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Lead of the Week: How "Keep You in Mind" Became a Confirmed Booking
March 16, 2026 · Angel Roman
"Keep you in mind" is not a no. It is an invitation to make the next step easy enough that they actually follow through.
Situation
A BBQ-focused caterer was running LinkedIn outreach to corporate contacts in their market. One prospect replied with a familiar response: "We'll keep you in mind for future events."
That reply is easy to misread. It can feel like a polite brush-off. But a prospect who responds at all, even with a soft deferral, has confirmed two things: they have a future catering need, and they are aware the restaurant exists.
The challenge is converting that awareness into an actual booking before it fades.
What We Did
Rather than leaving the reply on the table, the restaurant responded with a direct menu link and a short note making it easy for the prospect to reference the restaurant's offerings when the need came up.
The menu link served a specific purpose: it moved the conversation from abstract future consideration to a concrete reference point. The prospect no longer had to "keep them in mind" as a vague impression. They had something they could actually forward to a colleague or pull up when planning started.
A follow-up message came later to check in. The combination of the menu resource and the timely follow-up kept the relationship from going dormant.
Result
The prospect converted. A confirmed booking followed from a contact who had initially replied with a soft deferral.
No dollar figure is attached to this win. The result is the conversion itself: a "keep you in mind" response that became a real booking through deliberate follow-up and the right supporting material.
What This Means for Other Operators
Soft replies are an underutilized category in catering outreach. Restaurants tend to segment their leads into two buckets: active prospects and dead leads. Soft deferral responses get filed in the wrong bucket.
A prospect who replies is a warm lead. They responded. They did not delete the message or mark it as spam. They engaged, which means they are reachable and not opposed to the restaurant's outreach. That is a meaningful signal.
The gap is that most restaurants do not have a clear process for what to do with a soft reply. There is no standard playbook for converting "keep you in mind" into a booking, so the reply goes unanswered and the relationship goes dormant.
Two things help. First, a resource that makes it easy for the prospect to reference the restaurant when planning starts: a menu, a pricing guide, a link to the catering page. Something concrete they can save and retrieve. Second, a follow-up at the right interval, brief and non-pushy, that checks in before the contact has moved on entirely.
Neither of those steps requires a sales call or a complicated pitch. They require a system that executes them consistently on the right timeline.
Catering Funnels is a done-for-you lead generation and automation platform built for restaurants with active catering operations. The follow-up process that converted this soft reply is part of what the Delivery plan includes.
Follow Catering Funnels on LinkedIn for weekly wins and outreach breakdowns from real catering operations.