Catering & Mobile Food Services
The industry — Special food services
Base industry report for 7223 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 4,122
- Under 10 employeesA
- 68%
- Establishments · USA
- 54,120
- Employment · USA
- 730,273
- Payroll · USA
- $21.2B
Of 4,122 Canadian establishments with employees, 68% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
One thing must be trueEntry turns on a single condition that can be named and tested before much is spent. Clear it and this becomes an execution question; fail it and no amount of operating skill helps.
Take share rather than ride the market. Demand is flat, seasonal or policy-driven, so growth has to come out of a competitor. That is possible and it is slower, and it rewards an operator who can wait.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 3
The binding constraint — growth quality
The appeal is the low entry cost relative to a restaurant, and that is also the ceiling: a truck or a catering kitchen sells a fixed number of covers on a fixed number of days, and the good days are seasonal and weather-dependent. Commissary requirements and municipal vending rules limit where and when service is legal. Revenue scales by adding units, each of which needs its own operator — which is a staffing problem, not a growth engine.
Vending permits, commissary rules and event calendars are municipal, and a truck serves one crowd at a time. Sized by trading days × covers per unit.
$3.019B of 2022 US receipts divided by 10,155 establishments; the 2017 equivalent was $226,000 across 5,211. Units nearly doubled while revenue per unit rose 31% in nominal dollars across five years that included the pandemic — the segment grew by adding trucks, not by making a truck worth more. A caterer's equivalent was $1.03M and a contractor's site $1.69M.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 1 of 4 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 4 named · 1 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| AramarkNYSE: ARMKA | $18.5B | — | FY2025 revenue, 53 weeks to 3 October 2025; FSS United States segment $13.21B |
| Compass GroupLSE: CPGC | not disclosed | — | The largest contract caterer in Canada and globally; its accounts were not opened for this record, so no figure is carried |
| SodexoEPA: SWC | not disclosed | — | The third global contractor, with a substantial Canadian institutional book; not opened for this record |
| Independent caterers and food trucksA | not disclosed | — | 1,777 of Canada's 4,122 sites with employees have fewer than five. US mobile food averaged $297K of receipts per site in 2022 — that is the ceiling on one unit's year |
Evidence
Evidence. Receipts, firm counts and site counts for NAICS 7223 and its three industries were read in the US Census Bureau's own 2022 and 2017 Economic Census data files (EC2272BASIC, EC1772BASIC) [A]; the per-unit and sites-per-firm figures are arithmetic on them. Aramark's FY2025 revenue and its FSS United States segment revenue were read in the segment and disaggregation-of-revenue tables of its 10-K for the 53 weeks ended 3 October 2025 [A], not from a headline or a summary; FY2023 appears restated there following the Vestis separation, so only FY2024 and FY2025 are used. The Canadian site count and size bands are Statistics Canada, December 2023 [A]. What was NOT sourced: Compass Group's and Sodexo's accounts were not opened, so no revenue is carried for either, and no Canadian revenue split for this group exists on this record — the US census is used as the shape of the industry, not as its Canadian size. No municipal vending by-law, commissary rule or event-permit schedule was read, and no seasonality or weather series was opened. The 2017-to-2022 comparison spans the pandemic, which closed venues and opened trucks, so the direction is reliable and the rate is not. The cut — that unit economics cap at one operator per unit — is analyst judgment.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
National foodservice association (restaurants, caterers, contract foodservice); site says 'thousands of members' without a figure. Runs the RC Show.
US association of catering and event professionals founded 1958; 'more than 40 chapters', per its About page. No member count stated.
US-based association of caterers; runs the Art of Catering Food conference and CATIE awards. No member count found.
Restaurants Canada's annual foodservice trade show in Toronto; RC Show 2027 site live (rcshow.com redirects here).
Informa trade publication for caterers and event professionals; articles dated the day checked. catersource.com redirects here.
The former Catersource conference; 2027 edition March 22-25 at the New Orleans convention center, per the events page.
US online trade publication for food truck and mobile catering operators, with podcast and webinars; current 2026 stories.
The Food Trucks Association of Canada exists only as Facebook and LinkedIn pages that could not be opened, so it is not listed. mobile-cuisine.com returned a server error and Foodservice and Hospitality magazine blocks automated access.