Guide
How to price catering, with the working shown.
The mistake
A price is not a number you pick
It is a stack, and the reason most catering prices are wrong is that two of the four layers are invisible until the year ends.
What people usually do
Take last year’s per-head price, add a bit, and see if it wins. That price already carries two years of supplier increases you never re-checked, and it says nothing about whether this particular job is worth doing.
What the number is made of
Food, labour, overhead recovery, margin. Get the first two from this job, the third from your year, and the fourth is the only one that is actually a decision.
The worked example
One job, 120 guests, from the bottom up
Every figure below is arithmetic on the one above it. Change any input and the rest moves — which is the whole point, and why a fixed per-head price cannot be right for two different jobs.
$18.00 / head
What one guest eats, costed from your own dishes.
$15.20 / head
6 crew × 8h at $38/h, over 120 guests.
$3.98 / head
12% recovery on the two above — an assumption, not a measurement.
$24.79 / head
40% of the price. The only layer you choose.
01Food is the average of each course's dishes weighted by how many each guest gets — a guest choosing one of three eats one of them, not three.
02Labour is the crew this job actually needs, at what you pay them, divided by guests. It is not a fixed cost: a 200-guest job needs more hands than a 40-guest one.
03Overhead recovery is a SHARE of the costs that exist whether you work or not — insurance, the van, the kitchen. The 12% here is an assumption; yours comes from your own year.
04Margin is the only layer that is a decision rather than a measurement. Everything below it is arithmetic.
The answer
$62 a head. And you can say why.
$18.00 food + $15.20 labour + $3.98 overhead = $37.18 cost. At a 40% margin that is $61.97 per head, or $7,436 for the job.
What the sum shows
Three things that only become visible once you do it
- 29%
- food cost
- $15.20
- labour, per head
- $3.98
- overhead recovery
- $24.79
- what is left, per head
$18.00 of a $61.97 price. Under about 25% and you may be leaving money on the table; over about 35% and the job is carrying you rather than the other way round.
The layer most often left out, because it feels fixed. It is not — it scales with the job and it is frequently larger than the food.
Amber because it is the assumption in this stack. 12% is a placeholder; yours is your annual fixed costs divided by the work you actually win.
$2,974.80 on the job — before anything the estimate could not see, like the drive.
The part that is not arithmetic
What this sum still cannot tell you
Being clear about that is the difference between a method and a promise.
What the market will pay
Costing tells you the floor. It does not tell you the ceiling, and a wedding in a city will carry a price a corporate lunch in the same city will not.
What the date is worth
A peak Saturday costs more to staff and displaces other work. That belongs in the price as a rate on the date, not as an awkward conversation at quote time.
The costs it cannot derive
Travel is the usual one. If nothing knows the distance, the honest output is a gap naming the missing input — never a $0 that makes a 160 km round trip look free.
Questions
What caterers ask about pricing
- How much should I charge per head for catering?
- There is no number that is right for everybody, and anyone who gives you one is guessing about your costs. What there is, is a method: work out what one guest costs you in food, add the labour the job actually needs, recover a share of the overheads that exist whether you work or not, then add the margin you want. This guide does that with real figures.
- What margin should a caterer aim for?
- Commonly quoted figures sit around 25–35% net for catering, but the honest answer is that it depends on your service style and how much labour the job carries. The useful move is not picking a target — it is knowing your cost per head well enough that the margin is a decision rather than a surprise.
- Should I price per head or per job?
- Per head for the food and the service, plus a fixed component for anything that costs the same however many people come — travel, hire, a setup fee. Pricing everything per head means a 40-guest job quietly subsidises a 200-guest one, or the other way round.
- Do I charge more for a Saturday in December?
- You should, because it costs you more. Peak dates are harder to staff and you turn down other work to take them. Most operators know this and do not do it, because adding it by hand at quote time feels like haggling — which is exactly why it belongs in the pricing rather than in the conversation.
- What is the most common pricing mistake?
- Pricing from last year’s price. It carries every supplier increase since, invisibly, and it compounds. The second most common is leaving labour out of the per-head figure because it feels like a fixed cost — it is not, it scales with the job.
Next: what your food cost percentage should actually be, which is the layer this sum is most often wrong about.