Catering price calculator
Enter your food cost, staffing, and overhead and get the price per person you need to charge to hit your target margin, plus a breakdown of where every dollar goes. Free, no signup.
Your costs
Everything stays in your browser.
Labor
Other costs
Overhead & profit
Overhead covers rent, insurance, vehicles, and admin time. Both are a share of the final price, which is how caterers quote.
Charge per person
$24.37
$1,219 total for 50 guests
Your cost
$999
Profit
$219
Food cost
33%
Where the money goes
A planning estimate, not a quote. Ingredient prices, wages, and what your market will pay vary a lot by city and cuisine. Check the number against what you can actually sell locally.
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How to price catering, step by step
Start with the raw ingredient cost for one guest. Add the labor the event actually needs, which is far more than cooking time once you count setup, service, and breakdown. Add rentals, delivery, and travel. That total is your direct cost, and it is the floor, not the price.
Then decide what share of the final price should go to overhead (rent, insurance, vehicles, admin time) and what share is profit. Because both are shares of the price rather than markups on cost, the price has to be solved for: divide your direct cost by 1 minus overhead percent minus margin percent. The catering price calculator above runs that formula for you and shows the result per person and per event.
How much to charge for catering for 50 or 100 people
Per-person cost does not stay flat as guest counts rise. Food scales almost linearly, but labor and delivery do not: a 100-guest buffet rarely needs twice the staff of a 50-guest one, so the per-head price usually drops a little as the event gets bigger. That is why quoting from a fixed per-head rate leaves money on the table on small jobs and loses money on large ones.
Enter the real guest count above and the calculator re-runs the whole build-up, so you can see the per-person price change as the event scales instead of applying one rate to every booking.
What food cost percentage should caterers target?
Food cost percentage is your fastest sanity check on a quote: divide the food cost by the price you are charging. Most catering operations aim for 27 to 35 percent. If a quote comes in far below that range, the usual cause is an incomplete ingredient cost, things like disposables, garnishes, and the food you always over-prep. Far above it and labor will eat whatever is left.
The calculator shows your food cost percentage alongside the price and tells you which side of the healthy range you are on before you send the quote.
Why catering jobs lose money even at a good price
The two costs that get underestimated most are labor hours and overage. Setup, travel, service, and breakdown routinely add up to more hours than the cooking, and prepping 10 percent extra so the popular dish does not run out is real food cost that never appears on the quote. Both are in your costs whether or not you priced them.
Price the job with the real hours and the real food, then decide whether to discount, rather than discovering the shortfall after the event. To size the food itself, use the free catering food calculator, then bring that number back here.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I charge for catering per person?
Work from your costs, not a guess. Add your raw food cost per guest, the labor for the event, rentals and delivery, then price so food lands at roughly 27 to 35 percent of what you charge. In most US markets that puts drop-off catering around $15 to $25 per head and full-service closer to $50 to $130, but your own numbers decide it. The calculator above does this math for your actual costs.
What is the catering pricing formula?
The reliable one is a full cost build-up: price = (food + labor + rentals + delivery) divided by (1 minus overhead percent minus profit margin percent). Overhead and profit are shares of the final price rather than markups on cost, which is how caterers actually quote. That is exactly the formula this calculator uses.
What should my food cost percentage be?
Most caterers aim for food at 27 to 35 percent of the price. Below about 22 percent usually means you have left something out of your ingredient cost. Above 40 percent and the job will struggle to clear its overhead once labor is paid. The calculator flags where you land.
How much to charge for catering for 50 people?
Multiply, do not eyeball. If your food cost is $9 per guest, that is $450 of food; add your staffing for the event, delivery, and rentals, then price to your target margin. Enter those numbers above and you will get the per-person price and the event total instantly.
Should I charge for delivery and staff separately?
Either works, as long as the cost is covered somewhere. Many caterers fold delivery and staffing into the per-person price for simple drop-off jobs and list them as separate line items for full-service events, which makes the quote easier to defend when a client pushes back on the per-head number.
More free tools
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Catering Quote & Order Form Template
Free catering quote and order form templates you can fill in, download as Excel, or print.
Software behind the tool
These free tools are a slice of what ZiaPilot automates for restaurants every day.
- Restaurant catering softwareCapture catering inquiries, quote them accurately, and invoice without spreadsheets.
- Catering quote templateA reusable quote or order form you can fill in, download, or print.
- Catering lead managementStop losing large-order inquiries in a shared inbox.
- Catering invoice softwareBranded quotes and invoices generated straight from the order.
- Corporate catering orderingHandle repeat office accounts and standing weekly orders.
- Wedding catering softwareQuote multi-course weddings with guest counts and dietary splits.
Do this automatically, for every customer
ZiaPilot answers customers on your website and WhatsApp, quotes catering from your real menu, sends payable invoices, and drafts a reply to every review, on autopilot.