Catering price per head calculator
Build a per-head price from what the job actually costs you: food, staff, hire and travel. Then check it against the food cost and labour benchmarks before you send it.
The job
On-costs are payroll tax, super or pension, insurance and workers' comp. Twenty percent is a common all-in figure. Leave it at zero only if you are quoting subcontract rates that already include them.
Charge per head
Where the money goes
| Per head | Amount | Total |
|---|
Against the benchmarks
Before tax and before service charge. This is your charge per head only. Sales tax, VAT or GST and any service charge or gratuity go on top, and they vary by where you trade.
How the price is built up
Four layers, added in this order, because each one is calculated on the layer beneath it.
- Food. Your cost per head, plus a wastage allowance for trim, spoilage and the extra you always make so you do not run out.
- Labour. Staff times hours times rate, plus on-costs. This is the layer that gets left out, and it is usually the biggest one.
- Costs fixed to the job. Hire, travel, anything you buy for this event and nothing else. These do not move when the guest count does, which is why they hurt so much when numbers drop.
- Overhead and margin. Both taken as a share of the final price, not added to the cost. See below, because this is where the money leaks.
Margin on the price, not markup on the cost
The most expensive arithmetic mistake in catering, and it looks harmless. If your costs come to 34.12 a head and you want a 12 percent margin, the price is not 34.12 times 1.12. It is 34.12 divided by 0.88.
- 34.12 divided by 0.88 is 38.77, and 12 percent of that is 4.65, which is what you wanted.
- 34.12 times 1.12 is 38.21, and the margin you actually got is 10.7 percent.
The gap is exactly the square of your margin. At 12 percent you lose 1.44 percent of every job, at 20 percent you lose 4 percent, and at 30 percent you lose 9 percent. It scales against you precisely when you are trying to earn more, which is what makes it worth getting right. This calculator solves for the price rather than marking up.
Why the food cost percentage shortcut breaks on catering
Most pricing advice you will find says to divide your plate cost by a target food cost percentage and stop there. That works in a restaurant, where labour is a roster you already pay for and spread across a whole service. Catering buys labour per event, and it swings from nothing to more than half the bill.
Take two jobs with an identical 18 per head food cost, 100 guests each:
- A drop-off buffet, no staff on site, one van run. Built up from real costs it is worth about 27 a head.
- A plated dinner, ten staff for ten hours, a hire bill. Built up the same way it is worth about 89 a head.
The shortcut charges 60 a head for both. You lose the drop-off on price because you are more than twice what you need to be, and you win the plated dinner and then lose money on it, which is the worse of the two outcomes. Same food, same percentage, wildly different jobs.
Food cost percentage is still a useful check, which is why it is on the result panel. It is a rear-view mirror, not a steering wheel.
Benchmarks worth measuring against
Each of these is a share of what you charge, not of what you spend. They are bands to sit inside rather than targets to hit, and where you sit inside them depends almost entirely on how much service the job carries.
| Measure | Healthy band |
|---|---|
| Food cost High-end plated work can run as low as 25%. A casual BBQ or drop-off can sit near 38% and still be fine, because it carries almost no labour. | 28% to 35% |
| Labour cost Includes on-costs. A drop-off with no service staff lands far below this; a long plated dinner with a 1:10 ratio can exceed it and still be profitable if the food cost is tight. | 25% to 35% |
| Net margin Catering out-earns restaurants here, which typically manage 2% to 6%. Below 10% there is nothing absorbing a bad night. | 10% to 15% |
What gets left out of a quote
In rough order of how often it is forgotten and how much it costs when it is:
- On-costs on labour. Payroll tax, pension or super, insurance, workers' comp. Adding 20 percent to the wage bill is normal, and quoting the bare hourly rate understates your biggest cost by a fifth.
- Your own time. The site visit, the tasting, the three rounds of menu changes, the two hours on the phone the week of. If you are not paying yourself for it, the overhead percentage is where it has to live.
- The tasting itself. Food, time and often travel, spent on a job you have not won yet. It belongs in overhead across all jobs, not forgotten entirely.
- Travel both ways, and the return trip. Especially the collection run the next morning, which is a second journey and often a second set of hours.
- Wastage. Nobody caters exactly to the guaranteed number. The extra you make so you do not run out is a real cost of doing the job properly.
Cost it once, not once per quote
A per-head price is only as good as the food cost underneath it, and that number goes stale the moment a supplier moves. Rebuilding it by hand for every enquiry is where the time goes and where the errors creep in.
In 1pm, ingredients carry their own cost, recipes are built from those ingredients, and menus are built from recipes. Change one supplier price and every recipe and menu that uses it re-costs itself, so plate cost and margin stay honest without anyone maintaining a spreadsheet. The price you land on here then carries into the quote, the confirmation and the invoice as one number rather than three.
Related: food quantity per person, which works out how much to actually make once you have priced it, and room capacity by setup style, for how many the room holds before you price feeding them.
Common questions
Between 28 and 35 percent of what you charge. High-end plated work can run as low as 25 percent because the labour is heavy, and a casual BBQ or drop-off can sit near 38 percent and still be healthy because it carries almost no labour. The percentage on its own tells you nothing until you know how much service the job includes.
Take the margin on the price. They are not the same thing and the difference is money. If your costs are 34.12 per head and you want 12 percent, the price is 34.12 divided by 0.88, which is 38.77. Multiplying by 1.12 gives 38.21, and you have quietly given away 1.44 percent of the job. The shortfall is always the square of your margin, so it gets worse the more profitable you try to be.
Because it prices food and ignores labour. Take two jobs with an identical 18 per head food cost: a drop-off buffet with no staff, and a plated dinner with ten staff for ten hours. The shortcut charges 60 per head for both. Built up from real costs, the drop-off is worth about 27 and the plated dinner about 89. The shortcut prices you out of one and loses you money on the other.
Ten to fifteen percent net is the healthy band, and well-run operations clear more. That is considerably better than a full-service restaurant, which typically manages 2 to 6 percent. Below 10 percent you have nothing absorbing a cancellation, a no-show crew member or a supplier price rise.
No. The number it gives you is your charge per head before sales tax, VAT or GST, and before any service charge or gratuity. Those sit on top and vary by where you trade, so adding them here would make the figure wrong for most people rather than right for everyone.
How many of your confirmed guests are covering the costs you commit to the moment you accept the job: the staff roster, the hire, the van. Everyone above that number is contributing to overhead and profit. It is the figure that tells you how badly a drop in numbers will hurt, which is worth knowing before you agree to a guarantee.
Price the next one in a tenth of the time
1pm costs your recipes and menus once, then carries the numbers into the quote, the confirmation and the invoice. Change an ingredient price and every menu that uses it re-costs itself.