How a Nairobi caterer booked its first full wedding season from Google
A reception plan, drawn from above. Every round table is a Nairobi service area; every chair a search its guests type. Over 10 months the place-cards were written one ranking at a time — and the top table filled.
+38 event bookings from organic
38 chairs · 11 tables · 10 months · Local
Before the guests arrived
An empty room, and a guest list held by someone else.
Corporate and wedding clients found caterers through word of mouth and directory sites. The business had no service-area pages for Karen, Westlands or Kiambu, and had no profile reviews at all.
The food was the referral engine: a planner tasted the pilau at one Karen garden wedding and booked three more. But couples planning a 2,000-guest ruracio or an HR team booking an end-year lunch now start on their phones, and on Google the business barely existed. Directory sites captured the searches and resold the leads to whichever caterer paid most that week.
The goal was simple to state: own the map pack in the neighbourhoods where the venues are, and turn searches into quote requests the kitchen could actually serve within an hour's drive.
Walking the venue
The audit: eleven findings before a single chair was set.
Google Business Profile
- highPrimary category set to “Restaurant”, not “Caterer”
- highNo service areas declared — profile only surfaced near the Industrial Area kitchen
- highZero reviews and no review link anywhere in the booking flow
- mediumEight photos, all of empty chafing dishes; no events or menus
Site & content
- highOne homepage targeting all of Nairobi; no pages for Karen, Westlands or Kiambu
- mediumMenus published as a 9 MB PDF that Google indexed as a single thin page
- mediumNo LocalBusiness or Service schema; phone number was an image
- mediumMobile LCP 5.8 s on a 3G profile; quote form below four screens of gallery
Citations & trust
- highBusiness name in three spellings across 14 Kenyan directories
- mediumOld Ngong Road address still listed on 6 sites after the kitchen moved
- lowWhatsApp enquiries untracked, so organic leads were invisible
The menu
Four courses, served in order.
Built on our Local plan: the profile sets the table, area pages seat the guests, reviews write the place-cards, and citations make sure everyone finds the venue.
Menu
Google Business Profile · Service-area pages · Review strategy · Local citations
First course
Google Business Profile
Recategorised as Caterer with Wedding and Corporate secondaries, declared all 11 service areas, rebuilt services with prices from KES 1,800 per guest, and committed to weekly posts showing real set-ups by venue.
11 areas declared
Second course
Service-area pages
One page per area — Karen garden weddings, Westlands office lunches, Kiambu farm receptions — each with venues served, travel times from the kitchen, a sample menu in HTML and a quote form above the fold.
11 pages, 0 templates
Third course
Review strategy
A two-step ask: an SMS the morning after the event with a direct review link, then a printed thank-you card in the leftover-food boxes. Every review answered within 48 hours, by name of the event, never the guest.
~18 reviews / mo
Fourth course
Local citations
One canonical name, address and number pushed to the 14 directories that mattered, plus venue partner pages and wedding planner listings — the referrals that already drove word of mouth, now as links.
14 cleaned, 22 new
Order of service
10 months, from site visit to a full season.
Month 1
Site visit
Audit of profile, site, 14 directories and three competitors in the Karen map pack.
9 reviews · 7 quotes
Month 2
Linens on
Profile recategorised, service areas set, NAP fixed on the six worst directories.
24 reviews · 9 quotes
Month 3
First guests
Westlands and Karen pages live; review SMS goes out after every event.
41 reviews · 12 quotes
Month 4
Map pack
Westlands enters the map-pack top 3 for “corporate catering”.
62 reviews · 15 quotes
Month 5
Menus served
PDF menus rebuilt as HTML with Service schema; Karen and Lavington reach top 3.
84 reviews · 18 quotes
Month 6
Planners
Venue and wedding-planner partner pages earn 22 local citations and links.
107 reviews · 21 quotes
Month 7
Peak enquiry
Kiambu and Muthaiga in the map pack; 107 reviews; enquiries at 21 a month.
128 reviews · 23 quotes
Month 8
Long table
Runda and Gigiri pages expanded with venue guides and a travel-time map.
149 reviews · 26 quotes
Month 9
Bookings
Six organic bookings in a month for the first time; 149 reviews.
168 reviews · 28 quotes
Month 10
Full season
Nine of eleven areas in the top 3; 29 quote requests; season fully booked.
186 reviews · 29 quotes
The reception
Every chair filled, one ranking at a time.
Table 1
+38
Event bookings from organic
Table 2
9 / 11
Map-pack top 3 areas
Table 3
6 → 29
Quote requests / mo
Table 4
0 → 186
Google reviews
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
The seating plan
Scrub the season or press play. A place-card lands when a keyword reaches the top 3; the centrepiece turns green when the area enters the map pack — 9 / 11 by month 10 (Karen, Westlands, Kiambu, Kilimani, Lavington, Runda, Gigiri, Muthaiga, Upper Hill).
- at the top table
- 38
- at the top table
- areas in map pack
- 9 / 11
- areas in map pack
- keywords top 3
- 61 / 66
- keywords top 3
Karen table
In the map-pack top 3 since month 4.
- wedding caterer karenTop 3 · m3
- corporate catering karenTop 3 · m4
- event catering karenTop 3 · m4
- outdoor wedding catering karenTop 3 · m5
- nyama choma catering karenTop 3 · m6
- buffet catering karenTop 3 · m7
Guest list: keyword positions
| Keyword | Volume | Before | Month 10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| wedding caterers karen | 590 | — | #1 |
| corporate catering westlands | 480 | #34 | #1 |
| caterers in nairobi | 2,400 | #41 | #4 |
| wedding catering kiambu | 320 | — | #2 |
| outdoor event catering nairobi | 720 | #58 | #3 |
| nyama choma catering lavington | 140 | — | #1 |
| office lunch catering upper hill | 260 | #27 | #2 |
| buffet catering runda | 110 | — | #3 |
| wedding caterer langata | 170 | — | #6 |
You are cordially invited
Get a plan like this
Service-area pages, a profile that ranks where your customers are, and a review habit that compounds. Same playbook, set for your city.