Catering pricing calculator

How the catering calculator works

1. Scale the food. Servings needed = guests × servings per guest × (1 + buffer), rounded up. Each dish is scaled on its own. A recipe can scale proportionally or in whole batches.
2. Add the other costs. Packaging, labor (people × hours × hourly cost to you), rentals, transport, venue costs, miscellaneous costs and an optional overhead allocation. You choose what to include.
3. Optional contingency. A percentage added to those costs as a financial allowance. It is money, not extra food.
4. Set the price. Solve for a target margin, or enter your own event or per-guest price and see what it leaves.

Example (fictional): $1,300 of entered costs, a 25% target margin and a 3% payment fee give $1,300 ÷ (1 − 0.25 − 0.03) = $1,805.56 (rounded up to the cent).

Two printouts, kept separate

Print internal costing shows your costs, margin and internal notes. Print customer estimate shows only your business and event labels, guest count, menu, price, tax, total, deposit, balance and any customer notes. It is labeled “Estimate,” and it never includes ingredient prices, labor rates or your margin. Use your browser’s print dialog to print or save as PDF.

Recipe copies

Adding a recipe from the Menu calculator copies its ingredients into the event. Changing the recipe later does not silently change a quote. If the recipe has changed you will be told, and you can compare before and after and refresh on purpose.

Limits of this tool

• One package price for the event, not a price per dish.
• One simple tax rate on the whole quote. Complex taxability needs outside advice.
• No service charges, automatic gratuity, discounts (lower your price instead) or flat transaction fees.
• An estimate is not a contract or a tax invoice. Nothing is sent, published or paid from this page.

Read the catering pricing guide, or start with the menu calculator to cost a recipe.