Catering is an important and promising sector of the national economy in the Republic of Moldova at the present stage of its development. Combining both production and commercial functions, as well as consumption and animation, catering is gaining popularity in our country, although about 20 years ago the demand for catering services was very limited. At the same time, catering enterprises face certain problems, among which the most pressing are competition, state policy changes on HoReCa enterprises, product quality and safety problems, etc. In this article, the authors tried to consider and systematize the main trends in Moldova public catering sector development, and to study the possibilities for increasing their competitiveness.