The Catering Operations System

A wedding for 140 billed $31,208. The food cost $4,950, the bar $1,985, the staff $4,449 and the rentals $4,968. Add the florals, the van, the sundries and a fair share of the rent and insurance, and the caterer kept $8,782, or 28 cents on the dollar.

This workbook adds that up the morning after, from three ledgers that cannot disagree: what you bought, the hours your people worked, and what you committed to vendors. The budget, the event P&L and every dashboard read the same three.

From enquiry to paid in full

• Clients and events. Every enquiry gets a row and a stage. Pick its menu and the revenue fills in; the pipeline is weighted by the chance at each stage. Deposits and balances show the day they fall due.
• The client proposal. A printable proposal built from the event and its menu, with your terms. Every version is kept, and the win rate follows from what you won and lost.
• Procurement. Vendors scored on price, quality, reliability and service, by weights you set, with their insurance certificates. Every rental, florist and van from quote requested to received, with the deposit, the contract, the day the balance falls due and what is still owed.
• Purchasing. What you bought for each event, and what was used, left over and wasted.
• Labor. Shifts scheduled and worked, at each person’s rate, with every shift that ran over.
• Production. Every task from planning to cleanup, by owner, on a four-week timeline.
• The event sheet. The day’s event order for the team, on paper: the menu with every dish’s allergens, a warning when the menu carries an allergen the dietary note names, the dietary counts, staff, vendors and tasks.
• Budget and P&L. Planned, approved and actual cost with the variance, category by category, and a one-page statement for each event.
• Risks, decisions and assets. A risk register, a record of every decision with its options and what it cost, and your china, glass and linens at replacement value, with what went missing.
• The Executive Dashboard and KPI Center. Revenue, food, labor, prime cost and net margin against target; the pipeline, the win rate and what needs you this week; any date range you choose.

It includes everything in The Culinary Cost Control Center: the price book, recipes costed through their real yield, menu engineering, the order guide in whole packs, food cost and the Waste Center.

You can check every number

The Method sheet explains each formula in words and names the source behind each default, from the IRS ruling that makes a service charge revenue rather than a tip to the published ranges for catering food and labor cost. Where no reliable benchmark exists, as for win rate, it says so and calls the number a goal. The worked example, a year of events at a fictional caterer called Linden & Rye, was recalculated independently of the workbook and matched to the cent before release.

What it is not

It is not accounting software, a payment system or a booking website. It does not send anything to anyone: the proposal and the event sheet are pages you print or save as PDF. The allergy warning knows only what your recipes and the dietary note say; it is a second pair of eyes, not a substitute for asking. Your accountant, your contracts and your local rules outrank it.

What you need

Microsoft Excel 2019 or later, or Microsoft 365. It was tested in Excel for Windows. No macros, no add-ins and no internet connection. It does not run in Google Sheets or Numbers yet.