To price a guest at a catered buffet you add up its full cost first: the food for the whole event by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, plates, napkins and serving disposables, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one guest costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For a buffet of chicken, pasta, salad, bread and dessert that costs $8.00 to make, a 40% margin after 3% fees means $14.04, rounded up to $14.25. Food is only about a third of a catered plate; the prep and cooking hours are as much again, and the kitchen and van are overhead on every event. A venue's package price is the wholesale here, set so it still covers the full cost with something left. In the example below, a Louisville caterer prices a buffet for a 100-guest wedding.
The short version
- Full cost = food a guest + your time + disposables + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Cost the whole event, then divide by the guests.
- Price service staff, rentals and travel as separate lines.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each guest from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a guest's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Ingredients | The batch's cost ÷ guests a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ guests × your hourly rate |
| Disposables | Per guest |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the guests you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
What a catering business looks like over a year is in catering business plan, and the license in catering license.
An example: a buffet for 100
Riverbend Catering, a made-up caterer in Louisville, Kentucky, cooks a buffet of herb chicken, pasta, salad, bread and dessert for a 100-guest wedding:
| Ingredient | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken thighs | 30 lb | $90.00 |
| Pasta and sauce | $60.00 | |
| Salad | $45.00 | |
| Bread and butter | $25.00 | |
| Dessert | $70.00 | |
| A batch | $290.00 |
| A guest | Cost |
|---|---|
| Ingredients, $290.00 ÷ 100 | $2.90 |
| Time, 900 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 100 | $3.00 |
| Disposables | $0.60 |
| Overhead | $1.50 |
| Full cost | $8.00 |
At a 40% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $8.00 ÷ 0.57 = $14.04, so $14.25. At $14.25 a guest, the food comes to $1,425 and each guest leaves $5.82. It had been quoting $18, which leaves $9.46, and kept $18 for weddings, with service staff at $30 an hour a server and rentals on separate lines. A venue asked for a package price of $12.00 a guest, which leaves $3.64. A barbecue version is in BBQ catering business plan.
Get the calculator
Download the catering price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the guests it makes, the hands-on minutes, the disposables and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator prices one menu for one headcount. A wedding that grows from 100 to 130 the week before, chicken up a dollar, and two extra hours of prep change the real cost of every plate.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each guest from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each guest is a recipe, with unit conversion from the case or sack to the gram.
True cost from the batch. Each batch takes ingredients at their real cost, from the deliveries they came from, so a price rise shows up in the next batch.
Price creep. A price-creep report per supplier shows which ingredient is quietly costing more.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| What a guest costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Food left after an event | Not counted | Waste with a reason |
| An ingredient creeping up | Noticed at tax time | A price-creep report |
| Whether wholesale still pays | A guess | Margins on real cost |
Recipes, batches and true cost are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.