SK 
EN for catering and food trucks
A catering system that turns a guest count into ingredients, people and a price
Catering is priced off one number: the guest count. Everything else, the ingredients, staff, transport and equipment, follows from it, and yet it gets worked out from scratch every single time.
A custom system for a catering business starts at 1,400 and the first version is usually ready within a week. From the guest count and the chosen menu it works out ingredients by recipe, the number of staff you need, the equipment and transport, and from that the price, so the quote goes out the day of the enquiry instead of three days later.
Where catering loses money
The quote is built from scratch every time
A hundred guests, three courses, and you put it together at night even though you priced the same thing last month.
Buying is done by guesswork
Either you over-order and throw food out, or you run short and top up on Saturday morning at double the price.
Staff get lined up at the last minute
You roughly know how many people a hundred guests need, and the part-timers confirm on Friday evening.
Two events overlap
Dates live in your head and in the calendar on your phone. Equipment and people can both get promised twice.
What a system like this includes
A menu built from recipes with quantities per portion. The guest count then drops out ingredient usage automatically and the shopping list appears without any counting, which is the single biggest one-off time saving in the whole operation.
A calculation of staff and equipment based on the type of event and the guest count, meaning cooks, servers, plates, cutlery, chilling and transport. Equipment is exactly what gets promised twice for the same weekend most often.
A price built from your own costs and margin, visible before you send the quote. In catering it is easiest to lose money on big events, because a mistake gets multiplied by the guest count.
An event calendar with the availability of both people and equipment, which will not let you take on two events that physically cannot both happen. This is the same thing for catering that capacity is in a bakery.
A deposit by payment QR when an event is confirmed. In catering the material cost is high and buying happens up front, so a deposit is not about distrust, it is about cash flow.
- Enquiry and guest count Type of event, date, place and number of people.
- Menu and calculation Ingredients from recipes, staff, equipment and transport.
- Quote and deposit Price with a visible margin, deposit by payment QR.
- Buying and delivery The shopping list builds itself, the calendar guards capacity.
What stands behind it
I have not built for a catering business yet. The closest is scaffolding rental, where one entry drives the material, transport and price, and it tracks equipment that went out and came back. What is not there are recipes and staff planning, and that is the part we would have to work through based on how you cook.
The closest finished system is the one for scaffolding rental. It sounds unrelated, but it is the same calculation: from one entered number you get a parts list, transport and a price, and it tracks what went out and what came back.
While building it, the client Excel was taken apart first and 10 errors were found in it, errors that had shaped his quotes for years. In catering that kind of error gets multiplied by the guest count, so it costs more.
Common questions
We run both a food truck and classic catering.
Those are two types of operation with the same core. A food truck adds a location and a parking time, catering adds equipment and service; both can sit in one calendar.
The recipes live in the head chef head.
Writing them down is the most work on the whole project and at the same time the one thing that then saves time every week. I recommend starting with your ten most frequent ones, not all of them.
We have to record allergens.
If they are part of the recipe, they follow from it on their own and can be printed with the menu. It is one of the few places where keeping recipes has a legal use too.
How much does it cost?
From 1,400, with no per-user fee, which with event part-timers is the main difference against off-the-shelf programs.
How long does it take you to prepare a quote for a hundred guests?
Tell me how many events you run per season and how you price them today. A quote for a hundred guests then goes out while you still remember the conversation, not three days later. The first call is free.
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