Price the food by the head and the staff by the hour, because only one of them scales with the guest count. You get the quote, the real price per head it works out at, and your food cost as a share of it. Free, and no signup needed.
Menu and service
Staff, overhead and profit
A margin is a share of the price, so it can never reach 100%: at 99% the bid would be a hundred times your cost. Capped at 80% here. If you meant a markup on cost, a 100% markup is a 50% margin.
Other costs (optional)
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These figures are estimates to help you quote an event. Adjust the per-head costs to your own suppliers and menu, and set the staff hours from the real day: load, travel, set-up, service, clear-down and the drive home.
It is a free tool that quotes an event from what it actually costs you. You enter the menu with its food and drink cost per head and the guest count, then the staff separately, because staff hours barely move with the guest count. It adds rentals, delivery and licences, applies your overhead and profit, and gives you the quote, the real price per head it works out at, and your food cost as a share of that quote.
Add one row per menu or service and enter the guest count with what the food and drink COST you per head, not what you charge. Each menu starts with a typical ingredient cost, which you should replace with your own: your suppliers and your portions are the whole point. Then set how many staff the event needs, how many hours each is on the clock, and what you pay them. Tick rentals, delivery, a marquee or licences. Finally set your overhead and profit margin. Everything updates as you type, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Most of the trade works backwards from food cost: add up what the ingredients cost per head, then price the food so that cost is some target share of what you charge. It is a quick method and it hides the thing that actually costs money, because the staff, the rentals, the van, the set-up and the clear-down are not in the ingredient cost at all.
This calculator works the other way round. Every real cost goes in, one overhead and one margin come out, and you get the quote, the price per head it implies, and your food cost as a share of that quote. For more detail, see our guide on how to estimate a catering job.
The calculator shows your food and drink as a share of the quote, and that number will look high if you are expecting 28 to 35 percent. That range is a RESTAURANT figure and it is measuring something else. In a restaurant the menu price is the only revenue there is, so it has to pay the kitchen, the servers, the rent and the profit out of whatever is left after the food. A catering quote itemises staff, rentals and delivery as their own lines, so the same food measured against a total that already separates all of those is naturally a much bigger share of it.
On this tool's own defaults, a hundred-guest plated dinner lands near 60 percent and a thirty-guest one at about 40, and neither is wrong: the small event simply has more staff and rentals inside the same total. So do not chase a target with it. Watch YOUR number across your own quotes instead. When it jumps, something changed, usually a supplier price or a portion, and that is worth knowing before the event rather than after it.
This is the one that makes small events lose money and big ones look suspiciously profitable. Double the guests and you roughly double the food. You do not double the crew, and you certainly do not double the day: the van still has to be loaded, driven, unloaded, set up, served and cleared whether there are thirty people or a hundred.
So a single per-head price is not a quote, it is an average, and an average is wrong at both ends. Take an event at $22 a head of food and drink with three staff for six hours at $28, which is $504 of labour. At 100 guests the food is $2,200 and the staff is 19 percent of cost. At 30 guests the food is $660 and the SAME staff bill is 43 percent of cost. Quote both at the same per head and you have underpriced the small one by a long way.
That is why staff is entered on its own here rather than buried in a per-head figure. Price the event, then divide by the guests to see what the per head came out at, rather than starting from a per head and hoping.
And this one costs money in every trade, including this one. A 20% markup on a $1,000 cost gives a $1,200 bid, and your profit is $200 on $1,200, which is a 16.7% margin, not 20%. To actually keep 20% of the price you divide by 0.80 and bid $1,250. The calculator treats the profit field as a margin and divides, so the number you type is the share of the bid you keep. Overhead is applied to cost before that, because overhead is a cost, not a profit.
These are common starting points in the United States for what the INGREDIENTS cost a caterer per head, before staff, rentals, overhead and profit. They are not menu prices. Replace them with your own suppliers' numbers, which is the single biggest improvement you can make to your quoting.
| Menu or service | Food and drink cost per head |
|---|---|
| Tea, coffee and pastries | $4 and $2 |
| Dessert or cake table | $6 |
| Children's menu | $7 and $2 |
| Breakfast or brunch | $8 and $3 |
| Canapes and reception | $9 and $4 |
| Boxed lunch, corporate | $10 and $2 |
| Buffet, cold | $11 and $3 |
| Grazing table | $13 |
| BBQ or hog roast | $14 and $3 |
| Buffet, hot | $15 and $3 |
| Plated dinner, two courses | $18 and $5 |
| Plated dinner, three courses | $24 and $6 |
| Wedding breakfast | $28 and $8 |
| Front of house staff | $22 to $35 an hour |
| Food as a share of the quote | Varies with staff and rentals, commonly 40% to 60% |
Count the staff hours from the real day and not from the service window: loading, travel, set-up, service, clear-down and the drive back is often ten hours for a four hour event. Hold a minimum booking, or a thirty-guest party costs you the same day as a hundred-guest one for a third of the money. Put the final guest count deadline in writing with a date, because the number always moves and it always moves late. Quote rentals as their own line, since the client can often supply tables and will be glad to. Keep a record of the food percentage on every quote you send, so an unusual one stands out against your own history rather than against somebody else's rule. When the job is agreed, our free catering quote template and estimate and quote generator turn the same line items into a document you can send in seconds.
Once the estimate is accepted, invoice the job straight away and keep the payment terms short:
From our invoice data: Shorter terms bring the money in sooner: invoices due on receipt are paid in 15.9 days on average and Net 30 invoices in 47.2 days, while the share paid by the due date barely changes (39.1% against 42.3%).
Source: Billbooks invoice payment study, 53,095 paid invoices from 180 businesses, 2007 to August 2026. See the invoice payment study
These figures are for planning only. Your final quote should reflect your own suppliers, your own portions, your own staff costs and the venue, which can add a kitchen, a long carry or a parking problem that no per-head figure knows about.
Bid the job here, then send a branded estimate and invoice, collect payment online, and track it all from one Billbooks account.
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