Turn your catering menus and package guide into a flipbook you can send the same hour an enquiry lands with Flipbooks AI. Canapes, buffets, plated dinners, per head prices, minimum numbers and what happens on the day, all on pages that turn like a printed brochure. Built for catering companies pitching weddings and corporate events. It is free, there are no ads or watermarks, and you can publish as many menus as you have packages.
Upload your catering menu PDF. Flipbooks AI turns the canape lists, buffet spreads, plated menus and package pages into an interactive flipbook preview with the layout you exported kept intact.
Add your logo and colours, embed a film of a real service, put an enquiry button beside each package, and decide whether the per head prices are public or protected by a password for clients who have enquired.
Publish, then paste the link into your reply template, your acknowledgement email and your signature. Watch which packages get read, and call the clients who reached the prices while your name is still fresh.
Start with the guide you already send. Export it as a PDF, upload it, and Flipbooks AI gives you an interactive preview immediately. Choose how the pages turn, add your logo and colours, place your enquiry links on the package pages, embed a film or two, and decide whether the prices are public or behind a password. Open it on your phone the way a client will, then publish. Copy the link into your reply template and you are done. There is no design work and nothing to install, and the whole job takes about as long as answering two enquiries properly.
It is the document you send when somebody asks what you can do for two hundred people in September. It usually runs the same way: canape selections, then buffet and bowl food, then plated dinner menus by course, then the packages that bundle staff, hire and service, with per head prices, minimum numbers and what is and is not included. Flipbooks AI takes that as a PDF and turns it into a flipbook that turns page by page in a browser. It is not a restaurant menu. Nobody is choosing dinner tonight from it: a client is choosing a supplier for an event months away, comparing you against two others, and forwarding your pages to a partner, a parent or a finance team.
Canape lists with counts per person, bowl food and street food menus, buffet spreads, three and five course plated dinners, breakfast and all day conference catering, grazing tables, late night food, children menus and dietary alternatives, plus the drinks packages and staffing rates that go with them. Put the lot in one guide with a contents page, or split it so a corporate client never has to scroll past wedding cake. The structure stays yours, because Flipbooks AI keeps the layout you exported and simply makes it turn.
Your guide competes with two other guides on the same screen, so it has to look like you. Add your logo, set the colours from your brand, choose a background and a page turn that suit the work you do, and keep the type your designer specified. If you serve two very different markets, keep the same identity but let each guide carry its own tone: the corporate one calm and precise, the wedding one warmer. Consistency across seasons matters too, because a client who saw your guide last year should recognise it this year.
A twenty megabyte PDF is the standard way to answer an enquiry and it is a poor one. It downloads slowly on a phone, opens in whatever reader the client happens to have, loses your typography, sits in a downloads folder, and tells you nothing. A flipbook is a link. It opens in the browser in about a second, keeps the design your studio paid for, works the same on a laptop in an office and a phone on a train, and can be forwarded without becoming an attachment nobody opens. When your prices change in January you republish once and every link you have ever sent shows the new figures.
Planners and couples search for catering long before they ask anyone. A flipbook embedded on your site puts your menus on the page as content rather than behind a download, which keeps visitors reading and helps you show up for the searches that matter: your city, wedding catering, corporate lunch delivery, the venues you are on the approved list for. Name the guide the way people actually search rather than the way it is filed internally. The document you built to answer enquiries starts generating them.
Food sells on sight, and a static price list is the worst way to sell it. Give each menu a photograph that fills the page and a tap that opens the detail. Put a short film of a plated service or a canape pass on the packages page so a client sees the standard rather than reading about it. Make every price table sit beside a button that opens your enquiry form with the package name already in it. Link out to a testimonial page, a venue list, or the tasting booking. Each of these is a small step that stops a client filing you under maybe.
The guide has to sell food nobody has tasted yet, so it needs more than a price list. Put real photography on the page and let a client tap for the full plate. Embed a ninety second film of your team plating at a venue, or a walkthrough of a wedding you catered last summer. Link the enquiry button on every package page straight to your booking form, so an interested client is not hunting for your email address. Add a downloadable allergen and dietary sheet for the planner who will be asked for one. Include searchable content so somebody hunting for canapes lands on the right page. All of it is free, and no watermark sits over your work.
Catering pricing moves with the market, and a printed rate card locks you into a number you may regret by spring. With a flipbook you change the figure and republish, and every link you have sent shows the new price without you emailing anyone to explain. Keep last season figures for the quotes already out, publish the new ones for anything from today, and keep the two on separate links. If a client has been given a held rate, send them the version that holds it. Prices stay accurate without ever becoming a conversation you did not want to have.
A catering guide is written by more people than anyone expects: the head chef writes the menus, the sales lead writes the packages, the owner argues about the prices and somebody has to lay it all out. Share one preview link and everybody comments on the same version instead of five PDFs with initials in the filename. Keep next season guide in draft beside the live one and swap them on the date you agreed. Sign off happens once, on one document, which is quicker than a thread and much harder to get wrong.
Weddings, corporate lunches, conference catering, drinks receptions, private dining at home, festival and film unit catering, funeral teas, launch parties: the shape of the document changes but the job does not. Build one guide that covers everything you do, or separate guides for weddings and corporate so each client reads a document written for them. A small team with one seasonal menu and a large operation with twelve package tiers both upload a PDF and get the same result. Every version gets its own link, so the corporate rate card never lands in a wedding inbox.
Printed catering brochures are expensive and out of date the moment a supplier raises a price. Most companies print a run, ration them for tastings and wedding fairs, then send an apologetic PDF anyway. A flipbook removes the print bill and the rationing at the same time: send it to every enquiry, hand the code out to everyone at a fair, and put the link on your card. Keep a small print run for the tasting table if you like the feel of paper, and let the link carry the version that is actually current.
Caterers
Event Companies
Wedding Caterers
Hotels
Private Chefs
Venue Teams
Your guide gets forwarded to people you have never met: a parent, a finance director, a venue coordinator, someone reading on an old laptop. Flipbooks AI keeps it readable for all of them. Screen readers can work through the menus for a client with low vision, keyboard navigation works without a mouse, and zoom is there for anyone reading a price table on a small screen. Clear contrast and a simple layout do the rest. A document everybody can read is a document that gets a decision rather than a delay.
Most enquiries are read on a phone, often at work, often quickly, and often forwarded to somebody else within the hour. Flipbooks AI is built for that. The guide reflows for a small screen, the page turns stay smooth under a thumb, and zoom brings a per head table up to a size anyone can actually read. It opens in the browser from the link in your reply, with no download and no app in the way. When the client forwards it to a partner or a finance manager, that person opens the same clean document rather than a file that will not open on their machine.
Half of the people who open your guide are standing in a venue with poor signal, or on a train, or on a lunch break with four minutes to spare. Flipbooks AI is tuned to open fast on a weak connection. Your food photography is compressed carefully so it still looks like your food, the first pages appear while the rest load behind them, and there is no download step. A guide that takes twenty seconds to arrive on a phone is a guide that never got read, and in catering that is a job lost to whoever answered faster.
Nothing about your process needs to change. Export the guide from InDesign, Canva, Word or Google Slides and upload the PDF. Paste the link into your proposal template, your CRM email sequence, your quote document and your signature. Link out from the guide to your booking form, your tasting calendar, a payment page or a venue list. Embed it on your website, whatever that is built on. The flipbook sits on top of the tools you already pay for rather than replacing any of them.
Flipbooks AI costs nothing and does not hold the useful parts back. No logo is stamped across your food photography, there is no page limit for a guide that runs to forty pages of packages, and the analytics are not behind an upgrade. For a catering company that is real money: the menus change twice a year, the prices change more often, and paying per document to keep them current adds up quickly. Publish as many versions as you have markets, refresh them whenever a supplier price moves, and send them to everyone who asks without watching a quota.
Every guide you publish stays where you can find it, which is more useful than it sounds. Look up what you charged last autumn when a repeat client asks for the same event, or rebuild the spring menus from the ones you ran a year ago. Keep a version per market and per year, and stop hunting through a shared drive full of files with final in the name. When a client says you catered their sister wedding two summers ago, you can open exactly what they were sent.
We cater about sixty weddings a year and used to send a fourteen megabyte PDF that half of them never opened. Now the reply goes out with a link within the hour. I can see who read past the plated dinner pages, and those are the calls I make first. Two bookings this spring came from people who forwarded the flipbook to a parent.
Product catalogs
The corporate rate card used to be a spreadsheet nobody was allowed to send. Now the public guide shows the food and a password protected version carries the pricing. Clients get the numbers once they have actually enquired, and I stopped worrying about where our rates ended up.
Client lookbooks
Our supplier prices moved twice last year. Reprinting was not an option and reissuing a PDF to everyone who had one was worse. I changed the per head figures and republished, and every link we had ever sent was correct that afternoon. That alone paid for the switch.
Newsletters and programmes
I run a small team and do the selling myself. Building the guide took one evening, and the code on my card at a wedding fair got scanned about forty times. The analytics showed everyone stopping on the same page, which turned out to be the one page with no photograph on it.
Portfolio flipbooks
Not every number should be public. Put a password on the version that carries per head prices, minimum spends and staffing rates, and send it only to a client who has enquired, while a public version shows the menus and the style of the work. It keeps your rate card away from competitors and away from a browser that shares it further than you meant. You can also switch off downloading, so the numbers do not travel beyond the person you sent them to.
Speed wins catering work. The company that replies the same day with something worth reading gets the meeting. Keep your guide published and the reply is one link, ready before the enquiry has cooled. Put that link in your email signature and your automatic acknowledgement so anybody who fills in your form has the menus in front of them within a minute. Embed it on the site so a client browsing at midnight reads the packages instead of waiting until Monday. Use a printed code on a card at a wedding fair. When prices are sensitive, put a password on the version that carries them.
Most catering decisions come down to whether a client feels safe. Small things in the guide build that. Say what is included and what is extra in plain words, on the same page as the price. Show a sample timeline for the day so a couple can picture it. Add a page about dietary requirements before anyone has to ask. Put a photograph of your team working rather than only the food. Add a sharing button so a client can send the pages to whoever else has to agree. None of it is loud, and it is usually what tips a maybe into a tasting.
| Application | Rating | Unlimited Credits | Usage Rating | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10/10 | Yes | 1 | Flipbooks AI publishes unlimited catering guides free, with no watermark, full page food photography, embedded film, enquiry buttons on every package page, password protected pricing, and analytics that show which menus a client actually read. | |
FlipHTML5 | 5.2/10 | No | 2 | FlipHTML5 has been converting PDFs into flipbooks for years and offers a deep set of templates plus a shelf to hold several titles. Free guides carry its branding, and the reader tracking a sales team would want belongs to the paid tiers. |
Heyzine | 7.1/10 | No | 3 | Heyzine is fast to learn and produces a neat flipbook with very little fuss, which suits a small team. The free plan caps how many live books you keep and marks them, so running a wedding guide and a corporate guide at once gets awkward. |
Issuu | 8.3/10 | No | 4 | Issuu is built for publications that want to be discovered on the platform itself. That is a different job from answering an enquiry, and its free tier wraps your menus in Issuu branding rather than leaving your pages to speak for you. |
Flipsnack | 6.4/10 | No | 5 | Flipsnack adds shopping and lead capture to flipbooks, which retailers get real value from. For catering, the useful pieces including branding removal sit behind a monthly plan, and the editor expects you to work inside it rather than upload finished pages. |
Canva | 7.8/10 | No | 6 | Canva is where a lot of catering guides are designed, and it is good at that. Its presentation viewer shows the pages but not a page turn, and it will not tell you whether a client reached your package tiers or stopped at the canapes. |
Publuu | 6.9/10 | No | 7 | Publuu makes tidy flipbooks and tracks link opens in a way sales teams appreciate. The free tier works as a trial: page and flipbook limits arrive quickly if your guide runs long or you keep several markets live at once. |
Adobe InDesign | 8.1/10 | No | 8 | Adobe InDesign is the right place to set a guide with this much typography, and most designers will hand you an InDesign file. It stops at the PDF though: no link, no page turn, no enquiry tracking, and a subscription plus the skill to drive it. |
Marq | 6.5/10 | No | 9 | Marq, formerly Lucidpress, is built around locked brand templates so a sales team can produce on brand documents without a designer. Interactive flipbook reading is limited, and the useful team features sit on a paid business plan. |
Emailed PDF Menu | 7.6/10 | No | 10 | Emailing the PDF is what most caterers do and it costs nothing. It also arrives as a heavy attachment, opens differently on every device, loses your fonts, cannot carry film or an enquiry button, and never tells you whether it was opened. |
Some documents only exist for a moment: the menu you build for one wedding tasting, the seasonal party pack that sells from October, the conference rate sheet for a single client, the sample menu you take to a wedding fair. Build each as its own flipbook with its own link and its own code. Track them separately so you can see whether the party pack was read or ignored. When making one costs nothing, you make the one that fits the client rather than sending the general guide again.
The most useful thing a digital guide does is tell you what happened after you sent it. Flipbooks AI shows how many people opened it, how long they stayed, which pages held them and where they stopped. A client who reached the plated dinner pages and read the package tiers twice is worth a call on Tuesday. A guide that gets opened and closed on page two is telling you the first spread is wrong. Over a season that becomes a picture of which menus sell and which ones only you like.
You should not have to think about the technology behind your sales document. Flipbooks AI keeps pace with browsers and phones as they change, updates arrive without anyone doing anything, and a guide you published two seasons ago still opens cleanly for a client on a brand new device. There is nothing installed on an office laptop to break when that laptop is replaced. Your menus stay current because you change the food and the prices, not because you had to rebuild the document.
It is your catering menu and package guide turned into a booklet that turns page by page in a browser. Flipbooks AI makes it free. You send one link, the client reads canapes, buffets, plated dinners and prices on any device, and taps an enquiry button when they are ready.
Yes, completely. No watermark on your photography, no page limit for a long package guide, no subscription and no upgrade in front of the analytics. Branding, video, enquiry links, password protection and reading data are all included.
Yes. Per head rates, minimum numbers, staffing charges and what is included all sit on the page exactly as you laid them out. Because the guide is a link, you can change a price and republish, and every link you have already sent shows the new figure.
You send a link. Paste it into your reply, your proposal, your CRM sequence or your email signature, embed it on your website, or print it as a code for a wedding fair. Nothing is attached, so nothing bounces and nothing sits unopened in a downloads folder.
Yes. Publish an open version showing the menus and the style of your work, and a password protected version carrying the rate card. Send the password to clients who have enquired, and switch off downloading so the numbers do not travel further.
Yes. It runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or laptop, reflows for small screens and supports zoom for price tables. There is no app and no download, which matters because most enquiries are read on a phone and forwarded within the hour.
Change the pages in whatever you design in, upload the new PDF and republish. The link stays the same, so your signature, your proposals and your website all point at the current guide without you rewriting anything.
Yes. A restaurant menu is read by a guest choosing dinner tonight. A catering guide is read by somebody choosing a supplier for an event months away, so it is built around packages, per head pricing, minimums and enquiry links rather than courses at a table.
If you still have questions or want to explore more details about our features, limitations, and usage, we invite you to visit our full FAQ page.
