Catering Consulting

Full-cost pricing, labor allocation, and contract margins for caterers whose revenue is growing faster than their profit.

The Problem You're Facing

Catering is the easiest place in food service to grow revenue and lose money doing it. Volume goes up, the calendar fills, the team is stretched — and the margin is thinner than it was at half the size.

What that usually looks like: quotes built off food cost with labor guessed at the end. Staffing set by feel rather than by event type. Prep that spills into days nobody costed. And no way to tell which contracts are carrying the business and which are quietly draining it.

What This Covers

Full-Cost Pricing

A quoting model that includes prep labor, service labor, travel, rentals, breakage, and the overhead most caterers leave out entirely.

Margin by Event Type

Contribution margin tracked per event type, so you can see which work to chase and which to price differently or decline.

Staffing Models

Staffing built per event type and guest count instead of by instinct, so labor stops being the line that ruins an otherwise good job.

Prep and Production Planning

Production schedules that spread load across the week rather than compressing it into the two days before a Saturday.

Payment Terms That Protect You

Deposit structure, payment schedule, and collection policy so cash arrives before the costs do.

Contract Review

A read on the agreements you are already committed to, which is usually where the fastest recoverable margin sits.

How It Works

Cost the last quarter honestly

We rebuild what a representative set of your recent events actually cost, including the labor and prep time that never made it onto the quote.

Build the pricing model

A full-cost calculator you can quote from, with tier structures and floors that hold under negotiation.

Fix staffing and production

Staffing ratios by event type, and a production schedule that stops compressing everything into the final 48 hours.

Set the cash terms

Deposits, payment schedule, and a collection policy so growth does not become a cash-flow problem.

What You Get

What operators typically want out of this work:

Quotes that include every real cost, not just food
A clear read on which event types actually carry margin
Staffing set by model rather than by instinct
Production load spread across the week
Deposits and terms that keep cash ahead of costs

Who This Is For

Your catering revenue is growing but profit is flat or falling
You cannot say which contracts or event types are profitable
You are quoting off food cost and adding labor at the end
You cater out of a restaurant and share labor between the two

Common Questions

What is the difference between this and the Catering Profit System course?

The course is a self-paced $67 product covering labor, pricing, food cost, logistics and cash flow — the right choice if you want to work through it yourself. Consulting applies the same frameworks directly to your numbers and contracts. Many operators start with the course and move to consulting when they want it built for them.

We cater out of an existing restaurant. Does that change anything?

It changes the costing. Restaurant-based catering usually shares labor, prep space and inventory with the dining room, which makes event margins look better than they are. Splitting those costs honestly is normally where the work starts.

Do you help with pricing existing contracts, or only new ones?

Both. Existing contracts often carry the worst margins because they were priced before the operation understood its true costs. Reviewing what you are already committed to usually surfaces the fastest wins.

Want to know which contracts are actually profitable?

Start with a 90-minute Profit Leak Snapshot. We review your recent events, quotes, and labor, and you leave with your top three leaks and a prioritised fix list.

Book Your $350 Profit Leak Snapshot