: 181,848 rows, CSV.