How to price catering: per head, platters and the costs you forget

Price catering by costing everything a job uses, not only the food: ingredients, packaging, the prep hours, the trip and any staff on site. Set the food price per head or per platter from your food cost, add travel and staffing as separate lines, and protect yourself with a minimum spend and a deposit. A quote that only covers the food is a quote that pays you to drive across town.

Why catering quotes come out too low

In your dining room, the room does a lot of quiet work. The plates, the glasses, the heating and the staff on the floor are all in the price of a main, and you stopped thinking about them years ago.

Catering strips all of that out and hands you a different set of costs:

• Packaging. Trays, lids, napkins, labels, cutlery, cups. Per head it looks small. Across a year of office lunches it is not.
• Prep time. Forty identical wraps take longer than forty covers spread across a service, because nothing else is happening while they are made.
• The trip. Somebody drives, loads, carries and comes back, and the van costs money whether or not it is yours.
• Staff on site. A staffed event is hours away from your own floor, including the setting up and the clearing down.
• The small order. Six sandwiches delivered costs you nearly as much to fulfil as twenty.

Miss any one and the job still feels busy. It does not pay.

How do you work out a price per head?

Start from food cost, the way you would for a new dish.

1. Cost one portion of everything on the menu, from your actual invoices, including the bread, the dressing and the garnish.
2. Add the packaging per head. Cost a full box or tray set, then divide by the people it serves.
3. Choose your food cost target. Restaurants commonly aim for food at around 25 to 35% of the selling price. Catering has more packaging and labour around the food, so sit at the lower end, not the higher.
4. Divide the food cost by your target to get a selling price, then check it against what the same customer would pay elsewhere.

The menu price calculator does the arithmetic if you would rather not.

A worked example: lunch for 20

An office books a working lunch for 20 people: wraps, a salad and a cake tray, delivered.

• Food cost: €4.20 a head, so €84 in total.
• Packaging: €0.60 a head, so €12.
• Prep: two and a half hours of staff time, at an example staff cost of €20 an hour including employer costs, so €50.
• Delivery: the round trip and the van, call it €15.

The job costs €161 to deliver, or a little over €8 a head.

Priced from food cost at a 30% target, the food is €14 a head, or €280. That leaves €119 towards rent, energy and profit. Priced at €10 a head because "it is only sandwiches", the same job leaves €39, before anything else.

Two checks before you send it. Decide whether your per-head price includes VAT and say so on the quote, because an office buyer will ask; check the rate that applies to your catering with your accountant. And if you take the booking through a platform, its commission is a cost of the job too, so build it in now rather than discovering it later.

How should you price platters and trays?

Price a platter from what is on it, not from a per-head figure multiplied out. Count the pieces, cost them, add the board or tray and the labour of building it, and then state clearly how many people it serves.

That last part matters most. "Serves ten" sets an expectation. If your platters are generous, say so; if they are a light lunch, say that too. A customer who orders three platters for thirty people and runs out at the second round will remember you, and not kindly.

Charge for the trip and the staff separately

Put travel and staffing on the quote as their own lines. It is clearer for the customer, and it stops you hiding them in the food price, where they shrink every time somebody asks for a discount on the food.

• Travel: a free distance, then a charge per kilometre, or set fees by zone (in town, up to 15km, up to 30km). Zones are easier to explain on the phone.
• Staff: decide how many guests one person can look after for the kind of service you run, then charge hours per person, counting setting up and clearing down, not only the hours the guests are there.
• Surcharges: Sundays, bank holidays and peak occasions cost you more to staff. A surcharge for those days is normal and fair.

Set a minimum spend, and protect the date

Work out what a job costs you before the food itself: the trip, the setting up, the time it ties up a pair of hands. In the example above, the prep and the trip alone come to €65, and a small order still needs most of that. An order that cannot cover it is a loss however good the margin on the food.

Two ways to deal with it: a minimum number of guests, or a minimum spend that tops a small order up. The second is kinder, because the customer can still have their six sandwiches, they pay what a delivery actually costs.

Then protect the date with a deposit when the customer accepts, a balance due a few days before, and a cut-off after which numbers and the menu are fixed. Set the cut-off to when you place your orders. Your cancellation terms should follow the same timeline: once the shopping is bought, a late cancellation costs you the shopping.

When to quote higher

Demand for catering is lumpy. Weekday office lunches run all year. Christmas parties come in a rush, and communions, confirmations and graduations bunch together in late spring and early summer.

On the dates you could fill twice over, you do not need to be the cheapest. Quote the full price, take a larger deposit, and keep the date for the customer who accepts first.

Putting it into practice on Mosey

If you take catering through Mosey, these rules are written down once, as travel, staffing, surcharge, minimum spend and service charge rules, and they pre-fill every quote you build. They are internal by default, so the customer sees your quote lines rather than your workings. Mosey's commission on catering is 3% plus VAT, so add it to your costs alongside the card fee. See how to add catering to your restaurant or café for the full set-up.

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