How to Quote a Catering Job That Wins the Booking

What a catering quote needs to include

Whether it's a wedding, a corporate event or a private party, the same nine things belong on the page:

1. 1Your business details — name, logo, contact details, food hygiene rating, VAT number if registered.
2. 2The client's event details — date, venue, day and evening guest numbers, and the service style (canapés, buffet, plated).
3. 3A quote number and date.
4. 4Itemised line items — menu cost per head, staffing, equipment hire, delivery and setup — never one lump sum "£9,000 wedding package".
5. 5Dietary requirements and allergens — how many vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free meals are costed in, not assumed free.
6. 6What's not included — the cake, bar/alcohol service, linen upgrades, extra hours, next-day breakdown and collection.
7. 7The final-numbers deadline — the exact date headcount is locked in, and what happens if it drops or rises after that.
8. 8Subtotal, VAT (if applicable), and the total.
9. 9Payment terms and how to accept — deposit to secure the date, balance due before the event, and your cancellation policy.

Most quotes that lose caterers money are missing the final-numbers deadline — that's exactly where the margin quietly disappears.

How to price a catering job before you send a number

UK catering prices vary a lot by style and region — as a rough guide, a cold or finger buffet typically runs £15–£25 per head, a hot fork buffet £20–£35, and a three-course plated wedding breakfast £45–£75, before staffing, hire and VAT. Use those as a starting point, not a rulebook — your ingredient costs, location and service style all move the number.

Break the job into what actually costs you money

List every stage separately: the menu itself (ingredients and prep), waiting and kitchen staff (a good rule of thumb is one server per 10–12 guests for plated service), equipment and linen hire, delivery, setup and collection. Itemised quotes get accepted more readily, and they let a client trim a line — fewer canapés, a simpler dessert — instead of rejecting the whole quote.

The three things caterers routinely forget to charge for

• Final-headcount risk — guest numbers move right up to the week of the event. Build in a numbers-lock date and a clear per-head rate for late additions, rather than absorbing the reorder and reprint cost.
• Dietary and allergen meals — a bespoke vegan or gluten-free plate often takes as much kitchen time as the standard menu. Price it the same; don't treat it as a favour.
• Delivery, setup and breakdown — travel, hot-holding equipment, and collection the next morning are real costs that are easy to forget when you're focused on the food itself.

Then add 15–20% margin on top of your ingredient, staff and hire costs to cover quiet weeks, admin and wastage — not just the day itself.

A worked example

Here's an 80-guest wedding breakfast with an evening buffet, quoted the right way:

Final headcount confirmed 21 days before the wedding; guests added after that date are charged at £58/head with no guarantee of a matching menu. Includes vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options for up to 15% of guests as standard — additional allergen meals priced the same as the main. Excludes wedding cake, bar service and corkage. 50% deposit to secure the date, balance due 14 days before the event. To accept, reply to this email or tap Accept on the quote.

That headcount line is doing quiet, important work: it stops the awkward conversation ten days out when the guest list has grown by fifteen and the kitchen hasn't.

Five details that get catering quotes accepted faster

• Send it within a few days of the tasting. Couples and planners are often comparing two or three caterers off the back of a taster session — the fast, clear quote afterwards is the one that gets remembered.
• Make the menu look designed, not listed. A branded PDF with your logo signals the same care you'll bring to the day — a scanned handwritten menu doesn't.
• Name the headcount deadline precisely. “Final numbers locked 21 days before the event” beats a vague “let us know nearer the time” — vague deadlines are how caterers get burned on late additions.
• Make accepting effortless. A couple mid-way through wedding planning won't print, sign and post a form back to you — one tap or one reply should be all it takes.
• Follow up once, warmly. A short “any dietary questions, or want to talk through the menu?” a few days later recovers bookings that got buried in a busy inbox.

The fastest way to do all of this

Building the document above from scratch — per-head pricing, staffing, hire, VAT, the headcount-deadline wording — takes 30–45 minutes each time in a spreadsheet or Word template. Fine for the odd enquiry, and a real time cost once you're quoting several events a week.

This is exactly why QuoteRocket exists. You describe the job in plain English — "80-guest wedding breakfast, 3-course plated, evening buffet for 40 more, GF and vegan options" — and it turns that into a branded, itemised PDF quote in under a minute: line items, VAT, deposit terms, the lot. Your client accepts it with one tap on their phone, and an accepted quote becomes an invoice in one click. It's free to try, and while it started life quoting landscaping and trade jobs, wedding suppliers — photographers, videographers and now caterers — have been quick to adopt it since.

Whatever tool you use to produce it, the principles hold: itemise everything, price dietary requirements honestly, set a hard final-numbers date, and make saying yes effortless.

Frequently asked questions

More reading