A customer asks for a price per head. The tempting answer is the number you charged last time. The useful answer starts somewhere else: what this menu costs for this guest count, using the prices you have now.

Start with four numbers

You need:

  1. The guest count.
  2. The selling price per guest you are considering.
  3. The total theoretical food cost for the event.
  4. The food-cost target you use to judge the quote.

Theoretical food cost means the expected ingredient cost of the planned menu. It is not the same as the invoice total, and it does not automatically include labor, rentals, packaging, delivery, overhead, or food prepared above the guaranteed count.

Work the event in this order

Use these three calculations:

Revenue = guests × selling price per guest
Food cost per guest = total food cost ÷ guests
Food-cost percentage = total food cost ÷ revenue × 100

Consider the illustrative 180-guest event shown on the CostCook homepage:

180 guests × $68.00 = $12,240.00 revenue
$4,847.96 ÷ 180 ≈ $26.93 food cost per guest
$4,847.96 ÷ $12,240.00 ≈ 39.6% food cost

The $68 price sounds tidy. The food says something less tidy: 39.6 cents of every dollar of event revenue shown here is already assigned to ingredients.

Compare it with the target

If your food-cost target is 30%, reverse the percentage calculation to find the price that would meet it:

Required revenue = total food cost ÷ target percentage
Required price per guest = food cost per guest ÷ target percentage
$26.9331 ÷ 0.30 ≈ $89.78 per guest

That does not make $89.78 the correct market price. It tells you what the menu and target imply. You still have to decide whether to change the selling price, change the menu, accept a different target, or decline the work.

Check the assumptions before you quote

  • Are any ingredients missing a current price?
  • Are yields based on the product you actually buy?
  • Are sub-recipes included once, not twice?
  • Does the recipe cover the quantity you cook above the guarantee?
  • Are packaging, rentals, labor, delivery, and overhead handled somewhere outside the food number?
  • Will the quoted price be preserved if supplier prices change later?

A round price can still make a crooked quote. The point of food cost per guest is not to produce a prettier number. It is to put the food, the target, and the customer price in the same decision.

What to carry into the next quote

Keep the menu, guest count, ingredient cost, target, and selling price together. When one changes, recalculate the same three numbers before you say yes.