Catering played an important role during the war years, enabling the population to work fully to strengthen the country's defense capability, maintain the physical and moral strength of people. The catering network of Buryatia, which functioned in the pre-war period, steadily continued to operate during the war years, operated in urban and rural areas, covered industrial, logging and other enterprises. The purpose of the study is to show the state and trends in the development of the republic's catering during the war. The tasks are to determine the priority areas of catering activity in the context of the socio-political situation in the republic, to identify catering enterprises of Buryatia that operated during the war, to analyze their performance indicators. The objects are a network of catering enterprises, turnover, forms and methods of work of catering enterprises. Research methods are comparative-historical, analytical, statistical groupings. The results are a characteristic of a multi-departmental network of catering enterprises, the dynamics of the catering network development, changes in the arsenal of forms and methods of work, achievements and miscalculations in the work of enterprises. The need to provide the population of the republic with food resources during the war period caused the growth of the public catering network. The public catering system was represented by state enterprises (Ulan-Ude canteen trust), cooperative (Buryat-Mongolian Cooperative Union), military trade, departmental bodies in various industries: railway and river transport (trade and catering offices – Transtorgpit and Torgrechtrans), forestry (Lesprodtorg), etc. In a difficult economic situation, it was necessary to create our own food base, organize self-procurement, use of additional food supply sources for the population. Detailed information is provided on the activities of the Ulan-Ude canteen trust, such components as product range, subsidiary farming, personnel, positive and negative examples of customer service. Having restructured the forms of work in accordance with the motto "canteen - defense workshop", providing for the daily needs of the residents of the republic, catering enterprises contributed to the fulfillment of wartime tasks.