The Digitization Gap in Supermarket Catering

Every major European supermarket chain has deli counters, bakeries, and butcher departments in hundreds of stores. These departments produce enormous volumes of food daily. Yet when it comes to catering — prepared-to-order food for events, parties, and gatherings — most chains still rely on phone calls, paper forms, and in-store conversations.

This is the digitization gap in supermarket catering. And it represents one of the largest untapped opportunities in European grocery retail.

The Opportunity Is Hiding in Plain Sight

The US grocery foodservice market hit $52.1 billion in 2025, according to FMI — The Food Industry Association. The global catering software market is projected to grow from $1.12 billion to $2.84 billion by 2033, a compound annual growth rate of 12.3% (Straits Research).

European supermarkets are sitting on the same opportunity. The production capacity exists — deli counters, bakeries, and butcher departments already staff skilled food professionals who can produce party platters, buffets, celebration cakes, and multi-course menus. What's missing is the digital infrastructure to offer these services at scale.

Consider the typical European supermarket chain with 80 stores. Each store might handle 5–10 catering orders per week through informal channels — phone calls, handwritten notes, walk-in requests. That's 400–800 orders per week with no centralized visibility, no capacity management, no production planning, and no data on what customers want.

Now imagine those same 80 stores with a proper digital ordering platform: online browsing, configurable menus, per-store capacity rules, automated production planning, and integrated payment. The same stores could easily handle 20–40 orders per week each — not because demand doesn't exist today, but because it's currently suppressed by friction.

Why Generic Platforms Don't Work

The obvious question: why not use existing catering software? The answer lies in complexity.

Simple catering platforms — the kind built for independent restaurants or single-location caterers — assume one kitchen, one menu, one set of operating hours. They don't handle:

• Centralized assortment management across 50–100+ stores, where different store groups may offer different products based on their capabilities.
• Per-store capacity rules — a store that can produce 30 buffet servings on a Tuesday shouldn't accept 50, but the store across town might have different limits.
• Pickup date and time rules — a celebration cake needs 3 days' notice, but a sandwich platter needs 1 day, and these rules vary by product and by store.
• Complex pricing — family discounts, B2B pricing tiers, promotional vouchers, and region-specific pricing all operating simultaneously.
• Multi-brand operations — large retail groups often operate multiple supermarket brands. The platform needs to present each brand as an independent experience while sharing a common backend.

This is not a feature gap that can be patched. It's a fundamentally different architecture requirement.

The Build-vs-Buy Trap

Some chains have attempted to build custom solutions. The UK's Waitrose, for example, runs a “Food Made To Order” service through its own website. But custom builds are expensive (millions of euros), slow (years to develop), and produce a system that serves exactly one brand. There is no shared innovation, no continuous improvement funded by a community of users.

In the US, this problem has been solved. FoodStorm, acquired by Instacart in 2021, now powers catering and prepared food ordering for over 3,000 grocery stores across chains like Ahold Delhaize, Sprouts, and Albertsons.

But FoodStorm is US-centric and locked into the Instacart ecosystem. European chains have no equivalent. The market is wide open.

What a Purpose-Built Solution Looks Like

The platform that solves this needs to be built from the ground up for chain-scale catering. It needs to handle the full value stream:

For customers: Browse a curated catering assortment by occasion (wedding, birthday, holiday, everyday). Configure menus with guided selection rules. Choose a pickup store. See real-time availability based on that store's capacity. Pay online. Collect freshly prepared food.

For operations: Manage the entire catalog centrally. Configure rules per store group — capacity, timing, pricing, availability — without writing code. Receive orders as daily production plans per store. Track performance across all locations and brands.

For the business: Launch new brands on the same platform. Run multiple retail identities from one installation. Accumulate data on catering demand patterns across the entire network.

This is not theoretical. Such a platform exists today, powering three supermarket brands across more than 100 stores in Denmark, serving everything from party buffets and celebration cakes to fresh butcher cuts and breakfast platters.

The Window Is Now

European grocery is undergoing a wave of digital transformation. Click-and-collect, online ordering, loyalty apps, and electronic shelf labels are becoming standard. But catering — one of the highest-margin, highest-loyalty categories in the store — remains largely analog.

The chains that digitize catering first will capture disproportionate share. They'll offer a customer experience that competitors can't match with phone calls and paper forms. They'll unlock revenue from production capacity that's currently sitting idle during off-peak hours. And they'll build a data asset on catering demand that informs everything from staffing to procurement.

The digitization gap in supermarket catering is real, it's large, and it's closing. The question for European grocery executives is not whether to act, but how quickly.